Help Students Design Their Own Projects With These Fill-in-the-Blank Prompts
by Terry Heick
So often, we make learning more complicated than it has to be.
Local planning requirements are usually at fault here–plan this way and prove that you’ve done so here and here, fill out this and this, etc.
Those legitimate concerns aside, the following series of fill-in-the-blank prompts can be used by teachers to create lessons, students to create projects–or teachers to collaborate with students to create lessons–or projects.
Or—well, you get the idea. I use these sorts of stems to create learning blends through combination learning for students–either with them, or for them. I couple these prompts with other components–technology like apps or social media channels, texts from literary classics to postmodern non-fiction, creativity, or even local matters of citizenship.
Put more briefly, when helping students design their own projects, I provide these kinds of prompts to help students see how texts, apps, and more can all work together.
Please take them, add to them, or otherwise do with them what you will.
42 Project-Based Learning Ideas For Any Content Area
A few examples of how it might work?
Clarify racism in the United States for a high school in India.
Design and publish a compelling eBook your friends would actually want to read using a simple smartphone app.
Practice coding until you can make a ball bounce.
Compare the force of a tsunami with a nuclear bomb visually.
Rethink mobile technologies for poor communities with limited WiFi access.
Change a local business owner’s mind about hiring convicted felons.
Theorize what Emily Dickinson would say about instagram.
- Clarify…for…using…
- Stylize…without changing…
- Illuminate…so that…
- Solve….together with….
- Rethink….by…
- Learn to….with…
- Repackage…for…
- Identify what’s implied in…
- Design a ….using…
- Make a…with…
- Find the best evidence that supports…
- Find a better/smarter/faster/safer way to…
- Simplify….for….
- Explain how others misunderstand…
- Narrate the sequence of…
- Change…’s mind about…
- Socialize your opinion on…through…and refine or clarify it based on feedback. (e.g., quora, reddit, twitter)
- Explain the significance of….by….
- Contextualize the history of….
- Explore and curate the history of…
- Document…for the purpose of…
- Document how…was able to…
- Digitize…so that….
- Find another way to solve…
- Turn the problem of…into a manageable project
- Practice…until you can…
- Honor the complexity of…by…
- Debate the merit of…compared to…
- Collaborate with…in order to…
- Restore…
- Identify and elegantly demonstrate the sources of…
- Support…by…
- Play with…using…
- Find the patterns in…
- Analyze…through a series of questions.
- Identify analogous situations compared to…
- Iterate…in light of…
- Untangle the causes from the effects of…
- Contrast…and…
- See…from the perspective of…
- Merge the thinking of…and…
- Theorize what…would say about…
42 Fill-in-the-Blank Prompts For Students To Design Their Own Projects