THE GRADUATION PROJECT
This must be started by the end of 3rd MP and fully completed by the 4th MP Interim.
A Graduation Project is a formal assignment chosen by a student or small group of students on a topic related to the curriculum and involves out-of-class research and development. The project is primarily a learning activity, not solely an evaluation activity, designed to provide students with an opportunity to make clear that they are ready to graduate, equipped with the essential know-how, self-discipline, and mature attitudes required of adult life and/or the demands of college.
A Graduation Project is designed to challenge students to demonstrate:
1. not merely their knowledge but also their initiative.
2. not merely their problem-solving but also their problem-finding.
3. not merely their capacity for learning on cue, but also their ability to judge and learn how to learn on an open-ended problem, often of their own design.
The Graduation Project experience would typically be focused on the essential skills of "inquiry and expression" a synthesis that requires:
1. questioning
2. problem-finding
3. problem-solving
4. independent research
5. the creation of a product or performance
6. a public demonstration of mastery
A component calling for self-reflection and analysis of what one has undergone and learned may be included.
