Ideas for projects can come from anywhere, including newspapers, current events, past lessons, and/or students’ own curiosity and can last from a few days, a month or most of a semester.

The length and depth are completely up to you, the standard(s), and outcomes that you are looking to have students master.

Here are 10 ideas to consider:

1. Fake News – Research and focus on the problems of negative and/or ‘fake news’ (both online, in social media, magazines, etc.).
2. Create an Environmental Campaign – Research how to help a local business in your town to increase environmental sustainability (e.g., reduce waste).
3. Creating A Utopian Society – Create a perfect civilization. Identify critical characteristics, laws, resources, and habits, etc.
4. Living in the Past, what would you have done? Write a story about what your life would be like if you lived 100 years ago. How might you have addressed a situation in history differently?
5. Water World – What would be the impact of 6 degrees of warming on a major coastal city. Can they be saved? (i.e. Los Angeles, Miami, New York, etc.).
6. Create a Modern Marketing Campaign – Help a local business that does “good work” market itself to younger audiences. Create a proposal, present to business, refine proposal based on feedback.
7. Tell a Story Through Pictures – Create a photo documentary, then turn that into a film documentary, then turn that into a short eBook.
8. Creating the New USA? Starting Over – Re-imagine the American Constitution–or similar governing documents–as if they were designed today.
9. Giving Voice to an Issue – Create a documentary on an under-served local social issue few people see or may understand. Consider creating and publishing a student-driven weekly or monthly podcast.
10. Design the 21^st Century School – Design a school for today’s students, including new content areas, grading, collaboration, and community involvement.

Share your student projects here! Let us know if you complete any of these projects in your classroom. We would love to share some of your student products as examples here on our site. Contact us at [email protected] with your project information.

If you would like to have a project-based classroom and need strategies on how to make it started? Consider the following TKL online course titled “Getting Started with Project-Based Learning (PBL)“.