Project-Based Learning to Extend the Relationships Initiative
You’ve participated in the Relationships Initiative alongside your students, and you’ve initiated powerful conversations and laid the foundation for a strong relationships-centered school year. What’s next?
Remember that relationship and community building in learning spaces is ongoing. We encourage you to come back to the activities from this collection throughout the year – it can be interesting and exciting to see how educators and our students all change and share differently as people learn, grow, and develop stronger connections with one another. As you revise and discover new activities that work for you and your students, we’d love for you to share them with us!
If you have approached the activities throughout the Relationships Initiative with intention and authenticity, it is likely that your students are invested, interested, and ready to dive deeper into some of the concepts and themes from the activities. The project-based learning opportunities below have been curated to support student-led inquiry and media creation driven by topics related to social-emotional learning, communities, and youth mental health.
Share your Experience
If you’ve used any of the Relationships Initiative curriculum resources, or any of these projects below, please let us know! Together, we can build a statewide gallery that showcases what identity, community, and mental and physical health look like to Michigan students and educators at all grade levels.
Elementary Extension Opportunities
Caring Classroom Community
Explore the Creating a Caring Classroom Community collection on PBS Learning Media to examine identity, relationships, empathy, and self-regulation with young learners.
POP Check Series
These short mindfulness lessons from the Michigan Learning Channel are perfect to help students practice breathing and talking about feelings throughout the year.
Dance to Success Series
Find the Dance your way to SEL series on PBS Learning Media. This collection of Dance to Success’s social-emotional learning (SEL) resources will help elementary school students grow through dance! By following along with movement videos and engaging with provided supplementary activities, students will be able to work on all sorts of SEL skills such as sharing, listening to and accepting others, and expressing and understanding emotions, among others.
Middle Grade Extension Opportunities
The Diatribe's Mental Health & Wellness Collection
Explore the Mental Health and Wellness collection from Kalamazoo based poetry and performing arts collective The Diatribe. This free ten-session course for middle schoolers uses poetry videos, interactive student journals, and unique writing prompts to help young people share their experiences and tell their stories.
Little Actions Series
Explore the Little Actions collection of videos from PBS Well Beings. Engage students in inquiry around what “little actions” they feel make their lives easier, more joyful, or more manageable.
KQED Youth Media Challenges
Check out the KQED National Youth Media Challenges for 2022-23. These standards-aligned projects, for multiple content areas, are ideal for both distance and in-person instruction and come with ready-to-use curricular supports for self-directed learning. Challenges are open to middle and high school students across the U.S.
High School Extension Opportunities
The Diatribe's Our Identities Collection
Explore the Our Identities collection from Kalamazoo based poetry and performing arts collective The Diatribe. Our Identities is a ten session poetry unit for high schoolers that can be taught online and in-person. Designed to give students a safe space to speak about issues that impact their lives, the content is unique and inspiring and features work by Black, Brown, and LGBTQ artists. It is easy to teach and will have your students engaging in important conversations about issues surrounding identity and culture and writing and sharing their own powerful spoken word poems.
On Our Minds Podcast
Explore seasons 1 and 2 of “On Our Minds,” a podcast by and for youth, to hear more perspectives on teen mental health. Use the related mental health project challenge from StoryMaker to research and develop student-led audio projects about mental health in your community. Browse the StoryMaker website for additional projects that may be shorter or more relevant for conversations your students want to have around identity, art, culture, and community health.
KQED Youth Media Challenges
Check out the KQED National Youth Media Challenges for 2022-23. These standards-aligned projects, for multiple content areas, are ideal for both distance and in-person instruction and come with ready-to-use curricular supports for self-directed learning. Challenges are open to middle and high school students across the U.S.
