Dear 4-Rago Families,
This week your children are officially starting their Passion Projects for school. They will be submitting their proposals to me shortly and are working on creating advanced inquiry questions. This will be their main homework for the remainder of the next 6 weeks as I will give very limited class time to work on this. This is an opportunity for your child to study a topic of his/her choosing in whatever way works for him/her. During this research and discovery students will have to practice everything they have learned in reading, writing, research and technology this year.
Your child will be responsible for maintaining a Passion Project Notebook where they will document literally every step of the process. This is a crucial part of the project because it will let them SHOW WHAT THEY KNOW! Google Slides will be where they record research, ask questions, write reflections and document the process with both writing and photos. Any resources that are used must be recorded in their Google Slides.
So – What do we need from You?
- Your support in helping acquire materials (within reason)
- Your support in the kitchen or museum or bookstore or wherever it is your child may need to do the work.
- Your help in documenting the experience by taking photos of your child along the way and printing them out do that they can put them into Google Slides.
- Your overall support, encouragement and reminders when it comes to working on this EVERYDAY after school.
Each week will have a focus for the project. Here is the basic week by week schedule:
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- The next 2 weeks (1/22-2/2) will be focused on developing their Inquiry Questions and doing research.
- 2/5-2/16:(2 weeks) The DO part of the project. Students may be cooking, making slime with different ingredients, testing out the trajectory of different paper airplanes, interviewing experts or visiting museums. The sky is the limit! For some students this will include more research since visiting Alcatraz and building actual airplanes are not possibilities.
- 2/26-3/9: Developing the final technology presentations. We will be working in the Computer Lab regularly so that Mr. Casal and I can provide feedback and technology support. There is no one way to present the information. Each child will decide how they would like it to be presented.
- 3/12-3/16: Presentations in class (You are more than welcome to join us when your child is presenting). I will develop a schedule soon (If you have a day that works better for you, let me know and I will do my best to schedule all presentations accordingly).
This will be a fun and rigorous project that children become very excited about. I cannot wait to see all of their hard work and hear all of their great ideas! So please join me in embracing the creativity and individualized approach to encouraging students to pursue their own passions!
-Amber