Here are some ideas of how to start community project-based learning!
Check out these sites to inspire and challenge your students:
Donate rice to hungry people while playing a vocabulary game!
Free Rice lets your students earn 20 rice grains at a time. The rice is distributed by the United Nations World Food Program (
WFP), working with over 1,000 other organizations in over 75 countries. In addition to providing food, the World Food Program helps hungry people to become self-reliant so that they escape hunger for good.
Visit the United Nations World Food Program to learn more about their successful approach to ending world hunger. Features humanitarian crisis updates, press releases from around the world, photo galleries, and educational video games to teach about the needs of starving nations.
Connect with like-minded educators through The New York Times Learning Network provides news summaries for kids, lesson plans for teachers; all based on national and international current events.
The MAGIC Teacher has links, tutorials, and examples of media training projects around the world that enable children to get involved in media production. Students can read and explore links like Know Your Rights, Have Your Say, and Make Your Way in the Media. This is a goldmine of connections - BBC World Service and UNICEF to name a few.
Teachers Talking About Learning, an educational branch of UNICEF, links you to games around the world and interactive reflections sites. Find chances to explore ideas, discuss issues, and take action with your students. Created in response to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Millenium Development Goals is an incredible UNICEF site which explains poverty, education, gender equality, child mortality, maternal health, disease, environment, and development. Provides videos, news feeds, articles, and photo galleries to get your students' eyes wide open concerning the state of the world.
New Tools for Digital Learning includes step-by-step instructions on blogs, wikis, podcasting, etc. Empower yourself by learning to use the latest tech tools.
WITNESS is devoted to featuring online technologies that open people's eyes to human rights violations. This powerful international campaign will raise awareness in your students and encourage them to understand and speak out about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Links available to other world-wide human rights projects and organizations.
Safely connect, collaborate, and teach using leading protected email and blog solutions for schools and districts by joining a global community of connected classrooms through ePals.
Voices of Youth allows your students access to games, digital diaries, and international social action discussions. Full of links and resources to inspire and amaze kids.
TED features a great video archive of lectures by some of the world's greatest thinkers. Perfect for teachers needing motivation on social topics. Search engine themes include technology, science, culture, arts, and global issues such as poverty and equity in education. Most talks run about 20 minutes each.
Freedom School is a public middle schoolcreated in the honor of Paulo Freire. With it's focus on social justice and environmental sustainability, every student's differences are honored and celebrated and learning is deep, powerful, and transformative. Be inspired by and collaborate with this powerful community of learners.
Learn about a first grade boy who took interest in a social issue on the continent of Africa, did his research and took action at Ryan's Well Foundation.
Watch and read Texas youth find voice and power through their poetry at the Texas Youth Word Collective.
Get tons of ideas, lessons and inspiration for empowering students to think more critically about media at the Center for Media Literacy.
For free materials, newsletters, k-12 lessons, and plenty of links for kids try Tolerance.org.New Technology Foundation, teaching and learning opportunities for folks who's mission is to re-invent teaching and learning for the 21 st Century by offering a proven model and a fully integrated suite of tools designed to facilitate the creation and management of a relevant and engaging 21st Century education.
Social Action Collective NingChallenging adolescents to explore and inverstigate their roles, identities, and responsiblities in their communities and in the world.
SAC is about empowerment. We provide a free curriculum (powerful lessons, videos, activities, and rubrics) for 6-12th grade teachers who wish to challenge their students by questioning society's power structures and the world at large. We do this through an academic framework so teachers and students can connect creative writing such as slam poetry, speeches, and essays that explore topics of social justice. Use this free site as a guide for teaching voice, compiling student anthologies, and encouraging critical responses from your students. This curriculum issues of social justice and responsibility through a proces of reflection, anlysis , and creation. Our aim is to support you advocate for poetry, action, and change.
