5th Grade Projects / Impact Projects

Impact Projects

You may have heard your 5th grader talking about a major project that we will be using to cap off our experience at the Center for Inquiry. The teachers have envisioned this as a project that will be rooted in your child's personal interests presently and the future they wish to build as they grow older. As we prepare for this project, we have asked them to consider the ways in which they seek to have an impact on their community, school, family, and self.

Over the past several weeks, your fifth grader has been meeting with their teacher developing potential topics for these projects. Many of these topics are related to a service they find to be of interest like pet abuse or homelessness, but some of these topics are personal interests like plastics, Mexico, or children with special needs. Dr. Whitecotton and I are currently in the process of helping them narrow down their topics.

Once a topic is chosen each fifth grader will develop a Past, Present, and Future component of the project. For each of these three components, students will create a different physical product. Then each student will present their products and process in a Share Fair Symposium, to which we will invite family and community members.

In this blog post, I have listed the Content of each of the components of the project and a short description of the product they will create for that component. I am also adding information about your role as a family member and a timeline for the project.

The project is designed to be completed primarily at school with some home support. Any research will be completed during readers' workshop or explorations. Any written portions will be completed during writers' workshop, and any numerical planning, during math workshop, and so on.

PAST

Content:  There will be a component of demonstrating understanding of the past in that each student identifies one historical change agent figure or event to research and teach about during the writing and presentation of their project. This historical figure or event should relate to their topic of interest somehow and may or may not be someone that we have studied this year in our work as historians.  For example, there is a student who has expressed an interest in origami as a mindfulness practice, for his PAST component, he might research the history of origami and a history of mindfulness practice in the US in the past several years.

Product: For this part of the project, students will create a product to teach others about the historical figure or event, making sure to very clearly state how the historical figure or event relates to your topic of interest, some background about the person's life or how the event came to be, and specifically how this figure or event impacted history.

PRESENT

Content: This component of the project will involve your fifth grader delving deeply into a topic to research a specific organization, process, or aspect of the topic of interest for them. Because many of these interests are related to the surrounding community, the teachers at CFI will be doing our best to connect them with organizations or experts outside of the school in order to understand their topics most fully. For example, there is a student interested in working against euthanizing shelter pets in Columbia. He plans to research shelters in the area to find out their policies and what they are currently doing to make Columbia a No-Kill Shelter city. Students will thoroughly research using print, video, and human resources in order to teach about their topic.

Product: This product will feature the student's research timeline, any interviews, visits, reading, or interacting they've done to better understand their topic. The product will share what interested them about this topic, what they wondered, what they discovered, and what they currently think about the topic.

FUTURE

Content: This is the piece where we really focus in on the impact we want to have on the world. In the Future component, students will take what they've learned from the past, what they are learning about the topic as it stands today, and what they might do to involve themselves in that topic as they move forward. For example, the student doing the project against euthanizing shelter pets might seek to volunteer at a shelter that believes what he believes. To revisit the first example, the student who is interested in origami as a mindfulness practice might create a YouTube channel where he leads his followers through an origami pattern while emphasizing a certain mindfulness trait (breath, attention to senses, emotions, etc.).

Product: This product is simply the documentation of what they actually did to impact the world or a plan for what they seek to do in order to have an impact. For instance, documentation could include photographs or video.

PRESENTATION

The students will present each component of this project together as one Past, Present, and Future whole in May. They will be required to plan out what they will say as Share Fair Symposium attendees visit their projects (similar to an expert projects).

YOUR ROLE AS A FAMILY MEMBER

As the teachers, we realize this project could appear daunting and vague, but we hope to make it a very doable and enriching experience for everyone involved as we move through the next several weeks. Your support could range from being as involved as helping them set up contacts with different organizations to simply providing materials (or asking Dr. Whitecotton or myself for any materials you do not have access to). We ask that you do as much as you can to allow the student to be the one doing the primary work on the project.

You will be hearing from both Dr. Whitecotton and myself periodically over the next several weeks (please see the schedule below). We will be working in class on these as much as possible, but we will need your support and communication on what you are doing at home in order to best use all of our time. She and I plan to send GoogleForms through email for you to complete alongside your child as part of their homework assignment that week. These forms will simply have questions like: What components have you been working on lately at home? What components are you planning to work on soon? What resources might you need? What materials might you need? What are you most concerned about in the project? They are designed to help us best support your child through this journey.

All sections of their projects that are accessible through GoogleDrive should be shared with both the teachers and you all so that we can all provide feedback on their work. Like I mentioned above, there are other CFI teachers who have connections in the community to experts and organizations that relate to our topics. You may also be hearing from them in order to support your child in researching as deeply as possible.

POSSIBLE PRODUCT CHOICES 

(please pick a different one for each component: PAST, PRESENT, or FUTURE)

- PowerPoint/GoogleSlides       - illustrated picture book       - artwork with an explanatory paragraph 
- video                                       - timeline                                - any product approved by a teacher
- essay                                       - Prezi
- brochure                                 - Podcast style audio recording

TIMELINE OF THE PROJECT

March 20 - Sharing Basic Overview of the Project with All Fifth Grade Families

March 27 - Sharing Rubrics for Impact Project with Families

March 30 -  Sharing All Project Topics with All Fifth Grade Families 

**Note: We are sharing all topics with all families because as you read over the topics, we invite you to share any contacts or connections that might be helpful in completing these projects. We will pass those along to the students who need them. **

-Spring Break-

Tuesday, April 10 - First GoogleForm Check In 

Tuesday, April 24 - Second GoogleForm Check In

Tuesday, May 8 - Third Google Form Check In

Thursday, May 24 - All Components Due (including any documents from interviews or other research)

May 25 - Last Fifth Grade Gathering Parents Invited (will share previews for projects)

Wednesday, May 30 - Share Fair Symposium (Family & Community Invited)