Classroom Design for Busy People: Make a “Tribute Wall”! As a new teacher, I faced the same dilemma every fall: What to put on the walls of my classroom?
Design Challenge: Beekeeping in Doha, Qatar This was our students’ first introduction to the design thinking process and …
The Force of Friction: What Moves Objects & People? In humanities students researched undocumented minors and the reasons they immigrate to …
Big Ideas from Small Creatures First grade scientists in Room 2 have been interested in garden creatures for a long …
Faces of South County Each group studied the complex intersection of culture, politics, economics and …
Matter That Matters Our goal was for students to understand how resources in our natural world acquire …
Wise Kids Traditions We students thought it pretty important to think about one of the most critical things …
Plant and Insect Life Cycles Second Graders became botanists and entomologists as they cared for and cultivated plant …
Coded Structures, Decoded Identities As importantly, students learned to analyze critically how man-made environments affect …
College Knowledge In this project students looked at how current neuroscience research contributes to …
Mind The Gap During the next six weeks, students examined income inequality, gender inequality, and …
Seed Dispersal Challenge I developed a project to help students explore various seed dispersal adaptations.
The Upcycle Project This project had the broad goals of recognizing and confronting our environmentally …
Wat_er We Doing? A California Drought Story In this project students worked together to make a documentary about the current …
Best Project of All Time Using time as a theme, in this project we explored the mathematical concepts of …
3D Printed Timeline Ninth grade students in the MPX Program at Mid-Pacific Institute created a timeline of …
Jambox Project Plato once wrote, “Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education …
In Sickness and In Health This 11th-grade interdisciplinary project used art, biology, and humanities to pursue …
Water We Doing? A History Of The World Through Water Tenth graders stepped into the shoes of scientists and became stewards of our …
Creating Ripples with Underwater Robots This project took students from robotic ideas, engineering designs, structural, …
A Fly on the Wall A Fly on the Wall Project was a collaborative project between 11th grade biology and …
Chipotle Challenge ”So there are 60-some thousand flavor combinations at Chiptole…” This simple message …
The Boneyard Project This eight week project between Nick Ehlers’ junior biology class and Patrick Wilcox, a …
Energy Puzzles Our senior engineering students created jigsaw puzzles to introduce energy concepts to …
Healthy Choices: Food For Thought The Food for Thought project focused on why and how to make healthy food choices.
Matter All Around First Grade Scientists explored the world of matter all around them! They wondered…
The Learning Landscape Students often complain about their learning environments, whether it’s comfort …
The Great 9th Grade Odyssey Students worked in groups of three or four to create boats made solely out of cardboard …
Ancient Sailing and Seafarers This project looks at how and why seafaring peoples ventured out to the deep blue …
Conceptual Art Project When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and …
Chemistry and Conflict The inspiration for this project came from a “thing biography” display at a Los Angeles …
Media Saves the Beach Is it safe to go in the water? This question began an exploration of San Diego’s beaches …
Chemical Identity Masks In this interdisciplinary project, student created a two-sided identity mask.
Cultural Solutions In Nature In this project, students investigated biomimicry—the quest for solutions to human …
The {hu}Manifest Project Students worked individually on an integrated project exploring the essential question …
Children’s Astronomy Book Project Students created an illustrated book to teach young children about our universe.
The Sangak{You} project Sangaku or San Gaku are Japanese geometrical puzzles on wooden tablets, created during …
Geometric Mural Project Students experienced the beauty of math by creating murals using specific geometric shapes.
Physics A to Z Students experienced the beauty of math by creating murals using specific geometric shapes.
Urban Homesteading Project High Tech High International (HTHI) seniors designed sustainable solutions for urbanites …
Analog Flash for Windows The assignment for this senior project was to create an interactive, museum-quality …
Science Friction The goal of Science Friction was to help students understand that physics is all around …
Graph-It Design For the Graph-It Design project, each student used Excel software to create their own …
Pinhole Photography Students built pinhole cameras and took black-and-white photos, which they then …
Making Game Controllers Accessible to Everyone Teachers Corey Clark, Curtis Taylor & Matt Gottilla designed the AbleGamerz Project…
The AbleGamerz Project Sixth grade students at High Tech Middle Mesa design and build adaptive gaming controllers for people with physical disabilities
HTHybrid — First Week Back Students and staff started on campus in a week filled with joy and return to regular school
Science At Home 10th grade students did home experiments by using materials in their house and asking testable questions.
Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang: Meaning-making Makes Us In this episode of the High Tech High Unboxed podcast, Nuvia Ruland interviews …
Math Mentors Matt Leader’s 8th grade and Dave Corner’s 11th grade math students collaborate in a cross . . .
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 …
The Mathiness of Truthiness Exhibition Math teacher, Sarah Strong, presents the premise behind her interdisciplinary …
Living North County Ultimately, in groups of nine, students designed an eighteen box spinner that was …
Bacteria and You During the project, Biology students swab the kitchen for bacteria before cleaning, …
Destruction and Restoration: A History of Sausal Creek As a culminating task, student docents led families and other community members on a …
Steampunk Revolution Students learned about the industrial revolution and picked often forgotten negative …
Call Sign: Courage Students collaborated with the USS Midway museum to capture the stories of Naval …
Human Impacts on Local Wildlife Students collected and dissected vehicle killed wildlife and participated in marine …
Educational Video Games And Transdisciplinary PBL The above scene occurred in a recent session of the Minecraft Mathematics Middle School…
The Meals and Muppets Project In this interdisciplinary project, students looked at the essential question: “Should I …
Cyclic Machines Seniors at HTHNC received a simple prompt: “Create a machine or kinetic art piece that …
The Haunted Arcade: Halloween Carnival Games In preparation for the popular school-wide Halloween carnival, 7th graders challenged …
The Case For Collaboration Many have likened teaching to art. I think there’s something to that. Both are creative…
A Journey With Venetia Phair, The Girl Who Named Pluto In British Primary, we were encouraged to follow our students’ interests in developing…
The Wicked Soap Company Students learned about saponification, chemical reactions, pH, strong bases, lab …
The Lantern Project In this project, the entire 6th grade learned about geometry, unit rate, expenses and …
Writing “Downtown”: Student Voice in Teaching Writing Like my students must do in their writing, I must attend to my audience. Using what I…
Thank You Tiger! My Teacher Wake Up Call His dad had told him that he’d have a job with him as a bricklayer on the building…
Subatomic Black Hole Soup: A Graphic Novel Project For this project, seniors explored the task of teaching a complex physics concept in a ..
Colonies, Clusters, and Classrooms? Students researched a variety of animal communities through fieldwork, experts, …
Logs From San Diego Bay By the end of our first year together, our students produced a field guide, The Two…
#Hashtag Film Project Students examined the role of the media in their lives and how they can use the media to …
Practicing English by Playtesting Games In this project, 85 university students in Japan, all of whom liked board and card …
Designing a Collaborative Learning Environment in Math What do I want for my students? I want them to be active learners, able to ask questions…
72-Mile Classroom From the crest at Volcan Mountain, to the coast at Dog Beach, lies the 72-mile classroom…
From Socratic Seminar to Space Science I have been doing Socratic Seminars in my physics class long enough to know when they go…
A Differentiated Lesson, A To Z My students have a wide range of background knowledge in mathematics. They also process…
Deeper Learning In Common Core Math Projects Would teachers continue to be able to personalize and bring in adult world connections through math…
Change Leadership For Learning In this UnBoxed interview, Tony Wagner, first Innovation Education Fellow at the Technology…
Wild About Cramlington Today, I want the 28 students I am working with to experience just enough failure to act…
Illuminated Mathematics Almost all of us have at some point taught something that was completely irrelevant to the…
Science Room as Drawing Room What students find daunting in Biology is not so much the concepts, but the amount…
Exhibiting Student Writing Exhibitions of student learning, with their many projects, activities, and associated banter, can take on the atmosphere of a science fair or a grand opening at an art gallery.
Sunflowers and Math I don’t recall how long our class spent working on the art pieces or what we did before…
Canyon as Classroom In the summer of 2010, I was considering a job as a science teacher at a small private…
DNA Barcoding Invasive Species This study is a component of the HTH San Diego Bay Study, now in its eighth year.
The Agony and The Ecstasy (of Math) This is mathematics, he argues in A Mathematician’s Lament (2009), in all its elegance and…
Writing About Math First, as in any subject, writing about math forces students to articulate their thoughts…
Family Mathers Traditionally, math homework does not generate much enthusiasm, but the implementation of…
Visions of Mathematics “What is our vision for mathematics at High Tech High?” It is my belief that there is quite…
Autobots in Action Each autobot used a computer and an array of sensors to interact with its environment.
Mathematical Makeover I’m done, what do I do now? This is one of the utterances I least enjoy hearing in my fourth…
Blossoms From Compost: Lessons From a Messy Garden Gardening is whole-body learning, offering rich, multi-sensory, direct personal experience…
Speeding Race Cars & Dying Embers Flash back. It’s the exciting beginning of a new school year. For the next six weeks I…
African Bushmeat Expedition In the summer of 2008, Jay Vavra and a group of High Tech High students traveled to…
Opening up to Math I cannot count the number of times that I have heard from parents and students alike…
Superhero in the Making This project integrates language arts and physics standards while tapping into students’ …