project Archives

Play It By Ear Project

Students partnered with the SoCal Beep Baseball Association to design soldered equipment to make the game more available.

Making dog houses & cat condos for adopted pets with 5th graders

Alec talks to fifth grade teacher Jeff Govoni about a project he and his fifth grade colleagues did last year, in which students designed and built dog houses and cat condos for animals seeking adoption.

The first time you do a project is a “first draft”

Veteran PBL teacher Brian Delgado explains the power of thinking about the first time you do a project as a “first draft,” and unpacks a phrase coined by High Tech High cofounder Rob Riordan: “Let the experience be the text.”

Design Challenge: Beekeeping in Doha, Qatar

This was our students’ first introduction to the design thinking process and …

Understanding Habits of Heart and Mind

Second graders investigated the question, “How do Members of Our Community Show Care and …

Psycarnival

For this 10th Grade Humanities project, students studied the basics of psychology …

Chipotle Challenge

”So there are 60-some thousand flavor combinations at Chiptole…” This simple message …

Inner Nature Mask Project

While much of the Western academic tradition focuses upon the external world, we shifted …

Viva La Revolucion!

In a semester-long collaboration between two Humanities classes, students researched …

Digital Storytelling

Students created digital stories about a defining moment, a message, or a lesson learned …

Moral Courage Project

n this project my middle school students go on a self-exploration journey through …

Artist Happy Un-Birthday Project

For this Un-Birthday project, each student spent one week studying an artist whose …

Story/Art Project

Students analyzed numerous short stories with attention to tone, mood, structure and …

The Graphic Novel Project

The HTH Graphic Novel Project, based at High Tech High Chula Vista, aims to instruct …

Physics A to Z

Students experienced the beauty of math by creating murals using specific geometric shapes.

How to Design a Great Project Launch, with John Santos

The personalization of student learning starts with the experiences teachers lay out for their projects…

Personalized Learning through Collaborative Experiences

The personalization of student learning starts with the experiences teachers lay out for their projects…

The “Totes of Hope”: A Mental Health Humanities Project

To address the youth mental health crisis, 11th grade Humanities teacher Andres Perez and his students at High Tech High Chula Vista sewed tote bags for patients at Rady Children’s Hospital Psychiatric Outward. Along the way they learned about the systematic issues in society that could lead to troubling mental health issues, and how to take action toward them. They also learned the importance of iterating a product and a process, and giving grace to oneself through it all.

For Kids to Experience PBL from Day 1, Teachers Need PBL

High Tech High Mesa Instructional Coach David Roney explains how his colleagues designed August PD to put projects front and center, so teachers were ready to launch their projects on day one of school.

Project Launch: Parkour

High Tech Elementary Mesa first graders experience moving in a different way…

Two Approaches to Grouping Students in Projects

Early in the spring, I got a phone call from a school principal asking what Unboxed had on group roles in projects…

What is PBL?

A key question for PBL educators: how will we know if we are doing project-based learning well?

The Innocence Project

Students partner with the California Innocence Project to review case files of wrongfully convicted prisoners…

Kindergarten: Expanding Play

Michelina Miedema shares how students in Kindergarten express their ideas through play…

The Cheltenham PBL Experiment Episode 4: Year Two

After the first year, teachers reflected and recalibrated their approach for the second year of PBL at Cheltenham

What’s That Sound?

In this project, students explored the science of sound by doing a variety of experiments and investigations in science and engineering exploratories from tinkering with instruments to attending performances to get a live experience of the power of music.

When Place Shapes the Product

Genesee Community Charter School is centering students in a place-based curriculum provides them with a deeper understanding of…

Summer Rerun: Ron Berger on Beautiful Lessons

Ron Berger talks about literacy, projects, beautifully-designed lessons, and the power of no lesson at all

HTHybrid — First Week Back

Students and staff started on campus in a week filled with joy and return to regular school

What Can School Learn From After-school?

A conversation about why more engaging learning tends to happen in electives and extracurriculars than during “core classes”, and how what we can learn from these “peripheral” classes, teams, and clubs.

Screen Time: How Remote Learning Feels to Students

In this special guest episode from This Teenage Life students talk about how it feels to …

School Makes Me Feel

High Tech High students from many of the K12 schools reflect on how school makes them . . .

Establishing the HTH Design Principles

Rob Riordan introduces the HTH design principles and how they arrived at the final …

What Matters Most to Latitude during Lockdown

Alec talks to Lillian Hsu and John Bosselman, of Latitude High School in Oakland about …

Why PBL?

High Tech High students, teachers and directors explain the thinking behind doing projects.

Exhibition Voices

Students from middle to high school share their learning at Exhibition in December of 2019.

11th graders are helping wrongfully-convicted prisoners

Alec talks to Mackenzie King, whose students are helping the California Innocence Project in a project called XONR8.

High Tech High Design Principles

High Tech High is guided by four connected design principles—equity, personalization . . .

Ron Berger on Beautiful Lessons and “No Lesson at All”

Alec talks to Ron Berger about what he’s learned about teaching literacy

Electioneering Part 2: “That’s not Fair!”

teacher Mele Sato explains how she got her students excited about the somewhat …

Electioneering Part 1: Teaching Redistricting

Teacher Mele Sato explains how she got students excited about congressional …

Electioneering Project

Teacher Mele Sato explains the exhibition rehearsal process for the electioneering …

Teacher Designed vs Student Designed Projects

Lillian Hsu, Founding Principal of Latitude High School speaks the benefits of a …

Experience as Text – PBL Design Kit

HTH instructors break down key components that comprise a well designed project in the …

Cycles of Reflection – PBL Design Kit

HTH instructors break down key components that make a well designed project in the …

Cycles of Inquiry – PBL Design Kit

HTH instructors break down key components that comprise a well designed project in …

Building Off of Student Strengths

Carlos Moreno, C.E.O. of Big Picture Learning, addresses the importance of using …

Non-fiction Writing Project Critique – PBL Design Kit

HTH instructors break down key components that comprise a well designed project in the …

What Might Great Academics Look Like

Lillian Hsu, Founding Principal of Latitude High School, speaks about what the great …

Cycles of Production — PBL Design Kit

How might students build academic knowledge, skills, and dispositions, while simultaneously building products via project-based learning?

Project Tuning Protocol

Kelly Jacob and Sacha Casiato give a brief overview of the steps in taking a project …

Collaboration in PBL

Lillian Hsu, Founding Principal of Latitude High School speaks on the value of …

Teaching Authentic Projects

Emily Pilloton of Girl’s Garage reflects on her passion for creating authentic work with students

Planning Projects

Emily Pilloton of Girl’s Garage discusses the process into planning some of the amazing projects she co-authors with her students

Needs of the Community

Emily Pilloton of Girl’s Garage talks about what is the driver for projects.

Exhibitions – The Student Perspective

Students define and explain the importance of exhibitions in order to showcase their …

“Thou Talk’st of Nothing”

In today’s media-saturated society, it can sometimes feel like a sisyphean feat to…

The Importance of Drafting and Revision

Art teacher Shani Leader, Math teacher Mele Sato, and Humanities teacher Michelle …

Creating Projects from Essential Questions

HTH instructors explain the importance of forming essential questions that are open …

The Lantern Project

In this project, the entire 6th grade learned about geometry, unit rate, expenses and …

Doing the Project First

This is one of the most important steps in designing curriculum because it allows for the…

Design Thinking vs. “Refrigerator Projects”

Do you remember as a child the sheer thrill that came with having your work displayed on the…

Upside Down Exhibition

Envision believes that through focusing on rigor, relationships, and results, we can…

The Problem Finders

Yet, the various flavours of project-based learning—problem-based learning, challenge-…

Uncovering The Progressive Past: The Origins of PBL

Below I explore the origins of PBL and attempt to navigate practices and approaches…

Wild About Cramlington

Today, I want the 28 students I am working with to experience just enough failure to act…

Annotating Teacher Work

The first might be expected of my eighth graders: they were not listening during class. The…

How Do They Come Up With This Stuff?

With a teaching background in the most traditional of schools, I’d daily find myself…

In the Circle

I would ask myself, “Why do I have to read this book?” I would wonder how the teacher chose…

Into the World of Projects

This year I fell in love with project-based learning. I am new to this world and I jumped…

Where Do Projects Come From?

The topic of discussion, as it so often is, was how to make projects meaningful and still…

Crafting Beautiful Work

Ron Berger has had an enormous influence on how High Tech High and many other schools….

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