Though there is a time and place for direct instruction, the classroom seems to function best when the focus is off of the instructor and the students are the active agents in the educational process. What I mean is that students get more out of the process when they are actively involved in their education–thinking, asking questions, and discovering–rather than passively taking notes and receiving the knowledge of the instructor. If you are looking for a way to motivate your students and to redirect their destructive energies into constructive forces, consider assigning projects and activities that provide students with the opportunity to be creative, to share and develop their skills. Here are ten project ideas that you may use in your classroom. If you find these suggestions interesting, visit my website for 62 projects suggestions.

1. Glossaries: If students need to understand a large array of vocabulary words, consider having them construct glossaries to help them study and review.

2. Hieroglyphics: create pictures that represent vocabulary words. Alternately, students could retell the events of a story or historical episode in simple pictures.

3. ID Badges: create identification cards for characters from a work of literature or for people involved in an historical event. Include relevant details on the badges.

4. Illustrated Quotes: Have students choose a meaningful quote from a text that they are reading. They should explain why the quote interests them and then write the quote on a blank sheet of paper and draw related images.

5. Instructions: write instructions on how to perform an operation or experiment, diagram a sentence, or start a World War.

6. Inventions: create and illustrate your new invention that address a problem in nature or society. Address environmental or sociological issues.

7. Limericks: write limericks about events from history or scientific discoveries such as, “There once was a man named Sir Newton…”

8. Magazines: create magazines covering large units of study such as the Industrial Revolution or Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, that way many articles can be written. Images may also be drawn or printed and added to the publication.

9. Maps: create maps based on actual geographic or national boundaries and landmarks or maps illustrating the setting of a story and the journey of a character.

10. Merit Badges: create vocabulary merit badges where the term is defined in three or fewer words and a small image is drawn to represent the definition.

11. Movie Adaptations: plan a movie version of a novel, scientific discovery, or historical event. Pick who will play what role, plan scenes, write dialog, even create a soundtrack.

12. Murals: create a mural or a large drawing of many images related to a larger idea. A mural about the Harlem Renaissance might contain images of Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and W.E.B. DuBois.

13. Myths: write creation myths to account for scientific or historic events or for a creative writing assignment.

14. Newscasts: deliver important information from literature, history, science, or math in the form of a newscast. Newscast can be prerecorded or presented live.

15. Pen-pals: write letters to and from important people from history or the characters in a story.

Author Bio: Visit my website for 62 ideas for school projects and check out my blog for suggestions on implementing projects in your classroom or home school.

Category: Education
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