George Lucas Educational Foundation

Interest-Based Learning

Discover how students can drive their own learning through Genius Hour, 20% Time, personalized PBL, and other passion-based strategies facilitating student voice and choice.

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  • 5 Steps to Keep Engagement High During Project-Based Learning

    Taking students’ interests into account when designing project-based learning helps ensure that they stay engaged throughout the unit.
    Jorge Valenzuela
    689
  • Encouraging Executive Functioning Skill Development in Middle School

    A fun multiweek project can support the development of the crucial skills that drive academic success for middle school students.
    589
  • 3 Ways to Plan for Diverse Learners: What Teachers Do

    Every teacher already has the tools to differentiate in powerful ways for all learners.
    25.6k
  • 7 Ideas From Reggio Emilia That Any Early Childhood Teacher Can Use

    How to adapt principles from the famed approach to foster interest-based learning for the youngest students.
    5.8k
  • Responding to the Needs of Every Young Learner

    With these differentiation strategies, teachers can help ensure that young students are able to build on what they already know.
    782
  • The Reading Wars: Choice vs. Canon

    English teachers are wrestling with how to navigate the increasingly contentious terrain between student choice and assigning the classics.
    8.8k
  • 5 Ways to Build Career Connections in High School

    When teachers build bridges from the classroom to the world of work, it can motivate and inspire their students—and help them imagine their futures.
    163
  • 6 Ways to Get to Know Your Students and Build a Classroom Community

    Teachers can build rapport with students by starting the year with activities that encourage sharing of interests, and by connecting those interests to curriculum.
    1.5k
  • Guiding Students to Sustain Effort in School

    Secondary students can learn to manage assignments and achieve learning goals with teacher support and tools that promote success.
    1.2k
  • Emphasizing the Importance of Play During Distance Learning

    For young children, play is the primary vehicle for learning, and these ideas will help ensure that they continue to have rich play experiences at home.
    4.5k
  • How to Use Play for Learning

    Play-based learning helps engage elementary students in their education and has cognitive, physical, social, and emotional benefits.
    6.4k
  • Students Excel When They Find Purpose—So How Do We Help Them?

    By connecting learning to the real world, students begin to see themselves as a catalyst for change within it.
    3.2k
  • Genius Hour in Elementary School

    A teacher shares what she did and what she learned when she implemented Genius Hour in her fifth-grade class.
    8k
  • Connecting With the Very Young Gifted Child

    Early childhood educators can use differentiation to help young students who may be gifted to thrive academically.
    889
  • Learner Interest Matters: Strategies for Empowering Student Choice

    When students care about an assignment, they're willing to take greater risks and are more likely to excel in their product.
    9.9k

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George Lucas Educational Foundation

Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.
Edutopia® and Lucas Education Research™ are trademarks or registered trademarks of the George Lucas Educational Foundation in the U.S. and other countries.