At Prairie Creek, personal projects are authentic, real research. We don't set out the topic for the students and tell them what they must find (although it would be infinitely easier to say that everyone had to do a biography and find the birthdate, birth place, and three significant accomplishments of a famous person.) Instead, we work with students to find good topics. Do you know enough to ask good questions? Do you know too much to be curious about a lot of things? The topics in the Herons are very, very diverse: The Great Lakes, Lego, the platypus, football and young people's brains, the kraken, The Simpsons, the black death, the history of candy and more. Finding resources can be a challenge - but that's part of the point. How do you learn about something new? Where do you look? How do you find things? (We have a series of video lessons that can help answers those questions!)
Students ask questions about their topic, pushing for deeper questions that will require synthesis of information. In kindergarten, the scope of their project was finding 3-4 facts. Now the expectations are far greater. Doing a project each year enables children to build sophisticated skills. Students categorize their questions and begin looking for answers. Importantly, they don't stop when they find an answer. They know that, because they will be teaching, they need to know the information that surrounds the answer, too.
We learn how to take notes. It is, for most, the hardest task. Some students write down everything making it very hard to find one's own voice when writing later. Some students don't know what is important enough to write down. Some students write down too little and end up digging back through books finding the piece of information that they think they read. Many students struggle to write down only what they truly understand and can put in their own words. We encourage students to read, close the book, and then write down what they think they might want to teach to others (perhaps peeking to get a spelling or a date right.)
As our pile of note cards grows, we take occasional stock of what we have and what we might still need. Almost every child asks, "Do I have enough notecards?" "That depends..." I always answer. In a recent mini-lesson, I developed the metaphor of a tree with the students. Each of their categories was a main branch and the questions, perhaps, smaller branches from each category. The notecards were leaves. Which branch had many leaves? Which branch had only a few? If the branches were uneven, it was time to look for a resource or a part of a resource that could help you fill out the leaves of that branch. Sometimes, we think a branch might be a good idea but then we can't find any information or another branch gets a lot stronger. We can lop off a branch and split another into two different main branches if we need to. It's important to give children permission to allow the focus of their research to evolve. It's also important for them to know that there is no one "magic number" for notecards. Typically a paragraph takes 4-5 pieces of information so you can extrapolate how many facts you need - but some notecards might have three facts. Others just one (or half of one!)
And this is one of the reasons I love project time. As students realize that they are empowered to make the decisions, they begin to take their work very seriously. This is real. They will be the expert. They will be teaching us.
The 4th grade project exactly mirrors the honors project except that it is "mini". Instead of an article with 5-10 pages, students write an article with 5-10 paragraphs. Instead of speaking for twenty minutes, fourth graders speak for five. The 5th graders serve as mentors for the 4th graders, teaching the skills that they themselves are using. Teaching is a great way for students to solidify their understanding of what they are supposed to be doing.
In April, it all comes together - the article, the visuals, the oral presentation. But right now, it's one step at a time - and I'm so glad that every journey is different.