1. The personal project is a sustained, self-directed project where students will:

   • Explore an interest that is personally meaningful.

   • Take ownership of their own learning.

   • Transfer and apply skills in pursuit of a learning goal and the creation of a product.

   • Recognize and provide evidence of personal growth and development.

2. The project is intended to be more about the process than doing something grand. As such, it is very difficult to wait until the last minute to do the project. Sometimes projects don’t go the way they are first envisioned and that is okay.  

3. The project also requires students to keep track of evidence of their growth throughout the project. A journal can be helpful for writing notes as can pictures and videos at various steps in the process. The evidence helps students to write the final paper, create the final presentation, and reflect on their growth throughout the project.

4. To begin, students need to first decide on what interests them. From there, students will develop two goals to achieve. First is a learning goal where students state what they hope to learn through their project. Second is a product goal. Students will create something related to their learning goal. Depending on their interest, products could include videos, pictures, posters, physical objects, audio recordings, slideshow, etc.
   Students MUST create and provide evidence of their product with their report.

5. The goals should be realistic. When creating the goal, begin with the end in mind; what do you want to accomplish and how will you show it? Think of something that you have always wanted to do but didn’t have the motivation to get going or something that you are really passionate about and are ready to learn about in more depth! The project should be challenging (something that requires new learning and will require some work to achieve). In order to be sustained and meaningful, the student should expect the project to require about 15-20 hours of work outside of school between the end of 9th grade and January of 10th grade.

6. Approaches to Learning (seen below) are important lifelong skills. Students will use and reflect on the approaches to learning they select. Students will also need to provide evidence of the approaches they chose and used in their project. Examples of evidence could include; a series of inquiry questions (research skills), sample recording or transcript of an interview (communication skills), screenshot of daily reminders or alerts to complete personal project tasks (self-management skills), reflection about resolving a conflict (social skills), or a summary of prior learning that is relevant to the project (thinking skills).

   • Communication - exchanging thoughts with others, reading, writing

   • Thinking - generate new ideas, see things from a new perspective, apply, analyze, evaluate idea

   • Social - work effectively with others

   • Self-Management - persevere, self-motivated, use time effectively, use constructive feedback

   • Research - find, interpret, evaluate information

7. Students need to create a clear, detailed plan of the action steps with time frames and what is being done to achieve their goals. Use the headings below to create a chart. It’s okay if the plan changes along the way (in fact, it probably will). But that is part of the process and the student will write about that in their report.

8. Students will create clear, detailed and specific criteria at the beginning of the project that they will then use to self evaluate at the end. In order to do that, the student will need to have an idea of what a successful project will be like and what it won’t. Emphasis for the project is on the process. Therefore, students shouldn’t feel pressure to assess themselves highly if they didn’t achieve their goals. Obviously, we want students to achieve success, but projects often go awry or in different directions and that is okay. A sample chart is below. Modify as necessary.

9. Final reports will be due in the spring of the student's sophomore year. The reports will be assessed using a rubric students are given. The score for their report will be posted on the Quarter 3 report card. This score only reflects the indicators in the rubric that the student addressed in the report. It does not count toward the student GPA nor does it reflect the time or effort the student put into the project. Completion of the project, report and final share out will result in students receiving 0.5 credit on their transcript and a note stating that they completed the project.

The report will consist of three parts:

Part A - Planning
Students will need to:

• State a learning goal for the project and explain how a personal interest led to that goal

• State an intended product and develop appropriate success criteria for the product to self assess at the end of the project

• Present a clear, detailed plan for achieving the product and for achieving its associated success criteria.

Part B - Applying Skills
Students will need to:

• Explain how the Approaches to Learning skill(s) were applied to help achieve the learning goal

• Explain how the Approaches to Learning skill(s) were applied to help achieve the product goal

• Support the explanations with detailed examples or evidence

Part C - Reflecting
Students will need to:

• Explain the impact of the project on your own learning

• Provide evidence and examples of the impact on your learning

• Evaluate your product based on the criteria you developed at the beginning of the project.

Everything Else

After Part C, students will include their bibliography (if they had one), journals and notes about their process and evidence of their product. This is most often a series of pictures which serve as evidence that the student did what they said they did.

Home

Approaches to Learning

Learner Profile

List of Personal Project Ideas

MYP Policies

Personal Project

What can my student do now to start the Personal Project?