Looking for ways to plan project based learning activities? Suzie Boss suggests borrowing ideas from your colleagues and adapt or remix to fit your context.

Suzie borrowed ideas from professional development and learning conferences for teachers who may need a boost to get their project-based learning off the ground.

In this activity, students will use 5 pictures and 15 words of their choice to respond to a prompt of the teacher's choosing.  

Students will create a podcast exploring a topic of interest to them following the NYT framework. Students will enter the NYT competition (typically held in April/May).

In this activity, students will work in collaborative groups to create 9M x 9M models of plant and animal cells. Class population can be split into 2 or 4 groups, with half the students constructing animal cells and the other half constructing plant cells. Students must organize and assign duties, provide materials for this activity, and write a written report. They will also give "Cell Tours" to other students and/or classroom guests.

How are magnetism and electricity related? In this lesson, students will explore the relationship between magnetism and electricity, learn how to construct an electromagnet, and discover everyday uses of electromagnets. Students will create a multimedia presentation in which they will demonstrate their knowledge of electromagnetism.

Students match the character traits of a character in a book they are reading with specific actions the character takes. Students then work in pairs to "become" one of the major characters in a book and describe themselves and other characters, using Internet reference tools to compile lists of accurate, powerful adjectives supported with details from the reading. The lesson uses The Scarlet Letter as an example, but this activity is effective with any work of literature in which characterization is important.

A teaching resource for actiities, research assignments, writing prompts and cooperative activities for Ben Franklin including Poor Richard's Almanac.

In this lesson, students work in cooperative groups to prepare presentations on business organization and Big Business during the second part of the Industrial Revolution (1860-1910) in the United States.

After reading books, students share book talks through digital storytelling. First, students plan scripts and then find images to illustrate their scripts. They also add text, narration, music as well as pan and zoom effects. Finally, the joy of reading is prompted through the sharing of the students' digital stories.

By mimicking popular websites that relate the plot of movies, television shows, and real life events in reverse, students have the opportunity to review the plot in a more creative and challenging fashion. Using a snowclone (a verbal formula that is changed for reuse), students complete the phrase "If you read ____ backwards, it's about ____" to comment on the plots of novels.

The selection "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker explores the role heritage and culture played in an individual's understanding of his or her life and identity. In this lesson, students will understand the contributions of past and present and interpret and analyze the ideas of family and hertiage through the use of theme and metaphors.

In this activity, students create their own personal inferno journeys that reflects a real-life situation they may have faced or might face, that highlights a time where guidance might be needed to reach a better understanding.

In this lesson, teachers scaffold student reading of websites that highlight science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers. Before choosing a text for close reading, the teacher models how to "read" the variety of texts and features of different websites, including images and interactives. Then the teacher models a close reading with students, setting a purpose and asking text-dependent questions to help students find evidence, use inferencing skills, and peer edit.

This lesson asks students to explore the motivation behind characters' actions in To Kill a Mockingbird. Students first engage in a freewrite activity. They then do research and creative thinking to design a poster and plan a presentation representing a psychological profile for a selected character, while determining what specific factors (such as family, career, environment, and so forth) have the greatest influence on the characters' decision making throughout the novel. The groups present their findings to the class by assuming the persona of their character and explaining the psychological factors influencing their behavior in the novel

This lesson and resource engages students in a metacognition exercise about critical thinking and also practice research and informational writing skills using a collection of critical thinking quotes.

The past is often neatly partitioned in time periods and eras with generalized names meant to characterize what life was like during that time. In this multi-day lesson, students question the validity of using ?Dark Ages? to describe Europe from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance. In the process, students examine a variety of primary and secondary sources highlighting different social, political, economic, cultural, and environmental facets of life in Europe during this period.

This assignment was made for an English II class. It uses various PodCasts epsidoes to explore culture. 

In this lab, students will investigate the law of conservation of energy. Student teams must develop and carry out a lab procedure to achieve the stated goal of finding the maximum conversion of potential energy to kinetic energy. Using a ruler and a toy car, students will work collaboratively to design a lab that will demonstrate the change from one form of energy to another based upon the law of conservation of energy. Teams will then develop a hypothesis for maximizing the amount of energy transfer and create a procedure for proving the hypothesis. Once they run their lab, students will work independently to create formal lab reports that summarize the activity.

Students will explore the world of Medieval Europe. They will learn the way the people lived and how Phragmites was part of this world. Students will then be assigned a social class role in the system of feudalism and research information about their character's privileges and disadvantages. Students will experience the feudal system through activities and presentations to relay what they learned to their class. Students may choose a variety of creative outlets to express their character's life in their own creative way with a group or separately.

Students will perform several tasks during this assignment. They will:-Create allusions based on Greek muths-Research -Apply information learned  through research to their project idea-Create a website using propaganda tecgniques-Create a presentation to promote the food truck 

Suggestions on how to guide students through the writing process when writing editorials "” from brainstorming a topic to publishing their work "” and all the steps in between.

This template should be used in a manner similar to a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis in project management. This template will allow the project group to analyze different areas that are critical to the success of their activity completion. Students will have an opportunity to make real world connections, use technology and collaborate in order to complete the project objectives.

In this extensive, 79 page unit, students will explore modern art pieces and poetry.

This lesson encourages students to pick a turning point in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and show how the action of the play would have been significantly altered had a different decision been made or a different action taken. Students will use a graphic organizer to analyze the plot of the play, create a plot outline of an altered play, and present their new stories to the class.

The focus of this lesson is on the use of hieroglyphs as a form of communication, record keeping, and as a means for preserving and passing down history. Students will learn basic information about the alphabet, common Egyptian words, and how to read hieroglyphic messages. Students will also practice using hieroglyphs to create messages of their own.

This study of Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau is designed to give students an understanding of the ideas of these four philosophers and is also an opportunity for them to reflect on humanity's need for order and efforts to create stability within the social community. In the first part of the unit, activities focus student awareness on the nature of government itself and then progress to close reading and writing centered on the specifics of each philosopher's views. Large-group and small-group discussion as well as textual evidence are emphasized throughout. In the second part of the unit, students are asked to engage in creative writing that has research as its foundation. Collaboration, role-playing, and a panel discussion
are fundamental parts of the culminating activity. Options for further writing activities and assessments close the unit.

Students analyze the work of winners of the Learning Network's 2014 Student Editorial Contest as well as professional models from the Times editorial pages to learn how writers effectively introduce and respond to counterarguments. Then they write their own position pieces, incorporating counterarguments to strengthen their claims.

In this lesson on the Spanish American War from Historical Thinking Matters, students will explore sources, webquests, and activities designed to help in answering the following essay question: "The explosion of the U.S.S. Maine caused the United States to invade Cuba in 1898. Use the documents provided and your own knowledge to evaluate this statement. Do you agree with this explanation of the causes of the Spanish American War? Why or why not? Use and cite evidence from the documents to support your analysis of this statement.”

In this activity, students use a storyboard to create a character reference log. This log will allow students to recall relevant information about important characters as the plot progresses.

Students begin by evaluating the universal theme of betrayal from multiple perspectives. After reading time period scenarios as well as reflecting on personal experiences, students use critical thinking skills to explore and identify interventions for each betrayal scenario, including personal examples. Students then research Roman history as they write down thier own critical perspective of a scenario depicting plausible scenes from Roman times. As the culminating project and assessment, students will create comic strips with the Interactive Comic Creator

For the curriculum unit The Diplomacy Challenge. Lesson One. A key role of diplomats is to gather and analyze intelligence. In this lesson, students acting as diplomats, will prepare a short intelligence briefing on their assigned empire to present to the representatives of the other modern empires.

This interactive applet may be used by students to assist them with the process of letter writing. The generator requires students to fill in the specific components of a letter before it generates a correctly formatted letter. The generator may be used as a letter writing aid or in conjunction with other activities wherein students are tasked with writing a letter. Click the arrow to proceed throught letter.

Students create a notice of a lost pet flyer in Microsoft Word to practice creating, revising, and retrieving information.

In this lesson, students will summarize information found in the Alabama Driver Manual and share their findings in a multimedia presentation. Students will be responsible for self-scoring and peer scoring the multimedia presentations.

Students examine the impact of digital technology on print journalism and develop creative ideas for delivering news

In this lesson, students examine the impact of digital technology on print journalism and develop creative ideas for delivering news

This resource provides a lesson designed to follow lessons that ask students to write persuasive essays. After completing their essays, students will be responsible for creating a 5 slide presentation that effectively summarizes their essay. The presentation should include narrations for each slide. Students will share their completed slides with their peers.

In this extensive unit, students will work together to research and explore translated poems and their authors.

Description:  This lesson was created for a 9th grade integrated biology/English classroom with a focus on out door learning.  In this lesson, students will practice their scientific observation skills and reflect on their experience in this out door observation activity.   Students will also take these initial observations and extend them in their writing as they explore various forms of figurative language.  Finally, the reflections will be posted on their blog for their classmates to view and respond to as we begin to practice feedback on each other's writing.

Note:  Before beginning this unit, decide on where students will house their blog posts to allow for feedback from peers.  Keep in mind the time students might need to spend developing and working with the blog before actually posting to it.   A Google Classroom discussion post may work as well, or even better.  Additionally, this lesson also addresses the NGSS Science & Engineering Practices.

Students employ the screenwriter's craft to gain a fresh perspective on historical research, learning how filmmakers combine scholarship and imagination to bring historical figures to life and how the demands of cinematic storytelling can shape our view of the past.