This is given only to Grades 4-12. Each core or major subject has one main requirement per semester. This must be explained and announced by the teacher within the first week of each new semester. After evaluating and grading this major project or requirement, the teacher submits it to the school director. It is the office of the school director that returns it to the student.  

Meaningful, rigorous projects provide students with opportunities to master 21st century content and process learning outcomes using a powerful instructional approach.  This project/requirement is done individually, not by a group. 

Below are project examples that allow for varying degrees of understanding and powerful skill development, and should be used more frequently throughout the K-12 curriculum: (Taken from the blog: 7 Types of Projects that Foster Powerful Learning) 

1. Reading/Writing Projects 

Students read, comprehend and interpret specific books, novels, plays, poems, etc., often around themes. Sometimes books are assigned, while at other times students select their own books.  

Through reading/writing projects, students demonstrate comprehension, understanding, and ability to interpret the text. Reading/writing projects often include class discussions around dilemmas inherent in the reading and/or writing general reactions, interpretive essays, poems, stories, and plays based on the material read.  

2. Information-Data Organizing Projects 

The goal of information-data organizing projects is for teachers to have students collect, sort, and summarize information and data around a topic, question, theme, or unit from multiple sources, such as textbooks, fiction, and non-fiction texts. Students might synthesize articles and other readings around a topic of interest, analyze surveys and interviews designed to explore key questions or find ways to put information into a variety of formats, including graphs and charts. Sometimes information is represented in other formats, such as through artwork, crafts, and music. Information-data-organizing project approaches are useful when students are studying a particular topic or question since this type of project helps students learn how to use multiple resources instead of solely using a textbook. 

3. Major Investigation Projects 

Major investigation projects enable students to create their own questions around a topic, collect, organize, and evaluate information, draw conclusions, and share results through presentations and explanations. Students may demonstrate the results of their investigations through several types of products and experiences, including the writing of a paper, the development of artwork, oral presentations, audio and videotape productions, photographic essays, simulations, or plays. 

Sometimes students select their own topics for research projects based on their interests, while at other times research projects are focused on specific academic topics being studied in class. In some senior project formats, students are free to select any topic of interest for an investigation project. 

Scientific experiments are a sub-category of investigative research projects, in which students create questions around a scientific concern or issue, develop hypotheses, conduct design experiments, test a hypothesis, and formulate results. 

While major investigation projects are often considered long-term activities, some investigation projects can be conducted over relatively short periods of time when adequate amounts of time are devoted to them each day. 

4. Design Projects 

Students invent products and objects, design technology, or design artwork or models, for example, students might be asked to use scientific principles to design an object that will descend from a specific height at the slowest speed, to design artwork using artistic principles, or to design a house using the latest technological software.  

5. Problem Solving/Decision Making Projects 

Students solve problems and make decisions by being given or creating specific situations and complex problems. Problem situations around topics such as pollution, world events, health care, poverty, and economic issues are interesting and exciting areas of study and provide students with opportunities to learn about current and future complex issues and problems and to use creative problem-solving processes. Complex mathematical problems are another source of problem-solving projects.  

Decision- making projects through simulations of both historical and present-day decisions are worthwhile projects. 

6. “Argumentation” Projects 

After considerable research and discussion about an issue or dilemma, students draft a persuasive essay or position paper giving their point of view, reasons, and evidence to support this point of view. Some argumentation projects are built around debates or simulations. 

7. Real World, Authentic Projects 

These give students the opportunity to conduct projects with direct links and potential payoffs to themselves or the outside world. Projects which lead to personal improvement, community involvement, and service, multicultural explorations in real-world settings, an understanding of careers and career options, cooperative work experience, internships, and a focus on health issues produce direct payoffs for students in a changing world.