How to Set Up a Project-Based Learning Unit Based on Whole Novels

When my high school English students wrapped state testing, I wanted a lively next unit. Two principles came to mind: student choice and great books.

I knew I had to love the books I offered as choices. I selected recent publications, so that students could find the authors online and see them as real people. Ideally, the books would be award-winners (one form of vetting) and similar in length. Finally, to engage students, the books had to comment on pressing social issues.

I selected Biography of X, by Catherine Lacey, in which a widow investigates her late wife in a politically splintered United States, and Chain-Gang All-Stars, by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, which imagines people with long criminal sentences “opting in” to televised gladiator-style death matches. My students—growing up in a world of gamified sports betting, big tech, misinformation, and political division—intuited the importance of these themes.

Choice books already decenter the traditional whole-class novel, so they’re also a great candidate for project-based learning (PBL). Together, PBL and book choice got my students more engaged than either framework alone. Here’s how I combined them in my 10th-grade classroom.

The Process of Student Choice

Before selecting a book, students read reviews, looked at fan art, skimmed the first chapter, and held each novel in their hands. This shifted the dynamic from busywork to bookstore. “I’m going Chain-Gang. You?” one student asked another, who replied, “Nah, I want to know more about this messed-up relationship in B.O.X.”

Students wound up defending the merits of their top choices to each other. Though I ultimately gave everyone their first pick, I could also nudge them. Were they more interested in capitalism, socialism, and fascism? Or in prisons and the sports-entertainment complex? The divergence of subject matter, and the slightly easier-to-read prose in Chain-Gang All-Stars, gave every reader a path forward.

My students chose their book and a theme to research. I provided a menu of options I knew were present in the books, such as borders and the purpose of art. Students tracked their theme’s development in their novels while finding and analyzing an “Article of the Week” relating to their theme. Over time, they deepened their understanding. I also offered students choice in their final writing assignment. They could write a five-to-seven-page researched essay about their theme or a four-to-six-page original short story commenting on that theme.

Ultimately, students chose: 1. which book they read; 2. which theme they researched; and 3. whether they wrote a fiction or nonfiction capstone. As these choices accumulated, students felt ownership over their work. Academic dishonesty was less of an issue, and no two students took the same path.

Students often have trust issues when teachers promise choice, because it’s rarely offered consistently. It’s true that choice creates upfront work for teachers. For this reason, two books felt more manageable than three. I had to make two sets of discussion questions, close readings, pop quizzes, and so on.

But that work paid off because students cared about the unique course of study they’d built, even discussing the novels outside of class. In our end-of-year survey, this was their favorite unit, and choice was their favorite part.

The Work of Project-Based Learning

By teaching with PBL, teachers can reimagine how traditional English assignments might find an authentic audience.

For our launch event, we brought in a guest speaker, Sashi James, a local organizer who supports incarcerated women and girls. James made our books’ questions of justice and politics tangible. After the event, my students read their selected books differently, connecting the characters’ experiences to hers. Though our books weren’t set in Boston, James helped them understand that the books’ social issues were present in our own community.

Because students would write either a final essay or a short story, I dedicated a milestone to each genre. For milestone one, students wrote a bonus chapter, inventing their own character and inserting them into the real world of the book. Thus, everyone developed a character they could use later and explored whether fiction was for them. Milestone two was an annotated bibliography. Each student wrote a thesis—What had they come to believe was the urgent truth about their theme?—and presented an analytical summary of five to seven sources addressing to what extent they might use each source in their final assignment. This was most apt for those writing essays, but it ensured that every student thought critically about their theme.

In milestone three, students wrote their individual stories or essays. I messaged that I expected excellence by reading their early drafts and offering praise, critiques, and group and individualized suggestions. During the writing process, I rearranged our seats: Instead of sitting with their book groups, students now sat with peers who’d chosen the same genre. With this arrangement, I could instruct each half of the class in specific focus skills, like punchy thesis statements or writing dialogue alongside interiority. Chunking this big assignment into smaller deadlines (two weeks to produce an outline, a three-page draft, and a final draft, with daily word counts celebrated) also ensured that every student stayed on track.

With milestone four, students built a website to reach our wider community. I grouped students who had similar themes, and they created Google Sites showcasing their stories and essays. Normally, student writing isn’t read by anyone but the teacher. My students took pride in revising and proofreading because they knew their friends and families would read their work. To gauge readers’ opinions, they also drafted surveys with questions like, “To what extent do you believe political protest is always a right?” My students’ work is compiled on our class website. Though this unit could run without it, the website built valuable digital literacy and 21st-century learning skills.

As a bonus, Catherine Lacey and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah generously met my class on Zoom. As students asked thoughtful questions, drafted their own “author bios,” and sent their websites out, we had come full circle. My students were living authors, too.

My students encountered many firsts in this unit: footnotes, annotated bibliographies, websites, and more. I raised the level of rigor, but in a way that centered relevance and fun, and invited a sense of growth and accomplishment. With PBL and book choice, students bought in because they had a say, and they knew their work would impact a community beyond themselves.