Standout school projects from your youth/student days

[J-rap]

Do you have any that really made a lasting impression on you?

 

I do.  When I was in either 8th or 9th grade (in the 70's), we did a long-term fruit fly experiment.  (I think this was pretty common so I imagine many of you have done it as well.)  I still think about it many times a year!   It was a study of genetics, and we began with just a few fruit flies in our own jar.  Every day we'd use ether to put them to sleep, and then study them under a magnifying glass to determine whether they were male or female and various genetic characteristics, and then charted it all as they multiplied over time.

 

Fascinating experiment!

 

 

[HomeAgain]

In 6th we spent a year learning how to colonize the moon.  We created these massive research papers and projects over the 9 months that explored every detail from arrival to food production to waste management in a low gravity situation.  I looked at the book our class produced by the end and still can't believe we put in all that work.

7th we produced a newspaper.

 

I don't remember much from elementary.  I don't think we did anything outstanding besides a little bit of puppetry and dioramas.  But we did use the marionettes we made in 5th to create a movie.  Which also lent its skills to the live action film we did in 6th where we wrote another script and filmed scenes based on location order and..

 

I had a really good 6th grade teacher! :huh: :laugh: That was the year we also sorted our class into a caste system for a month as we learned about Ancient Rome.  Wore togas and everything.  Well, some of the class did. :laugh: But it was an amazing class now that I look back.  I don't think I see many teachers doing stuff like that.

[Sneezyone]

In 4th/5th grade, I can't remember, we had to figure out how to drop an egg from the second story of our school (hanging out the window) without breaking it. That was so much fun. We did fetal pig, frog and worm dissections too. Kids don't get that much hands on work anymore.

[Xahm]

In eighth grade, our Ga History class became the Ga General Assembly for 40 days. We were randomly assigned a county to represent and put on various committees. We had to write bills, get them through committee, debate, and vote. Then, the governor (our teacher) could sign or veto. Overriding the teacher's veto felt amazing! The year before us, one class impeached the teacher, so that was banned afterwards (though he clearly still admired them for having done it properly).

It was a huge deal and taught us tons. It took me years to figure out why kids from other schools would joke about their state history class being worthless.

[FaithManor]

In 6th, I tested different mouthwashes for their antiseptic qualities by soaking a two inch square of bread in each product, and leaving them inside a dark, humid cabinet in labeled Petri dishes for two weeks. I then compared mold growth rates, compiled the results into graphs as well as text reports, took pictures of the whole experiment, and drew some conclusions. Listerine performed the best by the way. At least back in the 70's. I also sent each company a letter detailing the results and how their product compare to their competitors.

 

I didn't own a microscope so could not compare samples for more than investigation with a magnifying glass, but it was pretty cool for a ten, almost eleven year old.

[Guest]

We did a science experiment as whole class where we had to chart up the rate of popcorn popping, grade 5. Nothing was every brought in or done at home -- that was not in the budget for most families.

 

My sons had much better projects before nclb.  State project in grade 2 was weeks in the making -- charts, graphs, samples of products, presentation in costume.  Science experiment in grade 3 was very involved...full fledged write up,kids were using thermometers and digital cameras were available for photographs.

 

 

Edited October 12, 2017 by Heigh Ho

[JustEm]

For the science fair in 9th grade I made something that would smoke a cigarette and collect the tar that a smoker would inhale per cigarette.

 

In 4th, we had an endangered animals zoo in our classroom. Essentially, we spent a few weeks learning about different endangered animals and what was happening to them. Then at the end each person had to pick an animal for our zoo and write up the info about their animal. I provided most of the stuffed animals for the zoo because I had hundreds of them at home.

 

In 5th, we had to do reports and presentations on an influential person. Most kids picked athletes or singers. I chose Marie Curie. My teacher thought I plagiarized my paper until I did the presentation and could answer other students questions on radioactivity.

[Selkie]

The one that sticks out in my memory is the mock murder trial that we did in 8th grade. I got to be the prosecuting attorney and loved it so much that I thought I wanted to be a lawyer when I grew up - until I found out what being a lawyer was really like, and then I dropped that idea!

[PinkyandtheBrains.]

We did a mock trial in sixth grade I think. We all had pet rocks for another project and my friends rock fell off her desk and smash my rock. So our teacher turned it into a mock murder trial project. 

[SparklyUnicorn]

Nope

 

 

[Jaybee]

In 9th grade, we studied our state's history. We went to court and observed a case for a couple of class periods. Then we did a mock court as well; actually going back to the courthouse and conducting it there. The teacher was a coach, and he wasn't always as interested in teaching/being in class as he should have been. But when he WAS there, he was a great teacher!

[J-rap]

In 6th we spent a year learning how to colonize the moon.  We created these massive research papers and projects over the 9 months that explored every detail from arrival to food production to waste management in a low gravity situation.  I looked at the book our class produced by the end and still can't believe we put in all that work.

7th we produced a newspaper.

 

I don't remember much from elementary.  I don't think we did anything outstanding besides a little bit of puppetry and dioramas.  But we did use the marionettes we made in 5th to create a movie.  Which also lent its skills to the live action film we did in 6th where we wrote another script and filmed scenes based on location order and..

 

I had a really good 6th grade teacher! :huh: :laugh: That was the year we also sorted our class into a caste system for a month as we learned about Ancient Rome.  Wore togas and everything.  Well, some of the class did. :laugh: But it was an amazing class now that I look back.  I don't think I see many teachers doing stuff like that.

 

Wow, that is an incredible project!  My kids would have absolutely loved doing that, and would have learned so much.  (Reminds me of the movie Mars.)  And the caste system project too.  Sounds like a fantastic teacher.

[J-rap]

In 4th/5th grade, I can't remember, we had to figure out how to drop an egg from the second story of our school (hanging out the window) without breaking it. That was so much fun. We did fetal pig, frog and worm dissections too. Kids don't get that much hands on work anymore.

 

Did you ever figure it out??

[Annie G]

40 years ago, when I was in 11th grade, our school gave one of our exceptional teachers a core group of 15 students identified as gifted (I dispute that I am gifted) and let him do whatever he wanted with us. At the time there was a new book called On Death and Dying. We read it, discussed it, and took trips. We went to the morgue at a hospital and saw and held a deceased baby. We visited a funeral home and got a behind the scenes tour and talked to the owner about how he worked hard to help families through their grief. We visited nursing homes and spent times with patients who were living with dementia.  We had doctors and nurses talk to us about how they cope with the stress of treating dying patients. 

 

It really helped me gain compassion and understanding and for lack of a better phrase...helped me to not be 'weirded out' by death and dying.  

 

It really helped me when I was holding my mom's hand as she was removed from life support. It helped when I was caring for my mother in law who suffered with dementia and cancer.  And so many other situations when I was faced with death or helping someone else through it. 

 

I know other people learn this kind of thing perfectly well on their own. But my family has serious communication issues and prior to this class, I lost family members and two friends and I lacked understanding and compassion. I was just...stoic. So I'm glad they tossed me into this program even though it was kind of weird, even for the 70's. 

[OrganicJen]

I loved the cake I baked in grade school as a 3d cell. I used all sorts of candy to represent the cell parts. I also made a 3d scene from Dantes Inferno with clay using cut up dolls stuck into the clay to depict various circles of hell. Those are the 2 projects I remember the most fondly.

[HomeAgain]

Wow, that is an incredible project!  My kids would have absolutely loved doing that, and would have learned so much.  (Reminds me of the movie Mars.)  And the caste system project too.  Sounds like a fantastic teacher.

 

She really was.  And now that I have thought more about it, I think she's the biggest influence on how we approach learning here at home.  So much is immersion and connected and project based.  It's a lot of hands on woven throughout the day and concepts weaving across subject lines.  I have a lot to thank her for.  She was pretty old, though, so I'm not sure the many years in between will help me find her to thank her in person.

[Bluegoat]

I did a couple neat projects.  One I remember was an inventions fair for all the kids in the school boards gifted programs.  We did some work as classes on inventing, what made for a good invention, and so on.  We built them at home.  Then we presented them at a fair like a science-fair, judges came around and you talked about what your project did, how you solved the problem.  

 

The only problem is that the winning project was pretty lame - all kinds of moving parts and such, but all of them totally unnecessary, and it could never have worked.  It was to feed fish when you weren't home - but you had to drop a marble in to start it.  It just looked cool and like a lot of work to get all the parts to work together.  So inefficient.

 

I was so ticked about it winning.  But the idea for the project was pretty fun.

[Stratford]

In the third grade, the entire grade built a dinosaur museum.  We had massive paper mache models of dinosaurs, some were probably 8 or 9 feet tall.  I think there were half a dozen models built, with backdrops painted behind them.  We recorded a tape of dinosaur songs (which I still have), wrote papers/books about dinosaurs, did art project, and at the end of it all ran our "museum" for the school and acted as docents for a couple of days.  We had a parents evening as well, where we gave tours and taught about our dinosaurs.  In total, it took about 3 months to put together.  We had tons of parent volunteers in during that time.  Looking back, it was a tremendous amount of effort!  It sticks in my mind, though, as a really amazing school experience.  

[Selkie]

Wow, these are some amazing projects! It's sad that my kids, who went to public school through 8th, 7th, and 5th grades, never did any projects even remotely like these. They spent a lot of time cutting pictures out of magazines and making posters.  :glare: Makes me wish I would have started homeschooling earlier.

[Elizabeth86]

Looking back we just didn't do tons of projects. One of my favorites was studying local county history in 6th grade. I am not a history fan, but our teacher made it fun and the fact it was so local was awesome. We did a play at a local original historic county courthouse. Loved that teacher, loved that year. We also made models of the solar system and drew on black paper with chalk examples of galaxies like spiral and whatever the other shapes.

[Zinnia]

In the 5th grade, we did reports on different states with a project that sat in the hallway for a week at the end. I had Ohio, and I brought in a jelly roll tray with dirt for my "field." I had planted corn, and it sprouted and started to grow by week end. It was awesome. I still remember random facts about Ohio from that, and the project was a good start for learning to research

 

I also went to a teacher's house to see Haley's Comet in 1984, talking about the next time it would come.

Edited October 12, 2017 by Zinnia

[Sneezyone]

Did you ever figure it out??

 

There were different solutions every year and I can't remember exactly what our group came up with.

[Sneezyone]

Depends on the school. Our local elementary does dissection in third grade and the egg drop challenge in fifth.

 

True. My kid's middle school isn't doing anything remotely like this tho. My elementary school was experimental, with tons of creative teachers and special learning opportunities. 

• We had 'Friday Activities' where we could (with a teacher) do metal working, ceramics, walk to the local community pool (it was a block away), macrame, etc.
• Our PE teacher was famous for giving boys with excess anger a couple sets of boxing gloves and head gear and teaching them to box (move, duck, punch, etc.).
• We did an overnight trip to Northwest Trek where we milked cows, made fresh butter and slept in a barn/hayloft.
• We were required to 'publish' a book every year so we designed the covers, wrote the stories, printed/typed our final drafts, and bound them. On 'Young Author's Night' our parents came to see all the books displayed in the library.
• We had a whole school musical production at least once and usually twice/year. I remember singing Yellow Submarine and It's not Easy Being Green as a solo.
• We had at least one and usually two Odyssey of the Mind teams going at all times. I got to go to the state competition twice and Intl. finals once.

[bensonduck]

In Honors Algebra II, we had to choose between:

 

Building an elliptical pool table that worked so that if you hit the ball through one of the foci, it would go in the hole.

 

Building a grill that was in the shape of a parabola that you could use outside (covered in aluminum foil) so that if you put a marshmallow at the focus, the reflection of the sun from the foil would cook the marshmallow.

 

I fully intend to do these with my kids.

[Cecropia]

Our AP world history teacher gave us free rein in choosing a final project as a major part of our grade. Some students came up with elaborate plays or movies, some did models, some had reports.  There was a wide variety of presentations and they were all so impressive.  My project was "Dishes Through History."  I researched and cooked over a dozen different foods from different civilizations/time periods we had studied, explained a short history of each one, and everyone in the class got to try them.  It took up so much room that I had to reserve the cafeteria.

 

I wish so much that my school district would have participated in annual science or social studies fairs.  I'm sort of living vicariously through my boys when they get involved in one.

[Cecropia]

 

• We were required to 'publish' a book every year so we designed the covers, wrote the stories, printed/typed our final drafts, and bound them. On 'Young Author's Night' our parents came to see all the books displayed in the library.

 

 

We did this too!  We had an annual Young Authors contest that coincided with the "Pizza Hut Book It!"  I LOVED binding the books!  The school got its hands on a bunch of large wallpaper samples for our covers. Every year we'd pick our favorite and the room would fill up with fumes of rubber cement...

[lmrich]

I also did a Young Author thing. I was chosen to read my book at a convention at the state. I met Jean Fritz and attended a lot of cool seminars with real authors. 

 

We made a life-size cow out of chicken wire and then stuffed with tissue paper in second grade. I have NO idea why we did that. 

 

Our school also put on elaborate shows which were a ton of fun. I remember most of the songs. 

[Arcadia]

We had cockcroach dissection in 9th grade biology as the first dissection of the year and cockcroach heads were flying all over the classroom while my classmates were trying to pin the cockcroach down to the board. It was funny but it did made many classmates not proceed to the AP Biology equivalent and change their career choices to eliminate biology as a college subject.

 

I did a demo of fractional distillation to make alcohol in the after school science club during 11th grade. I think I convinced quite a few guys to not drop chemistry. Chemistry class had more girls, Physics class had more guys. The alcohol was strong and all the chemistry teachers for 11th/12th grade came in to the chem lab to watch. I already had a “reputation†in junior college (11th/12th) so even the physics teachers, head of science, and the principal drop by. My principal gave me a generous amount from the school endowment fund for science club projects and science fair projects.

[Wheres Toto]

In 4th/5th grade, I can't remember, we had to figure out how to drop an egg from the second story of our school (hanging out the window) without breaking it. That was so much fun. We did fetal pig, frog and worm dissections too. Kids don't get that much hands on work anymore.

 

The egg drop is still pretty common in schools around here.  Although I wonder if it's starting to die out because of concerns about egg allergies.  I ran into that in my STEM club.

 

We had to make up our own layers of Hell after reading Dante's Inferno.  That was a lot of fun.  I think it was in 7th or 8th grade.   I think this is a project that isn't uncommon even now.