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18 English Project Ideas You Can Do Right Now! ESL Teaching Project & Activity Ideas 18 English Project Ideas You Can Do Right Now! ESL Teaching , Project & Activity Ideas 18 English Project Ideas You Can Do Right Now!

• by EN101 Author

So, you are looking for interesting and creative English project ideas to spice up your lessons?

Here are 18 practical projects that will help your students get creative while enhancing their written and communicative English skills. These are applicable to your middle school and high school students . 

Creative English Project Ideas

Advertisement.

Test your students’ creativity by asking the them to make an advertisement for inventions of their own. Or they can stick to readily available products within the market. 

Ask them to start with the connection: how their product will solve the issue of their ideal customers. Tell them that the best advertisements trigger consumers’ emotions. Let them use powerful adjectives to inspire their fictional customers.

Elevator Pitch 

Like advertisement activity, this project also focuses on commercial communication. You would like to assign this project only to high school students because of the amount of research that goes into it. 

Start by asking students to review successful elevator pitches of successful startups. 

Detail the necessary information and persuasive tactics.

Ask them to create their own business model or select one from vast startups present in the business world. 

The last step is to present the whole concept in 3 minutes or less. 

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Abstract Word Art Activity

If you’re looking for a fun group project for 4 or more kids, wacky abstract word art activity is just the ticket. Offering  writing practice  and grammar review, this isn’t your average art project.

Kids practice building sentences with different parts of speech, then create paintings of the silly mad-lib sentences they come up with. In an unexpected fun twist, at the end they get to rip up their paintings and arrange them into wild and unique abstract collages.

Autobiographies

In this fun project, you ask the students to detail their life history in an interesting tone. To avoid monotone, ask them to only include those events in life which they consider adventurous or unforgettable. 

Ask them to highlight emotions rather than timeline. 

You can add a twist to the exercise by asking them to write their ideal future life in an epilogue.

This project will focus on verbal communication skills. 

Ask the students to select a book or excerpt from a book to read. You can assign a genre to keep the communication streamlined. 

Students can take turns to give a short review of their reading together with their viewpoints about it. They can talk about the moral values of the characters or change endings or events to discuss if the plot becomes more entertaining with these changes. 

Check out these ideas on how to run a successful Book Club !

Class Magazine

This is a perfect project for all classes in middle and high school. You can take it to the next level by asking the whole school to start a competition for the best class magazine. 

You can ask your class to select a theme of environmental, health, literary, or societal topic. 

Then ask them to gather all skills; idea-generation, writing, design, and presentation. You will get the most benefits if you make it mandatory for every student to produce content for one page of the magazine. (You can include the advertisement activity within the activity of class magazine.)

Comic Strip 

This is another extensive project that will not only win the hearts of your students but also allow you to assess their creative capabilities. 

Ask them to illustrate interesting events from their lives, or imagination, in the form of comic strips. 

ALSO READ: SPEAKING ACTIVITIES FOR ANY LANGUAGE CLASS

This activity is similar to the comic activity given above. The only difference is the increased detail that is required in drama writing. An absence of images adds the obligation on the students to describe scenes and expressions. 

Again, students can describe any life event from their reality or imagination. 

You can later ask the students to act on the best dramas to improve their verbal and non-verbal communication. 

Paper Mache Activity

In this messy yet super fun project, students make paper mache futuristic Earths or other imaginary planets as described in science fiction.

This was my cross-curricular activity based off of our Literature reading of  Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?  and a unit topic in English about the environment and recycling. Of course, you can do paper mache for any lesson or unit that you have!

This article gives you the step-by-step instruction on how to do paper mache in the classroom!

Editorial/ Fan Letter

Editorial is one of English project ideas most suitable for high-schoolers while fan letters work for learners from all English expertise levels. 

Ask your high-schoolers to analyze a societal issue that is close to their heart. Next, they need to define the problem from the viewpoint of aggrieved parties. Ask them to write out the problem and get it published in a local or national newspaper. 

(Be ready to proofread and edit the piece before they send it to relevant personnel.)

Younger students can write fan letters to their best actors, authors, and singers. 

This is another English project which will combine societal, and practical, understanding with English learning. In this project, the students will learn problem-solving skills. 

Ask them to understand a societal or scientific problem. Once they have understood and defined this issue, they have to provide a solution to this problem. 

In the end, they have to present their solution together with the need which gave rise to it in front of the class. (You may want them to include a video presentation with visual effects .)

This activity is one of my students’ favorite s not only because it’s fun but also because it facilitates their learning. I tried this project on two literature readings I had before (The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain and Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe) and both achieved the same fantastic end.

In this project, students are tasked to illustrate the setting or a specific part of the book in the form of a three-dimensional miniature scene. Students will pick a favorite scene from the story they are reading and decide how they want to represent it using the materials given (above) and a variety of design strategies.

This writing exercise contains the most fun among all the given projects. You will excite their creativity as well as their inner critic.

Start by inquiring about the literary work which fascinates or inspires them most. 

Ask them if they can add humor to that piece. Let them edit a single character or scene or if they want they can give a humorous outlook to the whole plot. 

Fables 

This open-ended English writing project will ask the students to select one event in their life. This event should be intriguing as well as contain a life lesson. 

Then, they have to retell this piece in third person pronoun. Ask them to keep the tone conversational as well as engaging. 

In the end, ask them to write a conclusive moral of the story. 

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Self-Portrait Project

These self-portrait ideas were part of a short project that went really with my middle school ESL class so I thought I’d share them with you.

My students were able to come up with three products in one activity: a mind map, a self-portrait and an essay. The unit topic was about “Identity” or “Personality” but I guess this will work for general descriptive adjectives lesson as well. 

Charts 

If you want to include futuristic touch to your English lessons, include a thing or two from STEM subjects. One great way is to ask them to explain or detail a mathematical chart. (You can come up with variations in this original plan. For example, you can ask future businessmen to interpret graphics related to market studies.)

See, if they have enough vocabulary and concepts to comprehend and convey the message to their fellows. 

Fictional Pen-Pals

Just like fan letters, this activity asks the students to write letters to their favorite characters in fictional and non-fictional worlds. 

Ask them to pinpoint the era, region, settings they like most in a given novel or historical account. Next, they would show interest in one of its characters and the reason for this interest. 

In the end, they need to write a letter to this character praising or advising him/her regarding his/her role in the piece. (You can reply on behalf of that character if you think the point made by the student inspires further dialogue.) 

Book Trailer Project

Book Trailer Project  is a digital storytelling activity for middle school or high school students after they finish reading a book. Students need to take the key idea from the book to create a short video that persuades people to check out a book they have read.

Doing the book trailer project requires students to summarize, synthesize and analyze the book and put that analysis in their trailer. Furthermore, having students create book trailers is a great way to incorporate  technology in the classroom  and encourage reading. Thus, book trailer project is a great alternative to boring book report assignments, and can easily be done individually or in groups.

So these are some of creative English project ideas you can use in your English class to prompt your students to express their creativity and language skills. These are fun, practical, and learning-inducing. 

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5 ENGAGING ELA PROJECTS FOR THE END OF THE YEAR

I can hardly believe it’s almost the end of the 2019-2020 school year. I think it’s safe to say this has been one of the most wild, unexpected, and stressful years ever. Whether you have a few days or a couple weeks left, I wanted to share a few of my favorite mini-units and projects that work well at the end of the year. I hope these ideas help you finish the year strong with your students!

1. SLIDESHOWS THAT DON’T SUCK

Want to end the year on a good note with a fun, memorable mini-unit? “Slideshows That Don’t Suck” is one of my favorite projects ever. It’s purposeful, engaging, and just plain FUN. I designed this project when I was tired of cringing at my students’ font choices and hearing them read their slides word-for-word. I decided to tackle the problem of boring, unappealing presentations once and for all with a creative “Slideshows That Don’t Suck” mini-unit.

To make what could have been a pretty straightforward slideshow assignment fun, I gave my students total choice in topics. Well, choice with one tiny stipulation: Their topics had to be weird, random, ridiculous, boring, or obscure. The weirder, the better. I wanted students to work hard to bring a boring topic to life. I wanted them to curiously pursue the mundane and make it entertaining. My students were thrilled and instantly engaged by this challenge. Their topics included mole rats, milk, shoelaces, rocks, stink bugs, air fresheners, and spam accounts…the list goes on. Even the student who quite literally had completed 0 projects all year successfully delivered a slideshow on chicken wings. 

As weird and fun as this project sounds, it’s actually a great way to help students practice essential literacy skills. And I promise that you will never have more fun grading their final projects and learning more than you ever wanted to know about the world’s most ridiculous topics! If you want to save yourself some time teaching about slideshows, check out my digital-ready mini-unit. It’s complete with a pacing guide, a gallery walk activity, learning stations, a rubric, and more to make teaching this a breeze!

2. INTERVIEW CHALLENGE

This speaking, listening, and writing activity is a great way to keep students meaningfully engaged at the end of the year. I originally created the interview “challenge” for my journalism students, but then I realized it was too fun and meaningful to not use with my other ELA classes. Students can easily complete this with a peer over the phone/video chatting OR with a family member in their house.

Here’s how it works: The “challenge” requires students to reflect upon a memorable moment and briefly share that moment with a partner. Then, the student creates a list of questions and interviews their partner in order to write a mini-story. The better the questions, the better the answers, and the better the stories. Students will quickly realize that taking the time to craft precise, meaningful questions will be well worth it in the end.

The best part of this writing activity is reading through the final stories.  I always learn so much about my students and what has shaped their lives. For everything you need to teach this challenge from start to finish, check out my newly-updated digital resource.

3. RESUME WRITING

In the mood to teach something so practical that you won’t have to answer the question of “When will we ever use this in real life?” Teaching resume writing is just about as real-life as you can get, and it makes for the perfect end-of-year unit. You’ll feel satisfied knowing your students are leaving your class a little more prepared for the elusive real world.

But learning how to draft a resume and cover letter is about more than practicing real-life writing or becoming an employable job candidate. It’s also about growing as a human being. Writing a resume requires introspection, self-awareness, and reflection. Students will wrestle with the questions of “Who am I?” and “How can I represent what I have to offer on a piece of paper?” It’s intimidating but incredibly worthwhile and rewarding. Plus, you just might get a few excited “I got the job!” emails after teaching it, and there’s nothing better than that!

To learn more, you can read this blog post about how I teach resume writing or check out my student-ready resume writing unit. If you have the time, you can follow up resumes with a cover letter mini-unit or even sneak in some virtual mock interview practice. If your students aren’t quite ready for resumes, you can help them prepare for the real world with a career research project. Any of these options will help your students stay focused on the future, even during the chaos of the end of a wild year.

4. PHOTO JOURNAL

If you are searching for a purposeful project that will engage students without overwhelming them, give them a chance to document life through their own lens with a photo journal/essay assignment. Whether you assign it with journal writing or as a standalone project, a photo journal will help students practice essential skills while they contemplate what it means to live during this new normal. Simply ask students to document their lives, express their emotions, and make sense of the world around them.

A photo journal will look different for every student. Maybe it will be daily self-portraits, snapshots of empty streets, or a collection of the colors of nature. In any case, it will give students a chance to pause, reflect, and be present in the world around them. If you assign a photo journal or photo essay, I highly recommend checking out the app Getty Unshuttered. You can read more about it and find other unique photography project ideas HERE.

5. INDEPENDENT READING

Independent reading is a best-practice classic, and it just makes sense during distance learning. If you haven’t already assigned something like this, it’s the perfect activity to close out the end of the year. Give students choice in selecting their texts, as well as choice in the assignments and activities they do to represent their learning.

If students don’t have access to books, encourage them to download the Scribd app, which offers many ebooks and audiobooks. Currently, they are offering a free 30-day subscription without a credit card/payment information. This is what I would recommend to students. If you don’t mind entering your payment information, you can get a free 60-day trial with this link. For digital independent reading activities, you can check out my Novel Study for Any Novel bundle HERE. (It includes everything from “character Instagram posts” to standards-based writing assessments & rubrics!)

I hope these ideas make your last few days or weeks of school enjoyable, calm, and meaningful. Best of luck as you finish the year, and have a FABULOUS summer break! 🙂

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25 High School English Activities You’ll Want To Try Right Away

Think outside the box.

Engaging middle and high schoolers can sometimes be tricky. How many times have you planned (what you think is) a cool and exciting lesson, only to walk away feeling pretty bummed and discouraged when your hip activity is a bust? Believe me, I get it. I’ve tried English activities for high school that I am positive (most) of my kids will love and appreciate. I’ve attempted to make English relevant and fresh. I’ve even tried to choose vehicles like social media that fit into their lives. As I plan, I often think, “Man, I would have loved having this kind of stuff when I was in school!”

Sometimes, my efforts fall flat. Other times, I hit a home run. After a lot of trial and error, I’ve finally figured out some techniques that consistently work. Here are my favorite English activities for high school.

1. Pretend you are an alien from another planet

As an alien, you don’t understand human emotions. Ask students to explain what happiness is to alien you. They will try to use other emotions to explain happiness, so you will need to kindly remind them that you don’t understand those. Someone will figure out that what you are looking for is figurative language (e.g., happiness is a Diet Coke at 11:30), and then, mission accomplished. This is one of my favorite mini-lessons to do because when I start class with “I am an alien from another planet …,” some give me weird looks, but most don’t even flinch because they’ve already witnessed enough of my shenanigans to think it may be true.

Try it: Alien From Another Planet Activity at TPT

2. Embrace the season and let it dictate your unit

I change things up every year, but most recently I created a unit around “Spooky Season.” We read “spooky” stories and watched suspenseful short videos to evaluate how authors and storytellers employ devices that heighten the suspense for the audience. In these high school English activities, we analyzed theme and character development and compared different mediums all under the umbrella of Spooky October. As always, what works for my school and grade level may not work for everyone, but some of my students’ favorite spooky short stories were “Lamb to the Slaughter” and “The Landlady.”

3. Write your own spooky story

After reading from our mentor texts and learning how to create suspense, we write fictional narratives that will haunt your nightmares … just kidding—I wanted to add a bit of drama. They pull from grab bags I create of different character names, setting ideas, and props they can use to create their own terrifying tale.

Try it: Spooky Story Starters at TPT

4. Turn everyone into a poet with blackout poetry

Thanks to Austin Kleon , poetry is cool and accessible. If you haven’t heard of blackout poetry already, it’s created by taking a newspaper or loose book pages that can no longer be repaired and creating a poem using certain words on the page. Then, you black out the rest. I’ve done this every year and have changed my approach each time. Sometimes I give students free rein and let the words speak to them, and sometimes I’ll give them a specific topic I’d like them to create a poem around. I love to see 25 different variations of “courage” through poetry.

Try it: Blackout Poetry at We Are Teachers

5. Use emojis in class

When teaching a complex concept like symbolism, use symbols that are already part of students’ daily life. Assign each small group a word or theme and then have them choose an emoji to symbolize that message. Have kids sketch them out on the board and explain why they chose that symbol, or turn it into a full-on art project and display them around the room.

Try it: More Fun Ideas for Teaching With Emojis at We Are Teachers

6. Go hunting for mechanics, usage, and grammar errors

Doing a quick search of these kinds of fails on the internet will provide you with a great deal of content. You can turn those fails into a slideshow while the class finds the errors and corrects them, or you can assign a few to each small group to tackle. 

7. What’s better than a one-pager?

The name speaks for itself here. There are so many variations of one-pager assignments that you could do, but the one that I like is to use one-page as a blank canvas for them to demonstrate their understanding of developing theme and symbolism. They sketch out symbols and images that are significant to the book they are reading and include text evidence to support their inferences and takeaways. 

Try it: One-Pager Template at TPT

8. Play reviewsical chairs

When I first started teaching and was looking for solidarity, understanding, and inspiration, I found love,teach . In one of her blog posts, she suggested playing reviewsical chairs to prepare for a test. It is like musical chairs, but you review. When the music stops, someone is without a chair and they have to challenge someone else for their chair by answering a review question correctly. This is a fan favorite in middle and high school.

9. Play the flyswatter game

I love a fun review game. This one requires you to put up answers around the room (e.g., character names, dates, themes, symbols, storytelling devices, etc.). Then, you divide the class up into two teams. Have them send two representatives up to the front and arm them with flyswatters. I normally tape off a box that they have to stand in while I read the question. Then, the first person to hit the correct answer with their flyswatter wins the point. This game is intense and so fun! Make sure you move any book bags or obstacles that may be tripping hazards (for me this is just air).

10. Listen to podcasts and discuss them together

Not all teenagers are familiar with podcasts, but it’s a great way to introduce lessons in an interesting way. And so far, my students have reported really enjoying them. In fact, I’ve even had students come back and tell me they’ve continued to listen to a podcast series on their own after we’ve concluded our lesson.

Podcasts encourage students to be actively engaged, because the information being shared must be processed and visualized by the students as it’s being said. I usually prepare questions for them to answer as they listen, and then facilitate a discussion afterward. In my classroom, this sometimes leads to mildly heated debates, which is a learning experience in and of itself.

Try it: List of Educational Podcasts at We Are Teachers

11.  Introduce “chapter chats”

My students love being in charge of leading “chapter chats” in small groups. By encouraging them to be leaders in discussing specific book chapters, they take ownership in a whole new way. I’ve really enjoyed watching my kids come up with thoughtful questions, bring food to connect to something that happened in the text, and even create fun games that encourage their classmates to recall information from the chapter. Chapter chats are great high school English activities to assess those speaking and listening standards while also making them read critically because they are in charge of facilitating the discussion. 

Try it: Chapter Chats at TPT

12. Let your students be podcasters

Last year, I finally decided to let my students create their own podcasts. I’ve wanted to do this for years but logistically was not sure how to execute. It took a lot of planning on the front end of the assignment and organizing where to find places for them to record (makeshift sound booths), but we did it! They had to pitch their topics and get a red, green, or yellow light. Then, they had to research, cite evidence, write a script, and finally produce their own podcasts. We listened to the episodes and answered questions on the “listening guide” that they created. I loved this assignment and will definitely do it again. 

13. Throw parties with a purpose

We just finished reading The Great Gatsby , and since throwing lavish parties was Gatsby’s thing, we threw our own 1920s soiree. I divided my students into small groups to do research on their assigned topic (historically accurate fashions, refreshments, ambiance, guest list, etc.) and then deliver presentations. The students were responsible for assigning each other parts, complete with instructions on how to dress and what food or beverage to bring. They even provided each participant with a lexicon (specific vocabulary) to use at the party. This assignment was fun, and it also covered many standards, which is a win-win for me!

 14. Give speeches as characters

After watching a number of TED Talks and studying what contributed to an effective performance, my students wrote and delivered speeches of their own. They drew prompts for characters with different occupations giving different types of speeches (e.g., Beyoncé giving a Grammy acceptance speech). I found that my students were much more confident and comfortable speaking when given permission to act like someone else. This activity was a hands-down favorite event for my eighth grade students. Those speaking and listening standards can be tough to master, and high school English activities like this helped us get there.

15. Read, solve, and create murder mysteries

My students in both middle and high school love true crime. I’ve created murder mystery activities for high school English that fit really well with literature units and that focus on making inferences, writing, and using textual evidence. Once the premise of the mystery is determined, students create their own case files, evidence, and clues for their classmates to solve. I’ve had them pull from bags of evidence, locations, and possible suspects to add another element of fun and challenge. It’s simple, but they really like pulling things from mystery bags. This activity is also an excellent support for students who struggle with finding a starting point.

16. Read children’s books

I know many high school and middle school teachers who use children’s literature in their classrooms to introduce literary devices. Inspired by Ludacris , I once rapped Llama Llama Red Pajama in my creative writing class before I had students write children’s books of their own. I am sure there is footage of this out there living sneakily on someone’s camera roll, but thankfully, it hasn’t surfaced.

Try it: Famous Children’s Books at We Are Teachers

17. Use magazine clippings for found poetry

Give students some scissors and a stack of magazines, newspapers, or books to look through. Have them cut out words and phrases they like and then arrange them into their own unique work of poetry.

18. Perform plays

Just this week, one of my sophomore students asked me what we were going to be reading next. We just finished 12 Angry Men . She said she wanted to do another play. Then, another student chimed in and agreed. Plays are appealing for many reasons. Plays allow us to study literature without having to tackle the entire length of a novel. Plays allow students to become characters and perform. Plays invite students to let out their inner thespian. My students take on roles and commit to them. 

19. Pique interest by doing First Chapter Friday

It may seem uncomfortable reading aloud to your secondary students, but I am telling you, they still enjoy it! Read an exciting first chapter from books that you hope they pick up and read on their own. First Chapter Fridays are especially great activities for high school English if you have an expansive library of books for them to choose from.

Try it: First Chapter Fridays at We Are Teachers

20. Have them create SNL -style satirical sketches

When I teach my students satire and parody, I show them examples of school-appropriate satire. Then, we discuss why it is satire. After we get the hang of it, I have them write and perform them. I also happen to have a weird collection of wigs and costumes in my room that may help them get into character. Funny wigs are always an asset!

21. Write a summary of what they are reading incorporating teen slang

My juniors are reading The Crucible and the language can be tricky for them. After a long weekend, I was worried they would forget what we read so I decided at 1 a.m. to write a Gen-Z summary of Acts 1 & 2. They may have called me cringey and told me to burn my paper but it made them laugh and they understood it so it was a W (as the kids say.) Afterwards, I thought it would be a fun assignment to have them write the same style of summary for Acts 3 & 4. It forces them to go through and truly understand the dynamic relationships in the play and how the events are unfolding. Then, they get to flex on everyone with a summary that slaps. 

Try it: Teen Slang Every Teacher Should Know at We Are Teachers

22. To build background knowledge, create fun stations

At the beginning of a short story or a novel, give your students the background knowledge they need by setting up stations for them to visit. When I had planned for my students to read Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe, we had some ground to cover before diving in. I set up stations that gave background information on who Poe was, what Carnival was, information about the Catacombs, vocabulary that they’d encounter and need to know, and finally questions that focused on heavy topics they’d see dealt with in the story.

Some of these stations were videos they watched that were posted as QR codes, some were articles they had to read, and some were discussion questions they chatted about and then wrote down their consensus. To make it vibey, I added dollar-store battery-operated candles, scattered plastic skulls around, and turned down the lights with a spooky playlist playing.

23. Get them talking and thinking by using anticipation guides

An easy way to get your students excited about the next story you’re going to read is to have them complete an anticipation guide. This is a great way to preview the topics that will point to themes in the story they’re about to read. It’s also a great way to start some good discussions before getting into the text. They’ll have a better idea of what they’re supposed to be taking away from the literature if you guide them in a way that’s engaging before reading. My favorite anticipation guide is from The Most Dangerous Game. I teach at a school where hunting is very popular so when we go over the questions, I’ll have them sit or stand if they agree and then each side will share their explanations as to why they chose what they did. 

24. To teach figurative language, create a weird grab bag

When my students struggle with figurative language, I put them into groups of three or four. Then I throw weird things in a bag, and one member of their group chooses an object from the bag. Once they pull out their fake mouse or rubber duck or whatever item they’ve selected, they have to write a few sentences using personification that is inspired by the object they grab. Then, they choose their favorite sentence and write it on the board for the class to see. We’ll then go through everyone’s sentences to check to make sure we’re using personification correctly and to inspire creativity! If they can write incredible sentences using personification about an Expo Marker, they can definitely challenge themselves in their own writing. 

25. For all the Swifties out there, analyze Taylor Swift

Will there be haters? Yes. Be prepared to shut them down swiftly. In my poetry unit, we analyzed “All Too Well.” Taylor Swift is an incredible songwriter. Her songs are an English teacher’s dream. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t speak for all English teachers but any and all Swifty English teachers will agree. You can choose other music too! We’ve also analyzed Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come.” 

If you liked these activities for high school English, check out these 10 Playful Tricks To Engage High School Students .

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25 Creative Project Ideas for ELA

• August 21, 2017

For many students, creative projects drive the most learning. The project pulls together their interests and skills with the material, and engagement happens.

Projects make a huge difference in any curriculum.

When I look back on my experience as a student, creative projects are the highlight of every year going all the way back to 4th grade (my leaf collection!). As a teacher, I try to build them into almost every unit.

If you’ve been wanting to do more creative projects, but you’re stuck for ways to get started, this post is for you. I’m going to share five different categories of projects to help you find inspiration. If you need a quick fix of project-based inspiration, I’ve created a printable checklist of thirty-two project ideas within these five categories. Print it out and put it by your computer and it’ll be a LONG time before you run out of ideas! Subscribe below and I’ll send it right along.

#1: Projects based on Modern Media  My school once got rid of sophomore honors English and history.  Students could pursue the honors distinction by completing a portfolio of interdisciplinary projects instead.

Our teaching team needed to invent these projects and roll them out every couple of months. Our first was to have the students do a radio show like This American Life. They chose themes related to our curriculum, each recording an introduction, interviews, stories, and a conclusion. Then they mixed all this with music to produce a podcast. The results were phenomenal.

There are many more ways you could use podcasts.

Students in groups could create a podcast in which they interview guests who are characters from a novel.

You could have students go out and interview people in the real world about topics they care about.

You could come up with an interdisciplinary task, like creating a podcast about the school robotics team or maker space, featuring information, background and interviews that allow students to dive into STEM topics through humanities skills.

Another great way to use modern media as the basis of a project is through video creation. You could start a class Youtube channel covering modern news from the student perspective, then let students create videos every couple of months on a major recent happening. The videos should include commentary, interviews, and related storytelling.

Ask students to create two minute versions of the novel you are reading, either through cartoon animation or short acted scenes.

Participate in a collaborative project with students in another country, producing a video as a class that explores your city and its people and sharing it with your partners, then responding to theirs.

Perhaps your students would enjoy drawing up storyboards for the Netflix version of your latest novel. Or writing a television series proposal they might present to PBS. You get the idea. Once you’re rolling, there are hundreds of ways students could explore material with real depth through the medium of modern media.

#2 Festival Projects Who doesn’t love it when their hard work is truly celebrated? There are many ways to create a festival-based final project.

Have students present creative free choice reading projects at a reading festival. Invite younger students who could use inspiration in their reading choices. Play music. Have food. It doesn’t take much preparation to pull off an engaging festival for your students. Let them help; they’ll buy in more and it’ll be less work for you.

Or make the creation of the festival itself the project. Maybe you’d like to do a transcendentalism festival for a local elementary school. Have students in groups plan activities, make food, create posters, postcards, and booklets to share with the younger kids. Put a pair of students in charge of leading a nature hike and another pair in charge of contacting local news media with a press kit and follow-up materials from the festival itself. Revel in the joy success will bring your students.

Performances lend themselves well to festivals too. Perhaps your students are going to write and act mini one-act plays. Any way you could gather everyone together from all your sections on a Thursday night, inviting parents and administrators to join you? Maybe everyone in your class is going to memorize a poem, could they perform them in the school garden after watching slam poetry clips chosen by the class while your ambiance committee serves smoothies? (I love putting students in committees. They seem to love it too.)

When students have created something outstanding, a festival can simply be a way for them to showcase their work.

Say, for example, you’ve had your students create innovative apps designed to solve the problems of literary characters ( one of my own favorite projects ). Let them present the apps at a class innovation fair, similar to a science fair but with a bookish flavor. Either have students take it in turns to wander or answer questions in front of their displays, or give everyone two minutes with the smart board behind them to present their apps as videos, Prezis, Powerpoints, or powerful speeches.

Thinking about ways to give students an authentic audience and a memorable day amps up engagement so much. I find that festivals get everyone excited, every time.

#3 Interdisciplinary Projects The world is getting more interdisciplinary all the time. If a student wants to be known for great cooking, it’s a good idea for him to be able to take good photos, make videos, write blog posts and run social media if he hopes to write a cookbook someday. Entrepreneurs must be good not only at whatever they hope to build a business around but also at all things media and marketing. Athletes must manage their personal brands and communicate with the news. Historians better be ready to broadcast live for their museum’s Facebook page.

Providing students with ways to mix and match what they are passionate about from multiple disciplines sets them up to be happier later on.

Let’s imagine a project or two you could do with colleagues in several departments at your school.

Art: Ask an art teacher if he or she would consider hosting a gallery show in your school’s display area with work from your students. Then bring the art teacher in as a guest speaker as you introduce a project to represent the nature of one character from a novel through an artistic medium. Imagine a gallery featuring short videos, paintings, drawings, photo essays, murals, and sculptures expressing the nature of Hester Prynne from The Scarlet Letter or Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream . Have students write up reflective analysis papers demonstrating how their work represents their careful character analysis, and display these to accompany the art.

History : Talk to a history teacher about some of the important themes of the history curriculum in the year you teach. Choose one major theme and share it with students. Have students begin hunting for news articles, headlines, and images from modern media that connect current events and trends with this powerful theme from their history study. Get permission to create a giant collage somewhere in your school space. Have every student write a paper connecting ten things they find on the wall to the theme, and choose the best to publish and display by the collage for the whole school to read.

Math : Ask students to interview math faculty about exciting math-based careers. Then have them create a newspaper called “Why Math is Cool” to publish and share with younger kids who find math a struggle. Send them out in pairs to research the topics and create elements of the newspaper – comic strips, columns, infographics, articles, advice columns, etc.

When you do an interdisciplinary project, you not only engage your students but you understand them better as students. More interdisciplinary connections may naturally arise, and your newly strengthened relationship with your colleague in another department can only help.

#4 Inhabit a School Space Again, this project provides that all-important piece, the authentic audience. When students know they will be creating a project that many people will see, it makes a big difference to their motivation.

Perhaps your students could exhibit final projects in the school office. Perhaps the culmination of a free choice reading unit could be the creation of a huge book display with recommendation blurbs in the library.

Maybe poetry slam winners could perform as part of a school assembly or at a parent night. Or a photography class could shoot photos of your class performance of Death of a Salesman to display in the entryway of the school.

Is there a dark ugly wall somewhere in your building waiting to be filled with a collage of great literary quotations? Or a mural featuring three important themes from great American novels?

Inhabiting a school space connects your classroom to the community and the community to your classroom.

Image Credit to cheapsurfgear.com

#5 Take part in a Contest or Challenge

If authentic audience is king, competition is queen. Both have great power for motivation, like it or not. Engaging students in the writing process by taking part in a challenge or participating in a competition is an easy win.

Why not try NANOWRIMO (National Novel Writing Month) with your students this year? Can you imagine the feeling of accomplishment that would come with writing a novel as a teenager?

Or build a unit around submitting to a national essay contest ( here’s a list of great ones ) or one in your community.

You could even start a youth writing contest in your city and make your students the judges. What a lesson in good writing it would be to create a rubric and discuss the finalists to determine what pieces are the best! Similarly, you could start a website to publish student writing and make your students the editors and the public relations managers. ___

I hope you’ve found some inspiration for your next project. To borrow a line from Pringles chips, “once you start, you can’t stop!”  

Wish your students could dive into podcasting but wary of the tech? Let me give you the tips, trick, and (easy) tools you need to help students succeed with this engaging, relevant medium. Join over 5,000 other creative teachers when you sign up for Camp Creative: The Easy Roadmap to Student Podcasting. It’s a free three day PD with every resource and tutorial linked straight to your inbox – no need to try to slot a live session into your (very) busy schedule. 

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Ethical AI PBL Unit

3 weeks of attendance questions, better discussion toolkit.

Almost there!

Student Projects

Students learn English best when they are engaged and having fun.  Insights to English projects range from short-term to year-long and include topic-based projects, webquests, writing prompts, and more.  There’s a variety of individual, pair, small group, and class-wide projects available.

People/Characters are placed in positions they aren’t used to and have trouble adjusting. Students use ‘too’ and ‘not enough’ for this project.

Guided Recommendations

This project is for practicing CONDITIONALS . Students create a flowchart to establish a branching path for possible recommendations for their chosen topic. They’ll need to use Conditionals when they explain their chart.

Essay Prompts: Modern Technology

Technology is such an integral part of our society and our daily lives, and there are some who question the extent to which its used. Students get to express their own opinions by writing an essay from one of these 10 prompts.

“Mistakes Were Made.”

This project is for practicing PASSIVE VOICE. Students hold a press conference explaining what went wrong but avoiding blame.

Getting the Crew Back Together

Students create a fictional team, then assemble a crew, drafting each member according to their skillset, personality, and role.

Monster Rampage

This project is for practicing PRESENT PERFECT CONTINUOUS. Imagine a normally cute creature is now giant-sized and is accidentally terrorizing the city! Your students are reporters sharing breaking news on how the city is reacting.

Category Dictionary

In this project for beginners or young learners, students keep a notebook of many of the vocab words they’ve learned, designated by category, and paged alphabetically.

Its Own Opposite

Many words have multiple definitions, and a handful of words have two or more definitions that contrast with one another. These words are called contranyms (or Janus words). For this project, students will define, describe, and give examples of contranyms.

Batteries Not Included

Students are prompted with a few disclaimers, then work backward to create a product for which all of those disclaimers would apply.  Students get to be creative and silly as they learn to both understand and explain the meaning and need of various disclaimers and product features.

Myths Live On

English has many words with Greek roots, and some of those are based in Greek myths. In this WebQuest, students will learn about a character from Greek mythology, one of their key stories, and some of the vocabulary words that are named after that character.

Closed Captioning

Writing Subtitles or CCs for a short video can be a great way for students to pay more attention to sentence structure, including identifying phrases and clauses. It may also be good for vocab exposure.

Let Me Introduce Myself

Students formulate an introduction for a character that makes quite the first impression, whether that character comes from fiction, pop culture, history, or the students’ own imaginations.

Onomatowhat-just-happened?

Students receive three onomatopoeia sounds as prompts, then work backward to come up with a scenario that would explain how those sounds came about.

Merit Badges

Students create earnable badges for their classmates as the year goes on to reward one another for their accomplishments in the classroom.

Critical Hits & Epic Fails

In role-playing games, players often simulate chance – by rolling a dice in many cases – to determine the effect of an action, or an

Missing Verse

Students analyze song lyrics to understand the tone, message, themes, and style, then write a missing third or fourth verse.

Scene and Herd

‘Herd’ and ‘flock’ are words for groups of animals, but some animals have a group term specific to their species. These venery terms typically have addition (more common) meanings, so for this project students will combine the two definitions into one scene.

Unlikely Hero

Students create a character with two very different jobs, one in a mild-mannered profession, and another as an action hero. How do they use their skills, tools, and knowledge of the former to help them as the latter?

These articles contain ideas to get you started!  We encourage teachers to further customize these projects to best suit their learners’ level, interests, and needs.

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Creating an Engaging Summer English Project

A summer English project is required in some schools. These can become very onerous on the students and teachers. Today’s blog post is written by Rebecca Gettelman who is a middle and high school teacher from the Midwest. She has been teaching for over eleven years.

A number of years ago I started teaching at a new school.  My job offer came in the first part of June, and along with my contract, I was handed a stack of books and an assignment sheet and was told that all of my students would arrive on day one with a completed summer reading project to hand in. I was quite surprised as I had never had summer work until AP courses in high school, but not in middle school.  I was allowed to design the project as I saw fit, but a summer reading project was a required part of the curriculum. After several years of rethinking, rewriting, and tweaking, I came up with a project that is pretty effective.

Let’s think about how to design and create a project that fits the needs of your students and curriculum.  

What Do You Want Your Students To Do?

Do you want your students to read a least one book over the summer?  Do you want them to do more than just read—something along the lines of analyzing, reviewing, and thoughtfully considering messages? Would you rather your students focus on writing?  Do you want them to write a little bit every day or to just write one big paper?  

By starting with this you make sure that you don’t just end up with the same stale summer book report that has been assigned for decades and instead come up with a project that truly fits your class’s needs and flows smoothly into the new school year.

Include Elements of Fun and Creativity

Remember, it is summer vacation.  Keep in mind how much you, the teacher, are ready for a break by the time you hit those final days of school and remember that your students (and their parents) need some of that downtime too. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t assign a summer project, it just means that something that has elements of fun and inspires a student’s creative side is so much more enjoyable than something that doesn’t. If you are going to assign homework over the summer, you will get much better results if it isn’t something your students detest from start to finish.

Choice Is Important

I love to read.  But hand me a book (even one that I love) and tell me I  have  to read thirty pages and suddenly it becomes work that I will put off for days on end. Remember this when you are putting together your summer project— choice makes all the difference .

Now, the students can’t have the choice to just not do the project, but you can offer them other choices.

• Offer three vastly different books and they have to read one.
• Offer a four-part assignment and only two need to be completed.
• Offer a summer writing assignment, but they get one week off each month of summer.
• Give students the end goal and let them design their project. Read more on student-designed assessments here .

A Few More Suggestions

• A major downfall when assigning summer work to students is that you start day one of the new school year with a huge pile of grading to do. Why not consider offering optional due dates over the summer. You could even offer extra credit to students who turn in work early.
• Make the project something that students can’t just download. There are a million book reports available on the internet for anyone who wants to download them.  By creating a project that is unique, you avoid the curse of plagiarism.
• If you are assigning summer reading, give your local library a heads-up on book titles that you will be using.  The librarians will appreciate it.  This allows them to make sure they have at least a couple of each title on hand. 

Summer projects are a long-standing tradition in many schools and districts, but that doesn’t mean that the assignment has to be old or boring. By designing a great summer project, you can help yourself and your students get something positive and even enjoyable out of this tradition. 

Check out these ready to use summer project ideas:

• Summer Reading Project
• 12 Genre Book Report (let students select their genre-based assignment)
• Summer Writing Project
• Novel Study Choice Board
• Creative Writing Prompts and Activities
• Book Versus Movie Analysis Project

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This FREE persuasive writing unit is

• Perfect for engaging students in public speaking and persuasive writing
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By using highly-engaging rants, your students won’t even realize you’ve channeled their daily rants and complaints into high-quality, writing!

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Here you’ll find a wide range of EFL / ESL project ideas for all ages and abilities. Plus you can filter by student level, or a specific grammar or vocabulary topic you’re teaching.

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Tags: advanced , beginner , business , entertainment , intermediate , kids , music , past simple , politics , present perfect simple , present simple , science

In the Biography ESL project, students research the life of a famous person, then write about them and/or present to the class.

Tags: beginner , body parts , kids

The Body Collage ESL project is formed by combining body parts cut-out from magazines.

Tags: beginner , future simple , intermediate , kids , technology

In the City Of The Future ESL project, students create an annotated picture to illustrate what they think the city of the future might look like.

Tags: beginner , comparatives , intermediate , kids , superlatives

In the Create A Comic ESL project students create a comic strip about superheroes, including dialogue and narration.

Tags: advanced , business , intermediate , jobs , kids

The Create A Company ESL project requires students to create their own new businesses, describing what they do and the employees they will need.

Tags: beginner , geography , intermediate , kids , modal verbs (advice) , modal verbs (obligation) , modal verbs (permission) , nature , passive , present simple , there is/are

Students do the Create A Country ESL project in pairs or small groups, then present their country to the class.

Tags: beginner , holidays , intermediate , kids , passive , present simple

In the Create A Festival ESL project, students invent their own celebration and present it to the class.

Tags: adjectives , beginner , food , intermediate , kids

In the Create A Menu ESL project, students invent (and describe) the dishes on offer at a restaurant.

Tags: beginner , body parts , have/have got , kids , numbers

In the Create A Monster ESL project, kids have to draw and describe the appearance of their own monster.

Tags: beginner , can/can't , describing people , kids

In the Create A Superhero ESL project students describe their own superheroes and their powers.

Tags: beginner , home , kids , there is/are

In the Dream House ESL project students design their perfect house and present it to the class.

Tags: beginner , family , kids

The Family Tree ESL project is a well-known activity in which students create their own family tree and present it to the class.

Tags: beginner , future simple , home , intermediate , kids , technology

In the Home Of The Future ESL project, students make predictions for the home of the future, and design one of their own.

Tags: intermediate , irregular verbs , kids , present perfect simple

In the Irregular Verbs Rap ESL project, students create and perform a rap that incorporates all forms of different irregular verbs.

Tags: advanced , intermediate , kids , past simple , present perfect simple , reported speech

In the News Program ESL project, students create a TV news program and present it to the class.

Tags: beginner , kids , past simple , pronunciation

In the Past Simple Rap ESL project, students create a rap using regular past tense verbs with different ‘-ed’ pronunciations.

Tags: intermediate , kids , phrasal verbs

Great for kids (and the young at heart) the Phrasal Verbs Rap ESL project is a fun way to review the meaning of different phrasal verbs.

Tags: future (going to) , intermediate , kids , places in the city , sequence adverbs , travel

In the Plan A Tour ESL project students create an itinerary for a visit to a city.

Tags: adjectives , beginner , comparatives , home , intermediate , kids , superlatives

In the Real Estate Listing ESL project, students create a poster to advertise an invented property.

Tags: advanced , business , intermediate , third conditional

In the Share Portfolio ESL project students make, track, and review the performance of hypothetical investments.

Warmer Of The Day

Tags: advanced , adverbs , animals , beginner , daily routines , emotions and feelings , grammar , health , intermediate , jobs , kids , music , phrasal verbs , sports and hobbies , warmer

A version of the classic party game, the Charades ESL game is a fun way to practise many different types of vocabulary or grammar.

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English class project ideas

International schools, tes resources team.

Project ideas to keep secondary English classes motivated and practising key skills

Whether you're looking for resources to finish a unit of work or start or end the term, English projects offer students an opportunity to work creatively whilst consolidating everything they have learned so far. We have selected a range of project based resources which are sure to keep your secondary students involved. Looking for more secondary English resources? Take a look at our English hub .

Creative English projects 

At the start of a term or nearing the end of one, creative English projects are a good way for students to focus on one piece of work over a period of time. From putting together your own magazine to researching the life and work of Shakespeare and creating a fairy story, these resources allow your students to explore and demonstrate a range of English language and literary techniques in the classroom.

Planning a Magazine Project: English and Media

Descriptive Writing- 5 week Project Book - NEW GCSE English Language Paper 1: Creative Writing

The Island Project creative writing mini-scheme

Holiday project home learning for English

Book review Mind Map

Creative Writing & Poetry - Homework Project

An Inspector Calls Homework Project

Storytime Fairy Tale Pack

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Project-Based Learning Ideas and Examples for the ELA Classroom

Project-Based Learning , Research Writing , Secondary Literacy , Writing

You might recognize “project-based learning” as a buzzword in education. There is a reason for all the hype surrounding project-based learning. This style of instruction incorporates curriculum with 21st-century skills in a way that is highly engaging for students. If you’re looking for project-based learning ideas for the English Language Arts classroom, this blog post will introduce you to six simple and fun project-based learning examples .

What is Project-Based Learning?

To put it simply, project-based learning delivers instruction through hands-on assessment. Students will meet the curriculum standards of the unit while they complete the project. The project will incorporate each learning goal by requiring students to reach the goal in order to solve the problem or finalize the project .

We tend to think about assessments as the final step of a learning path. Instead, project-based learning introduces the assessment near the beginning of a unit ; to complete the assessment, students will be required to approach prerequisite learning goals.

You can assign project-based learning individually or as group work. I like to offer my students the opportunity to work on both types of projects over the course of the semester. I usually start with group PBL assignments . Then, I’ll challenge my students with an individual project-based learning assessment towards the end of the year. I find PBL most successful when I offer student-choice for individual project-based learning assignments.

What are some examples of Project-Based Learning ideas?

Your colleagues may have implemented PBL in their classrooms, especially if they teach STEM subjects. Project-based learning ideas are often associated with technical or scientific design. When people think about PBL, they often think of projects like growing a garden, designing an app, or hatching a chicken egg.

The reality is that project-based learning ideas can apply to almost any activity that connects to the real world . If you’re an ELA teacher , you are probably already implementing real-world learning in some way. You can develop project-based learning ideas grounded in reading, writing, researching, speaking, and listening, like planning a vacation or conducting a mock trial !

Project-Based Learning Ideas for English

Here are some simple and fun project-based learning ideas for English . You can use these ideas in your ELA classroom even if you have no experience with PBL. You can also apply these ideas to middle school ELA and high school English classes :

Conduct a Mock Trial

Moc k trials are an engaging way to explore the legal system and teach argumentative writing . You can conduct a mock trial around any novel or short story that features a character that could be guilty of criminal negligence. Some examples can include Mary Maloney from Roald Dahl’s “ Lamb to the Slaughter ,” Mrs. Price from Sandra Cisneros’ “ Eleven ,” and Sanger Rainsford from “ The Most Dangerous Game .”

Students will be motivated to dive deep into the text to look for evidence to support their arguments; in doing so, they will come to a greater understanding of the story’s underlying message and overarching themes . To prepare for a mock trial, you will need a central accusation along with mock trial roles to assign your students. This mock trial outline includes a slideshow lesson, 30+ role descriptions, an objections cheat sheet, a judge script, a universal rubric, and everything else you need to lead your students through this exciting project-based learning opportunity!

Plan a Vacation

This project-based learning opportunity is perfect for those long winter months! Have students plan a vacation – and practice various forms of writing while they’re at it! This type of project will invite students to explore the world without leaving the classroom.

Students can begin this project by thinking about a place they’d like to visit. The next steps are to use research skills to write an article about the local customs and culture. Students can then plan their daily itinerary and use graphic texts to illustrate their trip timeline or vacation budget. You can even have students practice narrative writing by crafting daily journal entries during their trip! This vacation planning project has everything you need to assign and assess this activity.

“Humans of My Community”

A popular project in secondary school involves having students interview family members to explore their family tree; however, some students may require an approach to interviewing that is more trauma-informed. This is especially true for students’ families who have endured collective hardships or systemic oppression. I find “ Humans of my Community ” to be a perfect alternative. This project-based learning example uses the same interviewing skills listed above and incorporates news article writing – this is especially helpful if you are preparing for the OSSLT .

In addition to speaking and listening, students will need to learn the news article format in order to complete this project. In turn, they will better understand how to read and write news articles. Mondays Made Easy offers a Community Interview Project outline for high school students. This resource includes assignment instructions, graphic organizers for article writing, assessment guidelines, and tools to help students facilitate interviews.

Letter Writing for Real-World Learning

Letter writing is a great way to incorporate real-world learning into almost any novel study or short-story unit . You can do this by using backward design and starting with the major conflict or theme within the novel. Then, consider an organization in your community or geographic area that handles issues related to this topic. When you introduce the novel or short story, you can mention to students that they will write an appeal to this organization.

For example, when my students read I Am Malala , I introduced Amnesty International’s Write for Rights . I selected a person who reflected Malala’s situation in the novel and told students we will be writing and sending letters on their behalf. Students conducted their own research to develop arguments in their letters. Additionally, they applied the lessons and conversations from our novel study to further support the cases in their letters.

Real-World Resource for Research Essays

One way to spice up a research unit is to introduce the concept of a “real-world resource.” A real-world resource can be any medium used to deliver information to the public . Examples include pamphlets, TED Talks, infographics, podcasts, and more. This project-based learning idea is a great opportunity for implementing student choice . Students can select a topic of interest to them to inform their audience.

Of course, in order to inform, students will need to research . You can incorporate teaching MLA format , practicing in-text citations , and other important research skills related to your English Language Arts curriculum. The best part about this PBL assignment is that it shows students the value of research in the real world . Your students will see the parallel between expository and argumentative writing and fields including marketing, broadcasting, media production, hospitality, medicine, health and wellness, and more!

Mondays Made Easy offers a Real-World Resource assignment outline that includes instructions, assessment tools, and student examples. You can use this resource to facilitate this project-based learning idea in your classroom.

Fundraising as a Project-Based Learning Idea

Here’s another way to connect PBL to any novel study or short-story unit. Similar to letter-writing, students can actively apply the story’s conflict and themes to real-world scenarios . You can select a community partnership that supports a cause related to the story you are studying in class.

Students can apply their knowledge of the text to their fundraising initiatives by selecting items of need for fundraising. Additionally, students will need to demonstrate that they are well-versed in their topic to appeal to donors.

I used the following example in my classroom: while we were reading Nancy Mair’s “On Being a Cripple” in my AP Language and Composition class , my students gained an understanding of what it meant to be able-bodied. Then, they invited a local organization supporting students with disabilities to join a fundraising event at our school.

This partnership required students to meet cross-curricular requirements involving letter-writing , event planning , and managing funds . In addition, students gained compassion and understanding for people who are disabled – an important real-world lesson for students attending school in the private sector.

Classroom Debates

You can bring your persuasive writing unit alive by assigning a classroom debate. This project-based learning idea is always a huge hit. Students can begin this assignment by brainstorming different topics of interest . Then, you can assign teams based on student choice .

In order to develop a strong argument , students will need to learn how to develop main points and supporting evidence . They will also learn the value of different types of evidence . Finally, they will practice public speaking and listening as they present their arguments and rebuttals.

Mondays Made Easy offers a Lincoln-Douglas Debate resource that outlines the structure of this classic form of debate. This resource also provides students with graphic organizers to develop their ideas. Additionally, you will receive a moderator script in order to easily facilitate a classroom debate.

Tying it all Together

Project-based learning ideas are not exclusive to STEM subjects. If you’ve been avoiding PBL in your classroom or have not been sure where to start, I promise you’re going to love it! Your students will also enjoy the project-based learning examples featured in this blog post and remember them for years to come.

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200 Project Topics For English Literature Students [Updated]

Choosing a project project topics for English literature students can be an exciting yet challenging task for 12th-grade students. The right topic can enhance your literary analysis skills, deepen your understanding of different periods, genres, and themes, and contribute to your academic and personal growth. This blog will guide you through the process of selecting a project topic that aligns with your interests and meets academic requirements.

What Is The Criteria for Selecting a Project Topic?

Table of Contents

Before diving into specific topics, it’s important to consider a few key criteria to help you choose the best one:

Personal Interest and Passion

Your interest in a topic will keep you motivated throughout the research and writing process. Choose something you’re passionate about or curious to learn more about.

If you love poetry, consider analyzing poems. If you’re fascinated by a particular era, like the Renaissance, focus on literature from that time.

Relevance to Current Academic Curriculum

Make sure your topic is relevant to what you’re studying in class. This will not only make your project more meaningful but also help you integrate your research with what you’ve learned.

Availability of Resources and Research Material

Ensure there are enough resources available for your chosen topic. Check your school library, online databases, and literary journals to see if there’s sufficient material to support your research.

Feasibility and Scope of the Project

Choose a topic that is neither too broad nor too narrow. A broad topic can be overwhelming, while a very narrow topic might not have enough material to explore.

Find a balance that allows you to cover your subject comprehensively within the given timeframe.

Originality and Contribution to Existing Scholarship

Try to select a topic that offers a fresh perspective or adds to existing scholarship. This could mean looking at a well-known text from a new angle or exploring a lesser-known work.

200 Project Topics For English Literature Students: Category Wise

Period-based topics, classical literature.

• The role of fate in Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex”
• Heroism in Homer’s “The Iliad”
• The concept of justice in Aeschylus’ “The Oresteia”
• Stoicism in Seneca’s tragedies
• Love and transformation in Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”
• Political satire in Aristophanes’ plays
• The portrayal of women in Greek mythology
• The influence of the gods in Virgil’s “Aeneid”
• Platonic ideals in Plato’s “Symposium”
• The tragic flaws of characters in Euripides’ plays

Medieval Literature

• Chivalric ideals in “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”
• Courtly love in the works of Chrétien de Troyes
• The role of fate in “Beowulf”
• Allegory in Dante’s “Divine Comedy”
• The social criticism in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales”
• Religious themes in “The Song of Roland”
• Arthurian legends and their evolution
• The role of women in medieval literature
• Mysticism in Julian of Norwich’s writings
• Morality plays and their didactic purposes

Renaissance Literature

• The nature of ambition in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”
• Humanism in Thomas More’s “Utopia”
• The role of disguise in Shakespearean comedy
• Political power in Machiavelli’s “The Prince”
• The use of iambic pentameter in Shakespeare’s sonnets
• Pastoral themes in Edmund Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene”
• Gender roles in John Webster’s “The Duchess of Malfi”
• The influence of classical myths in Renaissance literature
• The portrayal of madness in “Hamlet”
• Love and politics in Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra”

Enlightenment and Romanticism

• Reason vs. emotion in Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility”
• The sublime in the poetry of William Wordsworth
• Satire in Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels”
• The role of nature in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s works
• Gothic elements in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”
• The critique of society in Henry Fielding’s “Tom Jones”
• Romantic individualism in Lord Byron’s poetry
• Social justice in William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and Experience”
• The revolutionary spirit in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poetry
• The portrayal of women in the works of Mary Wollstonecraft

Victorian Literature

• Industrialization in Charles Dickens’ “Hard Times”
• The role of women in Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre”
• Colonialism in Rudyard Kipling’s works
• The double life in Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”
• Social criticism in Elizabeth Gaskell’s “North and South”
• The supernatural in the works of Emily Brontë
• Morality in George Eliot’s “Middlemarch”
• The concept of the fallen woman in Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the d’Urbervilles”
• Aestheticism in Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray”
• The role of the detective in Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Sherlock Holmes” stories

Modern and Contemporary Literature

• Stream of consciousness in Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs Dalloway”
• The American Dream in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”
• Postcolonial themes in Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart”
• Absurdism in Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”
• Identity in Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God”
• Feminism in Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”
• The trauma of war in Erich Maria Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front”
• The immigrant experience in Jhumpa Lahiri’s “The Namesake”
• Magical realism in Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude”
• The effects of technology in William Gibson’s “Neuromancer”

Genre-Based Topics

• The role of nature in the poetry of Robert Frost
• Love and loss in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnets
• The theme of death in Emily Dickinson’s poetry
• War poetry of Wilfred Owen
• The concept of time in T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”
• Metaphysical conceits in John Donne’s poetry
• The Harlem Renaissance and the poetry of Langston Hughes
• Imagery in Sylvia Plath’s “Ariel”
• The use of mythology in W.B. Yeats’ poetry
• Romanticism in the poetry of John Keats
• The role of the chorus in Greek tragedy
• Realism in Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House”
• The absurd in Eugene Ionesco’s “The Bald Soprano”
• Social criticism in Bertolt Brecht’s plays
• The tragic hero in Sophocles’ “Antigone”
• Family dynamics in Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman”
• Power and corruption in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”
• The portrayal of women in Tennessee Williams’ plays
• Political themes in George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion”
• The American Dream in Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun”
• The unreliable narrator in Kazuo Ishiguro’s “The Remains of the Day”
• Identity and race in Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man”
• Social class in Edith Wharton’s “The Age of Innocence”
• Modernist techniques in James Joyce’s “Ulysses”
• Alienation in Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”
• Gender roles in Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando”
• Satire in Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”
• The bildungsroman in Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations”
• The role of fate in Thomas Hardy’s “The Mayor of Casterbridge”
• The theme of isolation in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”

Non-Fiction

• Personal narrative in Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”
• Social criticism in George Orwell’s essays
• Nature writing in Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden”
• The role of journalism in Joan Didion’s works
• Feminist theory in Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex”
• Political theory in Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense”
• Autobiography and identity in Frederick Douglass’ “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”
• Environmentalism in Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”
• Cultural critique in Susan Sontag’s essays
• The philosophy of education in John Dewey’s works

Fantasy and Science Fiction

• World-building in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings”
• Dystopian themes in Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”
• Gender roles in Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Left Hand of Darkness”
• The concept of the other in H.G. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds”
• Technology and humanity in Isaac Asimov’s “I, Robot”
• The hero’s journey in J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series
• Post-apocalyptic themes in Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road”
• Political allegory in George Orwell’s “1984”
• Magical realism in Haruki Murakami’s works
• Space exploration in Arthur C. Clarke’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”

Theme-Based Topics

Love and romance.

• Courtly love in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Knight’s Tale”
• Forbidden love in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”
• Romantic ideals in Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”
• Love and betrayal in Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina”
• The complexity of love in Gabriel García Márquez’s “Love in the Time of Cholera”
• The portrayal of marriage in Edith Wharton’s “The Age of Innocence”
• Love and war in Ernest Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms”
• Unrequited love in Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights”
• Love and identity in James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room”
• The evolution of romantic relationships in contemporary literature

War and Conflict

• The horrors of war in Erich Maria Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front”
• The impact of war on soldiers in Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”
• Civil war and family in Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women”
• The psychological effects of war in Pat Barker’s “Regeneration”
• The futility of war in Wilfred Owen’s poetry
• War and heroism in Homer’s “The Iliad”
• The depiction of war in Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs Dalloway”
• The ethics of war in Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five”
• War and memory in Michael Ondaatje’s “The English Patient”
• The home front during war in Elizabeth Bowen’s “The Heat of the Day”

Identity and Self-Discovery

• The quest for identity in Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man”
• Self-discovery in Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre”
• The search for meaning in Hermann Hesse’s “Siddhartha”
• Identity and culture in Amy Tan’s “The Joy Luck Club”
• Personal growth in J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye”
• The journey of self-discovery in Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist”
• Gender identity in Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando”
• Self-identity in Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”
• Identity and isolation in Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”

Social and Political Issues

• Social injustice in Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”
• Class struggle in Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities”
• Political corruption in George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”
• Racism in Richard Wright’s “Native Son”
• Immigration and identity in Mohsin Hamid’s “Exit West”
• Capitalism and society in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”
• Environmentalism in Barbara Kingsolver’s “Flight Behavior”
• Human rights in Khaled Hosseini’s “A Thousand Splendid Suns”
• Social criticism in Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”

Race and Ethnicity

• The African American experience in Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God”
• Colonialism and its aftermath in Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart”
• Race and identity in Nella Larsen’s “Passing”
• Multiracial identity in Danzy Senna’s “Caucasia”
• The Chicano experience in Sandra Cisneros’ “The House on Mango Street”
• Native American identity in Sherman Alexie’s “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven”
• Racial tension in Richard Wright’s “Native Son”
• The Harlem Renaissance in Langston Hughes’ poetry
• Asian American identity in Maxine Hong Kingston’s “The Woman Warrior”
• Race and family in James McBride’s “The Color of Water”

Gender and Sexuality

• Gender roles in Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own”
• Feminist themes in Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar”
• Queer identity in James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room”
• Gender and power in Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”
• The portrayal of women in Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening”
• Gender fluidity in Jeffrey Eugenides’ “Middlesex”
• Lesbian relationships in Radclyffe Hall’s “The Well of Loneliness”
• Gender norms in Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House”
• Masculinity in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises”
• The intersection of gender and race in Audre Lorde’s poetry

Methodologies for Research

Literary analysis.

• Close reading of a specific poem by Emily Dickinson
• Thematic analysis of love in Shakespeare’s sonnets
• Comparative analysis of dystopian themes in “1984” and “Brave New World”
• Symbolism in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter”
• Motif analysis in Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick”
• Narrative structure in James Joyce’s “Dubliners”
• Character analysis in Jane Austen’s “Emma”
• Irony in Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”
• Allegory in John Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress”
• Foreshadowing in Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations”

Historical and Biographical Contextualization

• The influence of the Industrial Revolution on Charles Dickens’ novels
• Historical context in Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible”
• Biographical elements in Sylvia Plath’s poetry
• The impact of World War I on Wilfred Owen’s poetry
• The Harlem Renaissance and its influence on Langston Hughes
• The Irish Civil War in W.B. Yeats’ poetry
• The Great Depression in John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath”
• Colonial history in Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”
• Victorian social norms in Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre”
• Elizabethan politics in Shakespeare’s history plays

Theoretical Approaches

• Psychoanalytic analysis of Hamlet’s character
• Feminist theory in Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando”
• Marxist criticism of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”
• Postcolonial analysis of Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart”
• Queer theory in Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray”
• Ecocriticism in Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden”
• Structuralism in Roland Barthes’ “S/Z”
• Deconstruction in Jacques Derrida’s “Of Grammatology”
• New Historicism in Stephen Greenblatt’s “Renaissance Self-Fashioning”
• Reader-response theory in Stanley Fish’s “Is There a Text in This Class?”

Tips for Successful Project Completion

Here are some tips to help you complete your project successfully:

• Effective Time Management: Plan your research and writing schedule. Break down the project into manageable tasks and set deadlines for each.
• Regular Consultation with Supervisors: Meet with your teachers or supervisors regularly to discuss your progress and get feedback.
• Peer Review and Feedback: Share your work with classmates or friends to get their input and suggestions.
• Revision and Proofreading: Revise your drafts to improve clarity and coherence. Proofread for grammatical and typographical errors.

Choosing the right project topics for English literature students’ classes can be a rewarding experience. It allows you to delve deeply into a subject that interests you, enhances your analytical skills, and contributes to your overall academic growth.

By following the guidelines and tips provided in this blog, you can select a topic that is engaging, manageable, and academically enriching.

Remember, the key to a successful project is finding a balance between your interests and the available resources, and staying organized and focused throughout the process. Happy researching!

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CBSE Class 12 English Project Guide 2024: Topics, Guidelines

Manali Ganguly ,

Mar 4, 2024

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CBSE class 12 English project is a compulsory activity that the students have to undertake. 20 marks are allotted to the project and internal assessment and 80 marks to the written test in the CBSE class 12 board examination.

The CBSE class 12 English project is a compulsory part of the curriculum and carries 20 marks. The CBSE Class 12 English Project Guide 2024 will provide an overview with guidelines, objectives, marks, project topics, project ideas, and more.

These marks, along with the 80 marks allotted for the written test in the CBSE board examination, make a total of 100 marks. English projects can pour down their writing and present skills through the projects.

Table of Contents

CBSE Class 12 English Project Guidelines

Cbse class 12 english project objectives, cbse class 12 english project: marks, schedule, & suggestions, how to choose cbse class 12 english project topics, top cbse class 12 english project ideas, cbse class 12 english project sample pdf, how to prepare for cbse class 12 english project, parameters of assessment for cbse class 12 english project.

The English project is a vital part of the syllabus for CBSE class 12 . The students must abide by certain guidelines when they are working on the project. The guidelines for the project have been stated below:

• The project must be creatively done. This is to say that the students must put their original thoughts into the project.
• It is best to select a good book that is not a part of the syllabus while creating the project. The book should, however, have parity with the topic.
• The project must showcase the point of view of the student.
• The language of the project must be clear and understandable. Using jargon in this case will fetch marks.
• The project topic could include a letter - formal/informal - which must be written following the correct pattern.
• Marks for the project will be awarded on three bases - Literature Text, Creative Writing Skills, and Reading Skills. This is in keeping with the CBSE guidelines.

Read More : CBSE Class 12th English Syllabus 2023-24

The students must understand why they are made to work on the projects. The board has devised three skill sets, as discussed above, on the basis of which the students will be marked for their projects.

The objectives of the board can be seen below:

• To test the creative skills of a student.
• Test the skill of critical analysis in a student.
• To test the language proficiency in the student.
• Test the creative writing ability and grammatical skills in the student.

Read More : CBSE Class 12 Question Bank 2023: Download PDF

The English project and viva voce together carry 10 marks. 5 marks is allotted to the project and 5 marks to viva voce.

The students are supposed to work on a small project. The planning and organisation of the project must be done well ahead of the deadline, because the timeline is fixed by the board for the submission of project and viva voce.

The date of submission of the English project will be notified to the students in due course of time.

The board suggests the following for CBSE class 12 English project:

• Students can pick up a topic for the project that is interdisciplinary in nature.
• The topics for projects can be picked up from the ideas depicted in the chapters or drama or poems in the English syllabus.
• The topics can also be outside the book and age-appropriate.
• The project topics may also include such issues that provide the students the opportunity to listen and speak.

Read More : CBSE Class 12th Blueprint 2024

The students must prepare for the English project in an efficient manner since this will add to the final score in the CBSE 12 board examinations.

The English project together with internal assessment will carry 20 marks out of the total 100 marks. 80 marks will be allotted to the written examination conducted by the board.

The topics for CBSE class 12 English project are varied. The students must choose them very wisely. Some of the suggestions for the choice of topic as prescribed by the board has been discussed below.

The students must keep the following points in mind while preparing for the project:

• The first step is to understand the syllabus clearly.
• Secondly, the choice of topic must be good. The topic must be such that they are able to write elaborately on it.
• The topic must be well researched and have parity with the syllabus.
• While working on the project, the students must abide by the guidelines of the board.
• The organisation of ideas must be very good. The subtopics must be connected to each other.

Read More : CBSE Class 12 Question Bank

The selection of topics must be done carefully. This section lists down the most popularly picked CBSE class 12 English project ideas. The students can pick a topic from the list shared below:

• How is climate change affecting the environment around us? The importance of understanding the causes.
• Corruption: The biggest impediment in the progress of the nation.
• Reservation in Academics: How far is it justified?
• How is women empowerment changing gender roles in society?
• How important is the awareness of mental health?
• What can be pros and cons of using artificial intelligence in the healthcare system?
• Studying the effect of globalisation on the culture and economy of the developing nations
• How significant is Indian Literature? Cite the works of authors to elucidate.
• Pollution: Ways to control it.
• A critical analysis of the Indian Cinema.
• Raising awareness about the protection of animal rights. How important is it?
• Does social media have an impact on the mind? Explain
• The addiction of teens to social media. How is it affecting their academics?
• The evils of racism and ways to curb it.
• How has Covid-19 affected education?

English project is a compulsory part of the curriculum for CBSE class 12. The students must make sure that the choice of topic, as well as the presentation of the project, are both very good. This would fetch them full marks.

Also, knowledge about the topic is mandatory because they would have to answer the viva voce based on their projects. It is best to take a cue from a sample English project before starting with the presentation.

Shared in the table below is a sample English project for CBSE class 12:

Following are the basic ways in which the students can start with their English projects:

• Interview based on research: The students will have to take up a topic on which they will conduct research for the project. Questionnaires can be distributed among the family members and neighbours to gain their opinion on the topic. The answers will constitute the content of the project together with the inference. The write up/report must be written in 1000 words.
• Listening to radio or podcasts: The project report can be prepared on the basis of listening to interviews or podcasts or radio.
•  Creating audio or video:The students must make an audio recording or video on a topic on their own.
• Writing and presenting a drama: The project can also include the writing of a script or a one-act play. This could be a team effort.

Read More:  CBSE Class 12 Exam Pattern 2023-24

The board has set certain parameters on the basis of which the teachers will assess the project and award marks. The parameters are given below:

• Content Quality: The content and the quality of the project must be age appropriate.
• Timeline: The project must be submitted within the given timeline.
• Accuracy: The information given in the project must have accuracy.
• Grammar: The content should be grammatically free of errors.
• Creativity: The project must be creative. It must show the creativity and originality of the student.
• Knowledge Gained: The project must show the knowledge gained in the concluding part.

Read More:  CBSE Class 12 Syllabus 2023-24: Download All Subjects PDF Here

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19 Interesting Research Projects For ESL Students

Project-based learning is an excellent means of acquiring and developing new language skills. Teachers of ESL students can use research projects to make lessons fun, interactive, and engaging. As such, interesting research projects can be used to practice the concepts that a teacher wishes to reinforce.

Research projects for ESL students should be based on relevant topics that interest them. Topics can range from creating comic strips, preparing a dish in class, dramatization, creating short podcasts, planning an itinerary, and debating significant issues.

The projects should be appropriate for the ESL student’s proficiency, whether beginner, intermediate or advanced and can be done individually or in a group.

The research project’s purpose should align with the curriculum and be clear to the students. Read on to discover some exciting research projects for the different proficiency levels of ESL students.

The Focus Of Interesting Research Projects For ESL Learners

Learning a new language can be meaningful and fun with the right teacher and lessons. However, ESL students might also be shy to speak in the presence of other students, so they must be made to feel welcome and accepted.

Additionally, if students know what the purpose of the project is, they can focus on that instead of becoming overwhelmed with other areas.

When assigning a research project to ESL students, the teacher should first assess what the students’ interests are. They will be more likely to benefit from the research project if it intrigues them or if there is an incentive.

Then, when assigning the project, the teacher should tell the students the point of the assessment, so they know what the focal point for preparation should be.

Examples of focus points or purposes of research projects can include the following:

• Dialogue or speaking practice,
• Situational terminology,
• Team communication, or

Also try: 15 Engaging Speaking Activities For Online Classes

Interesting Research Projects For Beginner ESL Students

Beginner ESL students can differ in age, ability, and maturity, so the teacher must choose the research projects wisely and adapt them accordingly.

Below are some great ideas for exciting research projects for beginner ESL students.

1. Research Your Family Tree

Students can research their family tree as far back as possible and create a presentation with pictures. In addition to the family tree, the students can add a short biography of two or more family tree members to add extra weight to the project.

2. Plant A Vegetable Garden

A research project on planting can be modified according to the age and group size of an ESL class. Students can work individually or in groups and research what vegetables they want to grow and what is needed for each plant to thrive.

The project can be done practically, and students can document the growth of their plants. As an extension activity, the vegetables can be used to make a salad or a soup for other research projects, including following recipes.

Alternatively, the students can create a business plan and market their products for another project.

3. Create A Comic Strip

Creating a comic strip can be done individually, as a group, or as a nonsense game (for practice). First, each student can create their own superhero and write a synopsis of the superhero’s powers and weaknesses.

Then, they can make a short comic strip using simple illustrations where their superhero fights a crime or saves the day.

As a fun practice activity, students can do the first strip of a comic at the top of a page. Then they can swap pages with other class members who must continue the cartoon, a row at a time. The result should be pretty hilarious and give the students some good ideas for their research project.

4. Research A Culture Or Tradition

Students can be given the task of researching a culture or tribe. At a beginner level, ESL students can work in groups to research a culture and then present their findings. They can explore different aspects of their chosen culture, for example:

• Traditions,
• Traditional foods,
• Languages spoken, and
• Where the culture lives, e.g., country or types of dwellings.

When presenting their project, the students should be encouraged to show as many examples of their findings as possible. They can even dress up and play some of that culture’s music, for example.

Recommended for you: 15 Speaking Projects For ESL Students

5. Plan A Vacation

Another fun research project for beginner ESL students is to plan a vacation. The students can pick any destination they wish to visit and plan their trip accordingly.

They can research activities they’d like to do, their mode of travel, where to stay, and what they will eat. Then, depending on the difficulty level, the teacher can give them a ‘budget’ they should stick to.

6. Real Estate Listing

In this research project, students can pretend they are an estate agent selling a property. They can create an advert and use descriptive language to describe the characteristics and selling points of the property.

7. Dramatization

Students can work in small groups and act out a short story or scene from a favorite book or movie. The teacher can suggest a fun story the class can read or watch and discuss in a lesson.

Students can then be allowed time to prepare their skits, or they can do improvisations. This activity will encourage them to memorize their cues, but they can also use cue cards.

Interesting Research Projects For Intermediate ESL Students

As ESL students advance to an intermediate level, their research projects can increase in difficulty and expectations. Again, the teacher should always inform the students of the outcomes, so they know the project’s focus. Below are some ideas for interesting research projects for intermediate ESL learners.

8. Create A Short Podcast

Podcasts are a popular way of sharing information through speaking. Thus, they make a good assessment tool for various speaking activities in the classroom. For example, the teacher can assign a topic. The students can research and record a podcast as if they were reporting for the news or other channel.

An advantage of using podcasts as a form of assessment is that the students can re-record their podcast if they have made too many mistakes before submitting it to the teacher.

9. Create A Neighborhood

Students can create a neighborhood with various characters as a group research project, much like the game Sims. Then, the students can research the characters and their roles in the community. For example, there could be a handyman, a pet sitter, a grocer, families, a librarian, and a pharmacist.

Each character can have a name and description of features. In addition, the neighborhood, streets, shops, and other community elements can also have names and descriptions.

Also try: Fun Language Games For Middle School Students

10. Research Different Types Of Sustainable Energies

Sustainable and green energy are current topics that make good research projects, as there is a lot of information on the internet. This research project can be done in a group or as individuals, and the students can present their research to the class in a PowerPoint presentation.

11. Write A Biography Of A Famous Person

For this research project, students can choose a famous person and write a biography on them. The teacher can give pointers as to what should be covered, for example:

• Why the person is famous,
• Where they were born,
• If they are still alive,
• Significant events in their life,
• Where they grew up, and
• How they have influenced the world or their community.

12. Do A Cooking Demonstration

Recipes are instructive and introduce a different type of vocabulary. Students can demonstrate a recipe or cooking lesson in class as part of a fun research project. Ideas for cooking demonstrations include making soup, baking cookies, preparing pasta, or making a salad.

Afterward, the students can enjoy a meal together after a few presentations during class. However, the teacher should determine if anyone has allergies before sharing the meals.

13. Career Research Project

Intermediate ESL students can do a research project on potential careers they’d like to pursue. Whether they choose one or more professions, the students can research what the job entails, the potential income, and the pros and cons.

Additionally, the students can explore the qualification requirements to pursue their chosen careers.

Interesting Research Projects For Advanced ESL Students

Advanced ESL students are likely to be older and more mature, so the teacher must choose topics that are not embarrassing or ‘below’ them. The students’ cultures must also be kept in mind, as some Western traditions are frowned upon by Eastern cultures.

Next are some research project ideas for advanced ESL students.

14. Make A Short Film

Making a short film can be successful if planned and managed correctly. An example could be creating a documentary or enacting a story.

Whatever the topic, it is wise to plan each filming session ahead of time. It would be an ongoing project that requires the skills of a movie-making app or a willing student who is savvy in that department.

15. Argumentative Research Paper Or Debate

In an argumentative research paper, a teacher can list controversial topics from which the students can choose. The students would then need to write an argumentative essay with the pros and cons or choose for or against the topic.

As an extension of this activity, one topic can be selected, and the class is split into two groups. Then, students on the same teams can collaborate and debate the topic in class.

16. Describing Famous Artworks

In this project, students can choose a few famous artworks created by different artists using various media. The students can research and describe each artwork and its history. This project will undoubtedly introduce them to new vocabulary and help them practice using descriptive language.

17. Critical Book Review

A critical book review project requires a student to read a suitably challenging book and write a critique on it. The ESL teacher can use a setwork book or allow the students to choose their own books. The students can discuss the characters, the plot, the author’s writing style, and their opinion of the book.

18. Creating A Business Plan

Advanced ESL students who learn English for business purposes will benefit from this interesting research project. They can write a business plan for a company or entrepreneurial venture.

In their business plan, they can set goals, projected expenses, income, ideas for growing the business, and other related topics within their plan.

19. The Apprentice – You Are Fired

Students may well have seen the television show ‘The Apprentice’ and you can replicate this process over a number of weeks with real groups of students and fun challenges.

You can come up with a series of tasks for the students to complete in or outside of class and then groups are judged by the teacher or a student.

The losing group then has to argue/defend their performance and contribution to the task with the weakest student being fired.

There is potential for so much language to be used in this series of activities so it requires some preparation to ensure that they do have the vocabulary and structures to be able to successfully participate in this process.

Classroom-based activities that work well for this include:

• Coming up with a new household product idea and diagram of it.
• Branding, logo, and a short advert of the product previously invented in the last task.
• Creation of a new family-friendly board game.
• Create and present a virtual tour around a particular holiday destination/city.
• Create an entertaining podcast for children.

There is an endless string of tasks that you could do all involving lots of language points. Ideal for advanced students.

Whether beginner, intermediate or advanced, ESL students will likely benefit from a more hands-on approach when learning a new language.

So, the teachers of ESL students can use interesting research projects to reinforce concepts taught in the class. The research projects chosen should be relevant and intriguing to the students for their benefit and enjoyment.

Recommended reading: 7 Ways To Use Newspapers To Teach Grammar

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Learning english, we found 175 activities for you.

Uses of like

This activity helps you to practise using like in different sentences

I love sports

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Family holiday

Add some prepositions to a story about going on a family holiday

What a great idea!

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See and know

Learn about how to use see in spoken English

Choose which parts of these sentences have been left out

Bank accounts

Practice listening with this activity about bank accounts

Can you understand?

Can you identify what is really being said in this listening activity?

Which animal?

Answer some questions to learn new words to describe animals

Vocabulary for the house and home

Practise using vocabulary about the house and home

Vocabulary for work and jobs

Practise using vocabulary connected to work and jobs

Actually and actual

Learn about the uses of actually and actual

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What are the10 fun project activities for English language teachers?

• by Team Varthana
• Posted on January 9, 2023
• in Student Productivity

The English language is important in our lives as it facilitates communication and is the primary language used to study any subject throughout the world. Students need English because it broadens their minds, develops emotional skills, and improves their quality of life by providing job opportunities. To improve students’ understanding, an English language teacher should incorporate a variety of fun activities and project-based learning.

10 Creative Project ideas for English Language Teachers:

Project idea #1: book clubs.

This project will concentrate on verbal communication abilities. Request that the students choose a book or an excerpt from a book to read. To keep communication streamlined, assign a genre. Students can take turns providing a summary of their reading, along with their thoughts on it. They can discuss the moral values of the characters or alter endings or events to see if the plot becomes more entertaining as a result of these changes.

Project Idea #2: Autobiographies :

In this enjoyable project, you ask students to describe their lives in an interesting tone. To avoid monotony, ask them to only include life events that they consider exciting or unforgettable. Request that they emphasize emotions rather than timelines. You can spice up the exercise by having them write an epilogue about their ideal future life .

Project Idea #3: Class Magazine:

This is an excellent project for all middle and high school classes. You can take it a step further by organizing a competition for the best class magazine among the entire school. You can assign an environmental, health, literary, or societal theme to your class. Then, ask them to gather all of their skills, including idea generation, writing, design, and presentation. You will reap the most benefits if you require each student to create content for one page of the magazine.

Project Idea #4: Comic Strip:

Another extensive project that will not only win your students’ hearts but also allow you to assess their creative abilities. Instruct them to create comic strips depicting interesting events from their lives or imaginations.

Read: Math Games For Struggling Students

Project Idea #5: Editorial/ Fan Letter:

Editorial is one of the best English project ideas for high school students, whereas fan letters are appropriate for students of all English proficiency levels. Ask your high school students to research a societal issue that is important to them. They must then define the problem from the perspective of the aggrieved parties. Request that they write out the issue and have it published in a local or national newspaper

Project Idea #6: Inventions:

Another English project that will combine societal and practical understanding with English learning is Inventions. Students will gain problem-solving skills through this project. Instruct them on how to comprehend a societal or scientific issue. They must provide a solution to the problem once they have understood and defined it. Finally, they must present their solution to the class, along with the need that inspired it.

Project Idea #7:Fables:

For this open-ended English writing project, students will choose one event from their lives. This event should be both intriguing and educational. Then they must retell the story in third person pronouns. Request that they keep the tone conversational and engaging. Finally, ask them to write a conclusion to the story.

Project Idea #8:Imaginary Pen Pals:

This activity requires students to write letters to their favorite fictional and non-fictional characters. In a given novel or historical account, ask them to identify the era, region, and settings that they enjoy the most. They would then express interest in one of its characters and explain why. Finally, they must write a letter to this character praising or advising him or her on his or her role in the piece.

Project Idea #9: Book trailer project:

After finishing a book, students in middle or high school can participate in a book trailer project, which is a digital storytelling activity. Students must use a key idea from the book to create a short video that persuades people to read a book they have already read. Making book trailers with students is a great way to incorporate technology into the classroom while also encouraging reading.

Project activities are an essential component of English language instruction. Projects will liven up your lesson and ensure that your students leave the classroom wanting more, whether you’re teaching adults or children.

Creative Exploration: Topics for English Project Work for Class 10

For your Class 10 English project, think about topics related to India’s diverse culture. You could look into famous Indian authors and how they’ve influenced literature, or explore regional languages and why they matter. Another interesting option is to learn about India’s contributions to science, math, and technology over time.

You can also study current social issues, raising awareness and starting discussions. By picking topics connected to India’s rich culture, your project will not only help you understand more but also make you appreciate the country’s cultural and intellectual wealth even more.

Unleash Your Creativity with these Captivating English Project Ideas

For your English project, go on a creative journey with ideas that suit India. Explore works by famous Indian authors like Rabindranath Tagore or R.K. Narayan. Dive into the diversity of Indian languages and their cultural importance.

Take a modern look at how Indian English literature influences the world. Whether you’re into classics or modern tales, these ideas will give your project a special Indian touch, celebrating the country’s rich literary heritage.

Inspiring English Projects for High School Students

For your high school English projects in India, pick topics that are both educational and culturally enriching. Dive into India’s independence struggle by exploring key literary works, and getting insights into the socio-political scene.

Alternatively, focus on how Indian mythology inspires modern storytelling. Analyze the impact of English language films on Indian society, looking at the mix of language, culture, and entertainment. These project ideas give you a unique mix of academic depth and relevance in the lively high school setting in India.

In conclusion, the classroom walls need not confine the joy of learning English! These 10 fun project activities, spanning creative storytelling to tech-savvy podcasts, offer English language teachers a vibrant toolbox to spark student engagement and ignite learning beyond the textbook.

By embracing collaborative creativity, hands-on exploration, and a dash of digital magic, teachers can transform English lessons into journeys of discovery where language skills blossom alongside self-expression and a love for the written and spoken word. So, ditch the dusty grammar drills and let’s embark on a language adventure – one project at a time!

This paragraph touches on all the mentioned topics, emphasizes the fun and engaging nature of the activities, and highlights the overall benefits for both teachers and students.

1: Best Practices for Teaching English as a Second Language

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My Favorite High School English Activities of the Year

This past school year was a great one. With every school year that passes, I like to take a moment and reflect on activities that were successful in the classroom and really think about why they worked.

Here are nine of my top activities from this previous school year.

SWIFT Poetry Analysis Collaborative Poster Projects

As a way to have my students practice their poetry analysis skills while also building their self-efficacy, my students worked on these collaborative posters.

Using the acronym SWIFT (structure/symbolism, word choice, imagery, figurative language, and theme and tone), my students analyzed a variety of poems about a similar subject. Not only did the read and annotate the poems, but they also identified each of the SWIFT elements, provided a quote, and explained how each element impacted the poem. 

Once students complete the poetry analysis posters, we spent some time in class conducting informal presentations. Student groups presented the posters. I completed this project with my sophomore classes.

Why this worked: Students collaborated with one another to help each other as they worked on a new skill. 

For more information about this project, you can read this blog post.

Hero’s Journey Literary Project

Toward the end of my short story unit with my sophomores, I like to review the Hero’s Journey archetype. We watch a quick video, discuss the various stages of the Hero’s Journey, use some familiar animated movies as examples, and then my students work together to create this Hero’s Journey poster.

Usually, they work together in small groups of three, and I give them about two days in class to work on the assignment. Once my students are done with the poster and have demonstrated that they understand the archetype, we read a short story as a class and analyze the Hero’s Journey elements of that story.

Why this worked: Students were able to choose their own Hero’s Journey story for this project, so that generated a lot of student interest. Whenever kids get a say in what they do, there is more buy-in.

Rhetorical Appeals Learning Stations

Rhetoric is one of my favorite units to teach. I love reading significant and persuasive speeches with my students and teaching them how to analyze the language. I love seeing that moment when they get it -that moment when they realize just how powerful language is. 

This year, I added rhetorical appeals learning stations to my rhetorical analysis unit. For this activity, students spent one station analyzing ethos, one station analyzing pathos, and one station analyzing logos.

Why this worked: Adding movement and collaboration to the classroom is a great way to break up the monotony of traditional learning. Students learn best when they are active participants in the process.

You can see more about my rhetorical analysis unit here.

Intro to Transcendentalism Exploratory Posters

Before my juniors started learning about transcendentalism, I had them explore the five tenets of transcendentalism as an inquiry-based introductory activity. 

For this activity, I placed my students in small groups, and I assigned each group a different tenet. This type of poster project is a quick one, and I don’t even give my students an entire class period, roughly 55 minutes, to work on the poster. As I explain this activity to them, I make sure that I emphasize that I am looking for content. I want to see that they explored the tenet and that they are beginning to understand it.

For the posters, students wrote their own definition of the word, three synonyms, a quote about the tenet, and a visual representation.

Once students completed the posters, the groups presented their posters to the class as the class took notes on the five tenets of transcendentalism.

Why this worked: This introductory activity was student-focused. The students were in charge of their learning, and they essentially became the experts of their group’s tenet. Furthermore, they were also responsible for teaching their peers about the tenet they researched. I completed this activity with my juniors.

Listening Skills ELA Test Prep Escape Room

In my state, juniors take the standardized state test -the SBAC. This test contains a listening portion of the test that requires students to listen to nonfiction articles and answer comprehension and analysis questions.

To help my juniors prepare for this test, they completed a listening-skills escape room. This escape room is one of my favorites because it closely imitates the state test. My students listened to an audio file. In fact, I had them listen twice and also take notes to practice good test-taking skills. Then, my students worked together in groups of six to complete all of the tasks.

Escape room days are always a blast. They are high-energy, fast-paced days that engage even the most reluctant learners.

Why this worked: Escape rooms are one of the best ways to engage students. I’ve done a handful of escape rooms in my classroom, and I always have 100% participation. It is amazing.

You can see more about my ELA Listening Skills Escape Room here.

Short Story Collaborative Review Poster Projects

This short story poster project has quickly become a staple in my classroom. At the end of our short story unit, and before we take a comprehensive test on all of the stories we read, my students work together in small groups to complete short story collaborative review posters.

Each group is assigned a different short story that we read in class. They then go back and review their designated short story and identify and analyze various literary elements. I also have my students include a summary of the short story as well. Since this serves as our review, students usually have about a class period and a half to work on their posters. I encourage them to divide and conquer; I also emphasize that I am looking for content over aesthetics.

When students complete their posters, each group presents the poster to the class. Since I do this as a review activity before our end of unit test, presentations are a bit more formal. I require student groups to come up to the front of the classroom to present. I also require every student to present an aspect of the poster. As students are presenting their posters, the rest of the class takes review notes to help them prepare for the unit test.

Why this worked: This is a fun and engaging student-centered review activity that generates discussion about the texts. Since we already read, studied, and analyzed the text in class during the prior weeks, students are able to dig a little deeper and discover more about the text.

Dialectical Journal Concepts

When I teach novels, I like to have my students complete notebooks as they read. The notebooks contain two main elements: dialectical journals and basic comprehension questions that we answer together in class as we read (one, to keep up engagement as we read, and two, to help prevent copying and cheating. If we answer the questions together in class as opposed to assigning them as homework, students are less likely to text each other pictures of the answers). 

For the dialectical journals, I provide my students with a handful of big-picture thematic concepts that all relate to the novel. For each dialectical journal entry, students write and cite the quote, explain its significance, and then connect it to one of the concepts. I do this because once we are done reading the novel, students will then have categorized quotes pre-selected that they can use for their essay at the end of the novel.

Why this worked: When I plan my units, I like to plan backward. I always have the end-goal in mind. With that said, I make sure that the concepts we use are ones that students can apply and discuss in their essays.

You can read more about how I assign dialectical journals and even download a free template in the classroom in this Secondary English Coffee Shop blog post.

Lord of the Flies Mid-Novel Review Escape Challenge

I love the day when my students compete against one another in this Lord of the Flies review activity. When I assign this activity, my students need to place all of the events in chronological order from chapters 1-6. I have them complete all six chapters together at once because it is more challenging.

This activity works well because it generates authentic conversation about the story. Students review the events of the story, which then helps them prepare to read the final half of the story.

Why this worked: It is a fun activity and the kids get super competitive. Since students complete this activity in their teams, they are already familiar with working with one another. Plus, it gets pretty intense. The kids debate and even argue about the events in the story.

You can see more about my Lord of the Flies Mid-Novel Review Escape Challenge here.

Lord of the Flies Team Competition

Teaching novels from the literary canon can be a bit cumbersome sometimes, especially if students cannot relate to the characters or the conflict. One way that helps overcome this is by teaching Lord of the Flies as a team challenge. 

I started doing this a couple of years ago, and I keep refining my challenge. It still isn’t quite where I’d like it to be, but it sure is fun.

Before we read the novel, I place my students into six groups of six students each. I carefully group my students to make sure that each group is pretty even in regards to ability level; this is especially helpful in my inclusion classes.

As we read the novel, my students compete in a variety of activities that assess and challenge their literary knowledge. Some of the challenges include a map-making challenge, mask-making challenge, quiz challenges, and the mid-novel review that I mentioned above.

Why this worked: This is a fun and engaging way to get through a pretty tough text. Because they are working together in teams, the students have more ownership in their learning.

To read more about how I game-ify Lord of the Flies, check out this blog post.

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8 Foreign Language Project Ideas

In your class, it can be scary to give your students control over something as critically important as their own learning. But independence and relevance will always be the strongest motivators for learning anything.

That’s where project-based learning comes in, which puts students in the driver’s seat of their own learning.

But for a great project-based learning experience, you need excellent foreign language project ideas.

So get into this post, which explores eight excellent project-based learning activities that students will never forget. We also go over how these projects should be implemented and why they’re so effective.

Fun and Effective Foreign Language Project Ideas

1. food for thought, 3. a children’s book, 4. the artist within, 5. travel blog, 6. community service, 7. unveiling the past, 8. the business venture, checklist for a successful foreign language project, why assign projects anyway.

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

These project ideas can easily be tweaked to suit your students’ level and interests.

What’s the hallmark of any culture? Food, of course! And it’s safe to say that all your students, no matter their personalities or learning styles, probably love food.

So ask your class to come up with a menu for a culturally appropriate meal and prepare it together.

Students can begin by independently researching foods that are traditional in the target culture. Then bring them together to share their findings and choose the foods that they’re going to prepare as a class. The meal should be composed of key elements such as an appetizer, salad, main course and dessert. Next, break them into small groups and give each group a target-language recipe corresponding to their particular dish to follow.

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It’s helpful to undertake this project in the context of a unit on food vocabulary so that they can build familiarity with words for common foods and ingredients. Before they begin cooking, teach them target language vocabulary for language commonly used in recipes like “stir,” “chop,” “simmer,” etc. You might even try demonstrating by articulating such actions as they watch you put together a simple recipe first.

We guarantee that they’ll never forget the day they sampled authentic German  Rouladen  or had their first taste of real Italian  lasagna .

After the meal, ask them to journal about the meal, describing the foods they liked and those they didn’t.

It’s certain to create a hunger for that language and culture which will last their whole lives.

Whether it’s the last episode of “Game of Thrones” or “The Walking Dead,” kids and adults alike love dishing about their favorite characters and stories on TV. Why not utilize that enthusiasm for their next project?

Fortunately, technology makes it easy to find engaging target-language television to pique their interest.  YouTube,   Netflix  and Amazon Prime  all make it easy to search for TV shows in the target language. You and your students can check out the popular French detective drama  “Braquo”  or the romantic Chinese mystery  “Love 020.”

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Assign episodes of the show to watch, and then come up with a few questions that allow students to discuss the themes of the show. The questions should get them to think more deeply about the story and their connection to it. For example, ask students to share who their favorite character is and explain why. Or they could come up with an alternate ending for one of the episodes.

Post the questions on a shared blog or break your class into small discussion groups to talk about them. As a culminating task, students can write a script and act out an episode of their own, similar to this project using Spanish  telenovelas .

Few things are as satisfying to students as sharing their knowledge with younger, less advanced students.

What better way to do so than by creating and sharing a children’s book?

A simple picture book that teaches target language vocabulary for things like numbers, colors and days of the week can serve as a welcome refresher for your own students. They can create small books that tell a story and introduce vocabulary in a charming and engaging way. When they’ve finished, schedule a visit to a classroom of younger children where your students can read their books to a young “reading buddy” or to the whole class.

They’ll enjoy interacting with their younger peers and feel a priceless sense of pride in teaching them new skills.

If possible, keep the books on display in your school library for a while so everyone can enjoy and learn from them.

• Learn words in the context of sentences
• Swipe left or right to see more examples from other videos
• Go beyond just a superficial understanding

Art conveys a profound understanding of culture (and sometimes of language), but appreciation for a culture’s art is not something that can be easily taught. Students can connect with a culture’s art on a deeper level by recreating their own versions of it.

If possible, collaborate with an art teacher (in your school or otherwise) ahead of time to brainstorm a list of art-related vocabulary in the target language. These terms can include processes, materials, colors and descriptive words.

Then enlist the teacher’s help to coach students in the actual techniques unique to a particular time period in the target culture: the flowery blooms of American painter Georgia O’Keeffe, for example, or the “superflat” style of Japanese artist Takashi Murakami.

Ask students to present their work in the target language when they’re finished, describing both their process and the finished product.

This project gets students to choose a destination somewhere around the world where the target language is spoken, and then plan a trip to that country. They have plenty of options for what the project can create, but a travel blog is recommended because it can easily be created and shared via the many online blog sites. Here’s a great list of quality travel blogs by Nomadic Matt to inspire students.

Once the destination is chosen, students conduct in-depth research on various aspects, including:

• Geography and climate
• Historical and cultural landmarks
• Local customs and traditions
• Cuisine and local specialties
• Transportation options
• Accommodation choices

They can try developing engaging blog posts or travel diary entries in the target language, describing each day’s experiences and reflections, and they can include local slang or customs.

• FluentU builds you up, so you can build sentences on your own
• Start with multiple-choice questions and advance through sentence building to producing your own output
• Go from understanding to speaking in a natural progression.

To enhance the travel blog, students can include multimedia elements:

• Photos or illustrations: Visual representations of landmarks, local cuisine and cultural experiences.
• Videos or podcasts: Oral presentations, interviews with locals or virtual tours.

Once finished, students can look at the blog and make comments, and you can look at it as a class, too, and ask questions afterward.

For this memorable project, students should start by identifying a local community need and plan a service project. This could involve working with local organizations, interviewing community members in the target language and creating materials to promote the project. 

For example, if your community has a Spanish soup kitchen, and your students are learning Spanish, this could be a perfect match. On Volunteer Match , you can select the target language under “Special Skills.” This makes this a great resource for students to find volunteer opportunities that would work for this project.

As they implement their service plan, or their volunteering experience, have them consider activities such as:

• Tutoring sessions for language learners in the community.
• Environmental clean-up initiatives with bilingual informational materials.
• Collaboration with local businesses or community centers.

After completing the community service project, ask students to reflect on their experiences in the target language. This reflection could cover:

• Images, examples, video examples, and tips
• Covering all the tricky edge cases, eg.: phrases, idioms, collocations, and separable verbs
• No reliance on volunteers or open source dictionaries
• 100,000+ hours spent by FluentU's team to create and maintain

Conclude the project with a presentation where each group shares their community service experience with the class. This presentation could include:

• Visual materials such as photos or videos documenting the project.
• Oral reflections on language use, cultural understanding and the impact of their service.

This project requires some technical know-how, but you’d be surprised how many students know how to use editing software these days. Perhaps it’s one of the upsides of all that TikTok .

For this project, students will research and create a documentary or a short film in the target language about a specific historical event or figure. 

Students begin by selecting a historical event, period or influential figure related to a region where the target language is spoken. Topics can range from significant historical events to the lives of important historical figures.

In groups or individually, students conduct thorough research on their chosen historical topic. This involves:

• Studying primary and secondary sources in the target language.
• Summarizing key historical events, figures, and cultural context.
• Script writing for the documentary, ensuring a coherent and engaging narrative.

The culmination of the project is students bringing their research and script to life by creating a multimedia historical documentary. This can include:

• Recording voice-overs in the target language.
• Incorporating visuals such as historical images, maps, and video clips.
• Editing the documentary for a polished final product.

This project is designed for students who have a strong interest in business.

In it, students work in groups to create a business proposal in the target language. This involves market research, creating a business plan, designing promotional materials and presenting their proposal to the class. 

Students begin by selecting a business concept or idea that aligns with the target language and culture. This could be a new product, service or a cultural adaptation of an existing business.

Then, they’ll conduct thorough market research to understand the business landscape in the target language region.

Then they’ll create a detailed business plan in the target language. This involves:

• Defining the business concept, mission, and vision.
• Outlining the products or services offered.
• Developing a marketing strategy, including promotional materials in the target language.
• Formulating a financial plan, including budget projections.

The culmination of this project will be students presenting their business proposals to the class as if they were pitching to potential investors. 

Afterwards, students can ask them questions. If you’ve ever seen an episode of “ Shark Tank ,” that’s a good general model for this final activity.

Before you send your students off on their anticipated road trip, go through this checklist to confirm that you’ve given them a task that’s well worth their time (and yours).

A quality project is:

• Relevant.  Does this project relate to real-world situations? Will students use their language skills to solve real problems? Think navigating conversations or producing cultural products that can be used or enjoyed.
• Aligned to curriculum goals and learning outcomes.  We hate to burst your bubble… but remember that the whole point of everything you do is student learning. Will your students be working towards your learning goals? Or is this project simply “fluff”? Identify your standards and desired student outcomes that will be met through classroom time on this project.
• Student-centered.  If it’s a quality project, then all you have to do is give them a bit of direction and guidance, and send them on their way. Allow students to choose their own topics (within reason) and give them plenty of leeway to exercise their creativity and problem-solving skills. What they come up with just might surprise you!
• Rigorous.  It’s just human nature: when we don’t have to work for something, we don’t value it. It’s the same with learning. Students should struggle, wrestle and at times even become frustrated. Allow it to happen, but be available to provide scaffolding at that spot right between frustration and despair… so that they don’t give up. Remember that this is how you felt when you were learning your second language.
• Fun.  As much as they need to struggle, there must also be an element of fun in a great project. Something about it must spark and hold student interest so that they go right to work on it every day with little to no prompting. Perhaps it incorporates a favorite activity (like sports, music, drawing or video games). Or perhaps it addresses an aspect of culture that intrigues them (like food, celebrities or holidays). You know your students better than anyone else, so find that unnameable something that translates into fun for them.

There’s no way around it: a quality project will occupy a significant portion of learning time in your classroom. When any activity takes up this much time, it’s important to be clear about the reasons you’re doing it. That way your students will understand its value and not see it as a frivolous “time-waster.”

Here are the top reasons that projects are worth doing in any classroom, but especially in yours:

• Project-based learning is student-centered.  With “teacher-centered” methods like lecturing and note-taking, you are the sole dispenser of knowledge. Projects give students ownership and control of their own learning as they seek out learning that’s meaningful to them and accomplish it on their own terms.
• Projects allow students to use  real-world skills .  It’s no secret that student motivation skyrockets when they see their learning as relevant to the real world. They can experience the value of language and culture first-hand, instead of just listening to you tell them about it.
• Projects encourage the use of higher-order thinking skills. As teachers, our task is to empower students to utilize those higher-order skills: analyzing, evaluating and creating. When you’re teaching a language, there are days when you feel like you never get past remembering and understanding which, while necessary, represent the very bottom of the hallowed learning pyramid. A quality project is a unique opportunity for students to utilize knowledge at the highest level.

Do you have some inspiration now?

Run with it! And craft an unforgettable experience for your students by putting them in the driver’s seat with project-based learning.

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Department of Treasury, IRS and Department of Energy announce opening date for the Qualifying Advanced Energy Project Credit new allocation round

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IR-2024-144, May 22, 2024

WASHINGTON — The Department of Treasury, Internal Revenue Service and Department of Energy (DOE) announced today that the DOE Qualified Advanced Energy Project Credit Program Applicant Portal (48C Portal) is now open for any interested applicants to register for a new round of allocations.

Interested applicants, including small-, medium- and large-sized manufacturers, must submit their concept papers by Friday, June 21 at 5 p.m., using the 48C Portal. DOE will accept full applications only on projects where concept papers were submitted prior to the June 21 deadline.

Submitting a concept paper is the first step in the application process. A concept paper must be submitted using the 48C Portal to be eligible to submit the full application.

On April 29, in Notice 2024-36 PDF , the Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service, in partnership with the DOE, announced up to $6 billion in a second round of tax credit allocations for projects that expand clean energy manufacturing and recycling, critical materials refining, processing and recycling and for projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions at industrial facilities.

Round 2 substantially increases the overall amount of funding that can be allocated. Allocations for the new round will total up to $6 billion, with approximately $2.5 billion going to projects in designated 48C energy communities .

The 48C Program received significant interest from in Round 1. Applicants submitted concept papers seeking a total of nearly $42 billion in tax credits across all categories of projects. In the second step of the application process, applicants requested approximately $13.5 billion in tax credits, significantly more than the $4 billion available in Round 1.

All funding available for Round 1 has been allocated, however, interested parties that applied in Round 1 and did not receive an allocation are encouraged to review Round 2 guidance and re-apply for an allocation in Round 2.

More information can be found on the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 page on IRS.gov and Qualifying Advanced Energy Project Credit (48C) Program .

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The Case for Ukraine’s NATO Accession

Member countries must use NATO’s upcoming summit in Washington to reaffirm their commitment to admitting Ukraine. Refusing to offer a clear timetable for Ukrainian accession would fuel further aggression by signaling to Russian President Vladimir Putin that his neo-imperial dream is feasible.

BERKELEY/KYIV – At the signing ceremony of the North Atlantic Treaty on April 4, 1949, then-US President Harry Truman remarked that if this “simple document” had existed in 1914 and 1939, “it would have prevented the acts of aggression which led to two world wars.” The newly established alliance, he suggested, would ensure peace by deterring potential aggressors.

The success of this collective security strategy is reflected in the number of countries that have taken advantage of NATO’s open-door policy . Since 1949, the alliance has expanded from 12 to 32 members, with Finland and Sweden being the most recent additions. Now, member countries must commit to admitting Ukraine.

Bringing Ukraine into NATO is important for several reasons. For starters, any doubt about the alliance’s commitment to defend current or prospective members invites aggression. Russia is a case in point. The decision to shelve Ukraine and Georgia’s membership aspirations during the 2008 Bucharest summit led to Russia’s invasion of Georgia later that year. Similarly, turning a blind eye to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea resulted in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Failing to defeat Russia in Ukraine would inevitably lead to more wars of aggression. But by admitting Ukraine, NATO could tip the balance decisively in its favor and dispel any doubt about the alliance’s future, ensuring a lasting peace.

Moreover, appearing fearful of escalation or allowing its actions to be dictated by another power could push NATO into a death spiral. Giving in to threats would just lead to more threats and concessions. And if Ukraine falls, Estonia, Poland, Finland, or Taiwan will be next.

One of the basic tenets of NATO’s Cold War strategy was that force must be met with even greater force. In 1946, the late American diplomat George Kennan summarized this strategic principle, explaining that while the Soviet Union was “impervious to the logic of reason,” it was “highly sensitive” to the “logic of force.” Whenever its aggression met strong resistance, it retreated.

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The following decades vindicated Kennan. When Western powers showed they were determined to protect West Germany and South Korea during the Cold War, the Soviet Union backed down. Conversely, when the West hesitated, the Soviets attacked.

While US President Dwight Eisenhower’s invocation of the United Nations Charter failed to deter the USSR from invading Hungary in 1956, his successor, John F. Kennedy, spared West Berlin from meeting the same fate. Similarly, the West’s lackluster response to the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 was followed by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

By refusing to set a clear timetable for Ukrainian accession, NATO is capitulating to Russia’s demands, signaling to President Vladimir Putin that his dream of restoring the Russian empire is feasible and thus making World War III all but inevitable.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exposed NATO’s vulnerabilities. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently declared that Germany is willing to send 35,000 troops to defend “every square foot” of NATO territory. But that commitment, while significant, pales in significance when one considers that 500,000 Russian troops are currently fighting in Ukraine. Moreover, the European defense industry has proven unable to supply Ukraine with sufficient weapons and equipment.

Had Ukraine fallen in three days, as many “ experts ” predicted in early 2022, Russian forces would now be in Kazakhstan, Moldova, and possibly the Baltic states and Poland. Given that Ukraine has the only European army that is both motivated and battle-hardened enough to resist Russia, admitting Ukraine would undoubtedly bolster NATO’s military capabilities.

While some might argue that such a move would force the Kremlin to respond, it is highly unlikely to use nuclear weapons. The USSR posed a much greater nuclear threat, yet the West did not surrender to Soviet blackmail. As German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer put it in 1961, while the nuclear threats “directed from time to time against one or other of the NATO partners” were dangerous, the “Soviet government must know that by any such blow, it would touch off a counter-blow by which it would be annihilated.”

Was there truly zero probability of the USSR using nuclear weapons? Certainly not. But Western policymakers at the time understood that giving in to extortion would increase the likelihood of such an attack, not lessen it.

Lastly, the West must realize that Russia is already at war with NATO. The Kremlin is financing terrorism, engaging in disinformation campaigns, fueling domestic conflicts, meddling in the elections of democratic countries, and reportedly planning a sabotage campaign across Europe.

Unfortunately, Western democracies have been too slow to accept reality. While political leaders debated whether NATO “provoked” Putin and whether they should allow Putin to “save face,” China and Russia have deepened their “no limits” military partnership and formed an “ axis of upheaval ” that is now threatening to undermine the US-led international order.

In 1988, then-US President Ronald Reagan explained that NATO is not about “today or tomorrow” but rather about “what Europe [will] look like in 15 years.” While we cannot predict the future, two things are clear. If Ukraine falls, Europe could bleed for decades because Russia will not stop in Ukraine. Alternatively, with Ukraine as a member, the alliance could promote peace through deterrence, as it did during the Cold War.

The destinies of Ukraine, Europe, and NATO are inextricably linked. As French President Emmanuel Macron recently acknowledged , “Europe is mortal,” and its demise may already be in sight. The acute threat posed by Russia’s revanchist ambitions underscores the need for urgent action. NATO members must use the July summit in Washington to invite Ukraine to join the alliance.

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