Selecting Useful Topics for Projects

Selecting a viable topic is one key to getting and keeping a long-term project going. Useful topics for projects are often different from topics for thematic units. As a young teacher, I learned to plan my units around abstract themes, such as feelings, friendship, weather, and nutrition. These are worthy subjects, but they will not work as a topic for a project because they are an abstract idea rather than a concrete thing or group of things.

This “concreteness” is necessary because project work is a real, hands-on investigation of real people, places, and/or things in the environment. However, if a teacher works with a curriculum that uses abstract themes, she can usually identify a project topic related to the theme (e.g., nutrition/bread, weather/rain, friendship/mail).

Teacher reports about successfully implemented projects reveal that simple, everyday objects and experiences can support deep project work. Sometimes these topics are initiated by the teacher, but often they arise from a thematic unit or from an unexpected experience (see The Worm Project).

Not all schools or centers can afford multiple field trips, but identifying topics for projects that are in or near the children’s classrooms can eliminate that challenge. Successful projects have included investigations of worms, tools, pizza, gardening, and insects—all topics that children can investigate without leaving their building and grounds.

In addition, a topic that demands a field trip may not be useful to very young children. They cannot hold an experience in memory in the same way as an older child can. Therefore, it is important that projects for very young children revolve around topics that they can revisit multiple times in response to their curiosity. For example, if they are curious about an aspect of a plant in the garden, the teacher can then say, “I don’t know the answer to that question. Let’s go see!”

For more on topic selection including a list of criteria for selecting topics, see:

• The Project Approach for All Learners: A Hands-on Guide for Inclusive Early Childhood Classrooms (Beneke, Ostrosky, & Katz, 2019)
• Project Approach: Phase 1—Choosing a Topic to Investigate
• Project Topics in Neighborhoods Where Safety Is a Major Concern — by Lilian Katz
• Giving a Project a Narrative Title — by Lilian Katz
• Projects That Strengthen Children’s Sense of Their Communities — by Lilian Katz

IEL Resources

• Blog: Math and the Project Approach
• Project Example: The Pizza Project: A Delicious Learning Opportunity
• Project Example: Garden Project Sprouts From Simple Question: “What’s That?”
• Project Example: The Worm Project
• Project Example: Discovering the World of Insects on the Playground