School Project Ideas
Are you a teacher, parent, or student looking for a creative project
idea? You should find this list of 62 project ideas to be a great
resource for designing activities and projects.
When students
create projects, they are the active agent in the learning process; the
classroom is centered on the student rather than the teacher and the
role of the instructor evolves to that of the facilitator. This list
should give you great ideas to create projects for any topic of study.
Leave a comment below to share how you’ve applied these ideas in your
home or classroom.
Project Ideas
Advertisements:
create an advertising campaign to sell a product. The product can be
real or imaginary. Try using this to teach persuasion, as an assignment
for speech class, or to reinforce skills learned in a consumer class.
Album Covers:
create artwork for an album. The album may be connected to a skill
(such a multiplication) and should demonstrate or explain how that skill
is used. Or the album cover may be connected to a novel and the art
work might present a relevant theme in the story. Another use would be
to have students create natural disaster album covers in a science class
where the cover would depict and explain the event.
Autobiographies:
write the story of your life. This assignment may help you teach autobiography or reinforce a broad range of writing skills.
Awards:
create awards to present to historical figures, scientists, mathematicians, authors, or characters from a novel.
Banners:
create an informational banner. Students could create time lines of the American civil war or the Spanish alphabet.
Bar Graphs:
create illustrated bar graphs. These may be used to explore data sets,
use statistics to support a point, or illustrate a growth or change in a
market.
Biographies:
write the life story of someone else. It could be a friend, family member, historical figure, or a fictional character.
Blogs:
create blogs for literary characters or historical figures. Create an actual blog for free at
blogger.com or just have students write and organize articles on white printer paper if the internet is not available.
Blueprints:
create blueprints or floor plans of a scene described in a novel, an
historic setting, or an earthquake proof bridge or structure.
Boardgames:
create boardgames where students review course concepts. Game play
should be based around answering review questions correctly.
Book Clubs:
Students read either novels or selections from the text book and
discuss the readings in small groups. Students might be required to
take notes about the discussion or provide an audio recording of the
discussion as the artifact to be evaluated. Students might also create
discussion questions beforehand and have these approved by the
instructor. This activity may be applied to reading selections in any
subject.
Booklets:
create an informational booklet. In the
past I’ve had students create booklets showing comma rules, narrator’s
perspective, genre, figurative language, and more. Booklets can be
applied to almost any unit of study and all they require to make are
some blank white printer paper folded in half, one of my favorites.
Bookmarks:
create illustrated bookmarks with relevant information. A bookmark
might summarize previous chapters or contain the definitions of
challenging vocabulary words.
Brochures:
brochures can be
made as either tri-fold or bi-folds. Students can create informational
brochure’s about geographic locations, a story’s setting, or a natural
event such as how a tidal wave is formed or how the food chain works.
Calendars:
create a calendar charting the dates of key events. This can be
applied to an historical event (like a famous battle), a scientific
event (such a the path of Hurricane Katrina), or the sequence of events
in story.
Casting Calls:
select people (fictional, famous,
or otherwise) to play the role in a movie version of story or historic
event. Explain which character traits were considered in each
selection.
Cheers:
create a cheer explaining a scientific or
mathematical process. Alternately, a cheer could summarize the events
of a novel or an historic episode.
Classified Ads:
create
classified type ads as seen in newspapers. It could be a wanted ad or a
M4F type ad depending on the age of your students. Update the concept
and have students create Craigslist ads or Ebay listings. Example
applications include covering vocabulary words, introducing multiple
characters in a drama, examining figures in an historical event, or
studying endangered and extinct plants and animals.
Coat of Arms:
create a family coat of arms for a character from a novel or a person from history. A good activity for teaching symbolism.
Collages:
create a collage or collection of images related to a topic. Images
can be hand drawn, printed, or clipped from a magazine or newspaper.
These work best with large thematic ideas that give students the ability
to maneuver, like a collage representing slavery, the 1920s, or an
entire story.
Comic Strips or Books:
create an illustrated comic strip or book representing events from history or a work of fiction.
Crossword Puzzles:
create a crossword puzzle to review definitions of challenging
vocabulary words. Great for science, social studies, reading, and even
math terms.
Diary Entries:
create a diary entries for a
person from history or a fictional character who experienced an historic
event. Can also be applied to characters in a story or survivors of a
disaster.
Dramas:
create a play. Students might adapt an
existing story or create original works and plays can be centered around
any event in history.
Editorials:
provide an opinion about a
hot topic in history or science. Should the space program be reduced?
Is US military intervention in current conflicts appropriate? Is
global warming a concern?
Fables:
create fables that teach a
lesson. Students may create illustrated story boards of their original
fables or even dramatic adaptations which they then perform. A good
character building activity.
Flags:
create a flag
representing either an actual county (like Libya) or fictitious place
(like Narnia). This project should be accompanied by a brief report
explaining what ideas the colors and images on the flags represent.
Flash Cards:
create cards helpful for study and review. Flash cards can be created for any subject and topic.
Flowcharts:
students create flowcharts analyzing and representing a mathematical
process, a natural event, or an event in history or literature.
Glossaries: If students need to understand a large array of vocabulary
words, consider having them construct glossaries to help them study and
review.
Hieroglyphics:
create pictures that represent
vocabulary words. Alternately, students could retell the events of a
story or historical episode in simple pictures.
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.
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.
Instructions:
write instructions on how to perform an operation or experiment, diagram a sentence, or start a World War.
Inventions:
create and illustrate your new invention that address a problem in
nature or society. Address environmental or sociological issues.
Limericks:
write limericks about events from history or scientific discoveries such as, “There once was a man named Sir Newton…”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Myths:
write creation myths to account for scientific or historic events or for a creative writing assignment.
Newscasts:
deliver important information from literature, history, science, or
math in the form of a newscast. Newscast can be prerecorded or
presented live.
Pen-pals:
write letters to and from important people from history or the characters in a story.
Poems and Raps:
write a poem or rap reviewing any topic.
Postcards:
similar to the pen-pals assignment above, but postcards have illustrations representing thematic concepts.
Posters:
create posters to review skills. As a bonus, many of these posters can
often be displayed during state tests, so if your students create high
quality posters, the posters may be a useful resource during the test.
Questionnaires:
create a questionnaire and survey students to gather an understanding
about thematic issues from a text or social problems for a speech or
presentation.
Radio Broadcasts:
create a script for a radio program covering any appropriate field of study.
Reader’s Theater: silently act out the events of a story or text alone
or with a group of people while someone reads the text aloud. Students
should be given time to prepare their acting.
Recipes:
students can create recipes about how atoms combine to form molecules
(H2O), or how to create events like the French Revolution or World War I
(add one Arch Duke).
Scrapbooks:
create a scrapbook of your favorite poems or important events from a decade.
Skits:
create a short skit to bring an historical event to life.
Slide Shows:
if you have access to enough computers and a projector, I suggest
having students create PowerPoint presentations. With just a little
instruction, students should be able to create pretty flashy
presentations, and you can combine this project with a research paper as
a culminating activity.
Soundtracks:
create a soundtrack
for a movie version of a novel or historical or natural event. Use
actual songs or just describe the mood of each song if you do not know
song titles. Explain why you feel that each song matches the event. A
good activity to review mood.
Stamps:
students create
commemorative stamps honoring people, depicting elements from the
periodic table, or challenging vocabulary terms.
Storyboards:
create story boards summarize a short story or to plan a narrative, movie, or presentation.
Tests:
write a test to help you review unit goals and objectives. Questions
can be multiple choice, matching, and true or false. Answer keys should
be provided.
Vocabulary Quilts:
create quilts with badges representing the meanings of vocabulary terms. Badges should have an image and a few words.
Websites:
design websites that historical figures, scientists, mathematicians,
authors, or characters from novels would have had. Also, student can
create websites for historical movements, scientific theories, or
literary concepts.
Worksheets:
create review worksheets. Worksheets can be applied to any subject and topic of study.
Yearbooks:
create yearbooks reviewing the characters and events from several
stories that the class read or containing information about many
important figures from history.
