Project Based Learning is a teaching strategy that engages students in content skills through real life questions that are aimed to drive students to explore possible solutions. The question is used as a driving force for all of their learning for that particular unit or question. This gives students concrete and engaging examples of how the content they are learning can relate to real life problems. All of the content is still aligned to grade level standards to insure that students are learning academic content. Project Based Learning can benefit students in a variety of different ways. Projects create a sense of meaning for students. They show students that their learning is all building towards a common and tangible goal. Projects also teach students invaluable cooperation skills. The development of these skills is crucial to support students in college and career readiness. Project Based Learning has been proven to work by increasing student learning and motivation. The projects are exciting and include many different concepts that students may not be familiar with from a traditional classroom setting. This can include but is not limited to creating a model, defending your ideas through discussion, presenting ideas to your community and much more. These methods of showing knowledge are not always incorporated into traditional classrooms, but are an essential aspect of Project Based Learning.

This project outlines the research-based strategies that teachers can implement into their classrooms to create and improve upon teacher-students relationships. The project begins by examining the positive effects of having strong teacher-student relationships. The thesis then moves to discuss the existing literature on specific strategies that teachers can implement into their classrooms. This literature is then categorized into six broad categories that summarizes the specific strategies. This information is compiled and portrayed on a website that is shown in the word document. The website serves as both a tool and a collaborative domain for teachers to learn about strategies they can use to build their relationships with their students, as well as share strategies or documents they use in their classroom to form meaningful relationships.

High school students with high-incidence disabilities and struggling writers face considerable challenges when taking high-stakes writing assessments designed to examine their suitability for entrance to college. I examined the effectiveness of a writing intervention for improving these students’ performance on a popular college entrance exam, the writing assessment for the ACT. Students were taught a planning and composing strategy for successfully taking this test using the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) model. A randomized control trial was conducted where 20 high school students were randomly assigned to a treatment (N = 10) or control (N = 10) condition. Control students received ACT math preparation. SRSD instruction statistically enhanced students’ planning, the quality of their written text (including ideas and analysis, development and support, organization, and language use), the inclusion of argumentative elements in their compositions, and the use of transition words in written text. Limitations of the study, future research, and implications for practice are discussed.