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The Senior Project at Colonial High School

The Senior Project is in its third year at Colonial High School. Last year, over 500 students participated in senior boards. This year students will again be presenting their Senior Projects to the board in late April or early May. Projects encompassed a wide variety of topics and showcased students' learning.

Purpose

The Senior Project at Colonial High School is an opportunity for students to demonstrate what they know and to showcase their achievement. The project must be successfully completed as a component of English IV, which is a required course for all graduating seniors. This process has been successful in many high schools across the country.

The Senior Project is a fitting conclusion to a student’s education because through this endeavor, one is able to demonstrate accumulated skills in reasoning, research, problem solving, human interaction, organization, and public speaking. This is appropriate as the culmination of one’s K-12 education because these are the very skills and abilities which a young adult will be expected to demonstrate as college students and/or employees.

The Four Phases of the Senior Project

This project involves four phases: a research paper, a product connected to this research, a portfolio, and a presentation.

The first phase, the research paper requires research and documentation on a subject of each student's choice. Generally, this is a subject in which the student is already interested. This research represents a stretch beyond what the student might already know. Many sources are available for student use. Each senior may consult a regular encyclopedia as a starting point for research, but he or she will be expected to move beyond the general information that many encyclopedias provide. At least one of the sources must be an interview. As part of the research, one must obtain a mentor to assist in advising throughout the project. This should be someone who is knowledgeable about the subject (a professional). The format for the paper will follow MLA style as found in many colleges and universities across the country.

The second phase requires the student to apply the information he or she has gained from the research to manufacture a "product." The product may be a performance or an actual physical product. There must be some relationship between the project and the product. Large expenditures of money are not required in order to be successful on the product.

The third phase of the project is the portfolio. Each student must put together a portfolio, which demonstrates the journey throughout the entire research project. This will involve documentation of the various phases of the two steps already described.

The final phase of the project will be the presentation. This will be an eight to ten minute speech given in front of a board of judges. The Senior Project committee will assign each student a date in April/May. The board is comprised of business professionals who will evaluate each student's work.

Each and every student has the opportunity to be successful in a lifelong learning experience. The English IV teacher will work with each student to complete every step of the process and work toward finishing the Senior Project.