Have your students ever made a passion project?
Passion Projects are an amazing way to engage, inspire, and teach students in your classroom. As a result, these class projects have their benefits. However, they also have their challenges.
Keep reading if you are curious about passion projects, if you want to know the truths about passion projects, and if you want an easy FREE tool to better manage these projects in your classroom.
What is a passion project?
A passion project is a project that allows students to choose a topic they are interested in learning about, and then….they learn about it.
Yup, that’s it!
Above all, it is a project that is completely student-led, allowing students to choose, research, plan, create and present a project they have completely created on their own during class time.
Student-led activities are one of the best ways to increase Student Engagement in your classroom.
The Passion Project Pros
- The excitement. Students love passion projects. It may be the first time in their schooling that students are being told that they can learn about anything they want. If you have students that are not engaged in your classroom, this is a great way to pique their interest in learning.
- The students are giving you intel on what they like. If you pay close attention, you can get an inside look as to what your students want. Consequently, this will help you when planning lessons and activities that you want to be engaging with students.
- If done right, passion projects are less work for you. Students are responsible for almost everything. As a result, You don’t have much planning needed for the times you choose to let students work on the passion projects.
Also, this project can be done for early finishers, allowing you to avoid planning extra work for when students complete their tasks for the day.
Furthermore, passion projects are an easy way to obtain marks for your ELA Standards.
The Cons
- With freedom in student choice comes great responsibility (and struggles). Some students might greatly struggle with the freedom to choose ANY topic. This can seem quite abstract for students. These students will definitely need some prompting from an adult to help guide the (what is your favorite thing to do in your free time? What type of tv shows do you like to watch? If you could learn about anything in school, what would it be?etc…)
- Quality of work is not always the best. Because the project is so open ended and there is no specific final product for you to model, you may get some mixed results from students. It is difficult to keep the projects student-led, while also keeping expectations high. You need to find ways to communicate with students that you expect a lot from them without making it seem like you are taking control of their projects.
- Keeping track of work week to week. This ties into the previous con, in that keeping students accountable week after week is quite difficult. It is likely that a student will tell you they will be spending the class researching, only to find at the end of the class that they have not produced any findings. We need to remember that these are students and they need to be taught what it means to move a project further each day.
The passion project management tool you need
Say Hello to Trello! Trello is a free list-building website that is popularly used as a project management tool.
Trello is the perfect tool for students to use to manage their passion projects. This tool works like GSuite in that students and teachers can communicate back and forth with one another.
Trello allows students to know exactly the tasks they need to complete the project, and in what order.
Be sure to watch the Facebook Live I did in my Facebook Group The Teacher and Student Engagement Convo, found below. I go through step-by-step the Trello Board I have students use in my classroom.
Don’t stress about taking notes or recreating this Trello board. You can get your own copy of this exact Trello Board by clicking here.
My personal favorite part about using this Trello Board is the Exit Ticket I have created. This has students communicate 3-5 things they did in that class to move their project further along.
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