The criteria you put in your assessment will guide students toward the content and skills you want them to learn. You might even want to get their input before you finalize the project’s assessment.Be sure that your assessment gives students lots of leeway in how they investigate and share their projects. Every project should turn out differently. As Chris Lehmann says, “If you assign a project and you get back 30 of the exact same thing, that’s not a project, that’s a recipe.”

Below is a checklist to help you refine your question. You might not be able to check off all the items, but the more the merrier! ‼️ The question is appealing to students.🗜 The question is concise. 💦 The question has no easy answer. 😍 The question taps into students’ interests and passions. 💤 The question does not sound like a test question. 💗 The question leads to more questions. 🔀 There is more than one answer to the question. 🔰 The topic is personal or local.🏡 Students can relate to the question in their daily lives.🤔  Students will have choices for end products. 💬 There is an authentic audience for the project.🕵️‍♀️ The question requires serious investigation. ℹ️ Students will learn important skills and content.💥 The project will somehow make a difference in the world.

📐 Solve a Problem: There’s a real-world predicament with multiple solutions.How can we stop phantom traffic jams?How can we beautify the vacant lot across the street for $200?What’s the best way to stop the flu at our school?Design a better lunch menu for our school.Design a safe and sturdy bridge to replace one in our city.🎓 Educational: The purpose of the project is to teach others.How can we teach second graders about helpful insects.Create a campaign to teach senior citizens how to use an iPad.What do the students at our school need to know about being respectful?👍 Convince Others: Students persuade a specified audience to do something or change their opinions.Create a public service announcement (PSA) that persuades teens to drink more water.Drive yourself to define a question and then Prove It to your classmates.Convince grocery shoppers to return their shopping carts.How can we convince our principal that we should have a party in December?🌏 Broad Theme: The project tackles big ideas.What does it mean to read?How does conflict lead to change?How does math influence art?How do writers persuade others?How are good and evil depicted in different cultures?💬 Opinion: Students need to consider all sides of an issue in order to form and justify their opinions.Should pets be allowed to attend class?Why has a woman never been a U.S. president?What makes a good astronaut?🚥 Divergent: Students make predictions about alternative timelines and scenarios.What if Rosa Parks gave up her seat?What if the world ran out of oil tomorrow?How might your city change if the climate became an average of 10°F warmer?What if the USA switched to the metric system?🚀 Scenario-Based: Students take on a fictional role with a mission to accomplish.You’re a NASA engineer, and you are in charge of building a moon base. What are the ten most important things to include and why?Imagine that you are King George. What would you have done differently to keep American part of England?You are the CEO of a company that is designing a new social media app. Present a business plan to your investors that explains how your company will make money.You’ve been hired to revamp your local shopping mall. Come up with a plan to increase business.How would you spend $1,000,000 to help your community?🚧 Scaffolded Around Framing Words: BIE has a tool to help you develop driving questions called a Tubric. It provides possible framing words, actions, audience, and purpose. If you’d rather not take the time to construct a tube, you could use Rhoni McFarlane’s Developing Inquiry Questions chart, Amy Mayer’s Scaffold for Writing a Driving Question, or TeachThought's PBL Cheat Sheet.How can I create a campaign to reduce bullying in my school? (from Rhoni McFarlane)How can we find a solution to reduce the litter in our school permanently? (also from Rhoni McFarlane)How can we as first graders create geocaching sites to promote physical fitness in our neighborhood? (from Washington Discovery Academy)

Driving questions pose simply stated real world dilemmas. They pose predicaments that students find interesting and actually want to answer. The question drives students to discuss, inquire, and investigate the topic. It should push them toward a production or solution. In the process of investigating the question and sharing their answers, students learn important content and skills.  

it’s not surprising that we have a variety of other terms for a question or statement that is the project’s driving force. These terms include essential question, challenge, prime question, WILD HOG question, focus question, and smart question. I’ll stick with driving question, but do know that sometimes the driving question is not interrogative. It might be a statement, but I’ll still refer to is as a question.

Projects begin with a driving question—an open-ended question that sets the stage for the project by creating interest and curiosity.