Long Range Projects for Long-Term Impact
As teachers, we are no strangers to long-term planning - we are constantly thinking ahead to the next lesson, the next unit, and the next steps to support our students in their learning.
Sometimes it can feel a bit jarring, moving from one unit to the next while trying to create meaningful connections between different content areas. I like to tackle this by structuring a year of learning through one or more key questions that my students can keep coming back to through an extended project. It helps to reinforce our learning in an ongoing way while engaging students in drawing their own connections between topics and subjects. If you are new to extended project-based learning, this article will offer you a few entry points into this type of planning. If this is a familiar space for you, we will direct you to fantastic Edwin Collections that support year-long learning themes.
Favourite Short-Term Projects
Edwin’s library is stocked to the virtual rafters with projects to spark student learning. Whether you want to engage students in a new topic through inquiry or offer creative outlets for students to demonstrate their learning through design, there are plenty of options to suit your planning needs. When you are searching for ideas for long-term projects, you can start by searching the Edwin library using the keyword “project.” These project collections can serve as stand-alone activities or they can be used to frame all of your units of learning. Let’s take a look at some of my favourites!
Designing a Livable Community
This collection focuses on community development, land use, and sustainability and draws primarily on outcomes from Social Studies and Geography. The learning objects guide students to consider the importance of green spaces, community walkability, and the effects of urban growth as students reflect on what makes communities livable. It is this kind of question that is perfect for a long-term project!
Using this overarching question, you can make connections to scientific concepts like biodiversity and human impacts on the environment through environmental chemistry. Students can explore challenges to livability across time through a historical lens and consider the political policies and programs that might make their own communities more livable for all citizens. Through stories, poems, and critical media analysis, you might guide students through different representations of community, or the range of human relationships to place. Finally, students can apply their math learning about measurement, statistics, and geometric constructions to model aspects of livable communities.
Use this collection on its own to inspire students to engage in year-long inquiry or use it in conjunction with other Edwin project collections, like 🗂️ Design an Eco-Home, 🗂️Design and Economic Policy, and 🗂️ Bring Back the Pollinators.
Equity Grant Proposal
In this collection, students identify an issue concerning equity, diversity, and inclusion within their community and then innovate solutions through a grant proposal. This is another project that can stand on its own or spur a year-long inquiry that builds bridges across subject areas. You could even split this project into different phases, offering opportunities for exploration, research, interviewing community members, and moving through the design process.
Make this collection your own or use it in conjunction with 🗂️ Population Change - Group Project or 🗂️ Challenges to Improving Quality of Life.
Favourite Long-Range Projects
In addition to stand-alone project collections, Edwin also has a number of collections that come in the form of a series. You can work through a collection series throughout the year to guide the structure of your course content or to guide students through the creation of a product to showcase their learning.
UN Sustainable Development Goals Collections
There are 17 collections in the UN Sustainable Development Goals series and you can find them using the keyword search “UN sustainable development goal.” Covering issues such as clean water, climate action, and human rights, you could guide a year of learning through the overarching question: Why is sustainability an important concept for guiding the decisions of individuals and communities?
🗂️ UN Sustainable Development Goal 12: Clean Water and Sanitation
Creating a Podcast Episode
In this collection series, you can guide students through the development of a podcast episode or channel to showcase their learning. Each collection focuses on a particular aspect of podcast development and can be adapted to whatever subject or topic you choose.
🗂️ Identify Topic, Purpose, and Audience
🗂️ Identify Point of View and Perspective
🗂️ Identify Form, Conventions, and Techniques
If you want to provide students with the opportunity to create different forms of media, we also have collection series for zines, blogs, and Instagram accounts too!
Favourite Year-Long Portfolios
Using an ongoing portfolio can be an excellent way to reflect and build on common themes and concepts throughout the year.
Two-Eyed Seeing Portfolio
Etuaptmumk (eh-too-awp-t-mumk) is the Mi’kmaw word for Two-Eyed Seeing brought forward by Mi’kmaw Elder Albert Marshall.
The idea is that each eye represents a unique way to look at, and make sense of, the world around us. Through one eye, we can see through the lens of Indigenous ways of knowing and with the other eye, we can see through the lens (or lenses) of other ways of knowing.
Teachers can use this collection to guide a unit, term, or year of learning and incorporate Indigenous ways of knowing across multiple subject areas. You might have students create a portfolio to gather evidence of their growth and learning using the guiding questions from the collection:
What eye or eyes am I seeing through in this unit/topic?
What other ways of seeing might help me to reinforce what I am learning or help me to understand it in a new way?
How can I use my ways of seeing for the benefit of all?
Try it!
Use and modify Edwin’s collections to help you structure a year of learning around a key question or long-term project. Whether you want to extend a single project, use a collection series or adapt a project to support the creation of a learning portfolio, let Edwin assist you in creating long-term projects for long-term impact!
Explore More
Here are some more of our favourite projects that can be adapted for long-term and cross-curricular learning.