How To Start Learning Through Projects in Your Classroom for the Best Results

Learning through projects is one of the best methods to get your students to learn. It can easily integrate student choice, reading, writing, communication, problem solving, and creative thinking. It’s highly engaging and motivating for students when done correctly. My most memorable learning experiences as a kid in school all had to do with projects.

Fears Around Learning Through Projects

However, many teachers shy away from it. It can be so intimidating and time consuming. Sometimes we wonder: “What kind of work are they even going to turn in to me?”; “Are they going to learn anything?”; “This is just going to be doing too much!”

We feel that it might just be a big waste of time (and glue). Some of us may have even tried it and found that the majority of the time was spent with students coloring, cutting, and gluing, with not much learning of the content and skills you actually wanted them to learn.

The Benefits of Learning Through Projects

Trains Students in Executive Functioning and Higher Order Thinking Skills

However, the benefits of learning through projects far outweigh the potential drawbacks. When done correctly, students get steeped deep in the process of planning, prioritizing, and time management. They gain valuable experience in problem solving and opportunities to learn from their mistakes – opportunities that textbook and worksheet learning can’t offer at the same level.

Cultivates Student Choice and Ownership

Learning through projects also offers a lot more opportunities for student choice and customization. It naturally results in students feeling greater ownership of their work. It makes them go through the process of creating something from start to finish and presenting it to a group of peers. The learning process feels a lot more meaningful and intentional than textbook or workbook based learning.

Interdisciplinary Learning

Learning through projects also incorporates so many different disciplines. Students will have to read, write, and communicate through different modes. In addition, because projects can be so all encompassing, they can easily integrate multiple subjects like history, science, language arts, math, art, etc. all in one learning experience.

Step by Step on How to Get Started With Learning Through Projects

Process of Learning Through Projects With Your Students: Step-by-Step

So, how can you and your students get started? Well, I’ve put some steps down below that I’ve used in my classroom and I hope you’ll find it helpful. The important thing is to be flexible, to experiment, and to keep trying. Just like there are many individual students with different personalities and ways of learning, individual teachers can also have different processes that work for them. But the list below can be a starting point to work with if you feel lost or overwhelmed.

Step 1: Start with your learning goals.

Skills goals: Pick 1-2 main skills you want to target. These would be different from content information or content goals. Keep in mind that even though you may just have 1 or two main skills that you will be targeting and measuring, it doesn’t mean that they’re not going to be working on other skills throughout the process. They will be working on countless skills! But focusing on just one or two helps us to have a more organized and intentional approach. It has helped me track progress of different skills over time and has informed my teaching tremendously.

Content goals: For me, the content that students learn should be their choice. So when I think about content, I like to come up with multiple topics. My goal is usually for the different groups of students to explore different topics and share with the class to multiply our knowledge as a whole group.

Instead of just giving a topic, it’s very important to have it posed as a question. If you’re working with younger kids or students that need a little more direction and motivation, you may want to formulate the questions yourself and allow them to choose which one to explore. A very helpful and fun exercise at the beginning of every unit I do with my students is to generate questions. As many questions about the topic as they can possibly come up with. They get ideas from previewing the textbook or looking at primary sources, especially primary source images.

But that is what works for me when it comes to content. You, however, may actually have specific information that you want your students to learn. In that case, you may want to create a checklist of questions to make sure that your students include the answers in their project or presentation somehow. You can also prepare guiding questions or guiding tasks.

Brainstorm and come up with at least 2 to 3 project options that will provide opportunities for the kids to show their achievement of the learning goal.

Step 2: Create a rubric and discuss expectations with your students.

Create a rubric with the kids. Keep it simple. I like to keep it under 5-7 categories and only 3 deep for simplicity in grading and just less overwhelming for everyone. As much as possible, my rubrics actually just explain what exemplary work in each category looks like. Be specific.

Show examples of exemplary work and discuss it with your kids. Some questions you can use: Do you think this is good work? What about it makes it good work? How can we produce the same kind of quality? Can it be improved? Can you make something better?

Show non-examples of exemplary work and discuss. This is so crucial. In order to really emphasize what high quality work looks like, it can be so useful to show bad examples and to discuss it. Do you think this is good quality? Why not? What can be improved? Can you make something better?

Step 3: Help your students create an action plan that will set them up for success.

Create an action plan by starting with the end in mind and working backwards. Help them brainstorm the tasks they’ll need to do. If they have so much energy and they jump all over the place, allow for that. Use sticky notes to help them move notes around in different order. But as the guide, you should have the end in mind and help them work backwards and put their ideas in order once they have all the pieces. Set a schedule and tentative deadline for each task.

Step 4: Guide them through the process using questioning techniques. Avoid micromanaging or doing the work for them.

Guide them through the process using questions and options. Start with open ended questions just to help them facilitate the step by step thought process. What’s next? Sometimes they will get stuck and it’s easier for them to be offered options. Two options. Should it be this or that?

Example: I had a young student who could not start her storyboarding process for a filmmaking class. She was overwhelmed with the infinite choices or the fact that it’s all up to her so her mind was going blank. So I came up with two possibilities for her opening scene and put it before her. I had to do that for a couple of steps until she got the hang of it and was able to do the rest independently. Another way we could have solved the problem is just by starting in the middle, wherever she could already see the scene and work backwards from there to figure out how the story would get there and forward to how it would end.

And just keep reminding them, especially during brainstorming, that it’s not permanent. It’s just a starting point to help them get going.

Step 5: Students publish and share their work.

Publish or share the finished product. Make students present. To the rest of the class, family members, friends, etc. And make sure they know that they would have to beforehand. This adds to the meaning of the project and gives students accountability beyond the grade. It’s great practice for real life.

Ask peers, people presented to for specific, positive feedback. This, by far, is much more effective than critical feedback to drive improvement and growth. For older kids, you can ask for specific critiques, but I would highly discourage starting with this when they are presenting publicly or orally. This is something that works really well once you’ve built up a great culture of learning and encouragement in the class.

I think it would also be best to just give critical feedback in writing. Make sure critiques address specific tasks or pieces of the project or the process to make sure that they don’t come across as criticism of the person as a whole. It’s not productive or helpful if it’s just a generality. It just makes the person feel bad and get defensive and worse. It is also far more effective to present critiques in the form of questions – whether it’s asking for more clarification or asking about obstacles that prevented the student from putting out his or her best work.

If you want to address the behavior or mindset during the process, see if they can come up with it first in self reflection and assessment.

Step 6: Students and teacher should reflect.

End with self reflection and assessment. Have them do a free write on how they feel going through the process and having finished. How do they feel about their product? Then have them measure the quality against the rubric they helped create at the beginning of the project. Prompt them to reflect on areas of strength and improvement. What would they do differently on the next project? What kind of support would they like next time? Etc.

Assess and reflect on your own (performance) as their guide. Did you micromanage? Lose patience? Maybe pick 2-3 areas you want to focus on growing through this process. Then reflect on how you did. Identify an action plan for next time.

“Practice Makes Progress”

I hope this has been helpful! Don’t be afraid of projects and of it not being perfect right away! Just keep trying. As they say, “practice makes progress.” Your kids will learn far more than just reading from textbooks. They will be reading from textbooks and other books, but there will be self-motivation and purpose when they’re doing it to get information for a project they’re excited about.