Week 11: March 10-14

Well, after this week, you will have accomplished one of the main goals of your graduation project: completing your Oral Presentation. After you have presented, you should be working on your final paper, incorporating comments/suggestions from your panel, and also finishing your web portfolio.

Week 10: March 3-7

Practice, practice, practice makes perfect!

This week, you will be presenting twice to get feedback on your presentations. These practice sessions will be scored using the same rubric that your panelists will have when you present.

Your weekly progress grade for this week will reflect how well your practice sessions go.

A schedule of practice sessions is available here.

Week 9: February 25-29

This week, you should be completing your final presentation. This includes finalizing details of your tangible product and preparing any slideshows, videos, etc. that you will be showing to your panel.

Presentations should provide your panel answers to the following questions:

1. Why did I pick this topic/project? This should give your panel an idea of why you are so passionate about your topic. If you changed topics, or if your idea evolved over time, you may also want to include that information.
2. What did I learn about my topic? This part of the presentation is a demonstration of your knowledge and should indicate that you have gained expertise in your topic. You should include information from your research and notes, your interviews, the key terms that you defined and any other information that can show the depth of your knowledge on the subject area.
3. What did I do with what I learned? Finally, you need to show your panel what you did for your tangible project and be able to explain the connection between your research and this final project. Here is where you should share websites, video, images, brochures, pamphlets, visual aids, and any other evidence that shows what it is that you did over your two trimesters of work.

Your presentation can be organized using your Electronic Portfolio, a PowerPoint slideshow, or in any other format that clearly organizes the information that you are going to share with your panel.

A rubric for the presentations is available on the Dashboard, and a schedule of when you are presenting is available here.

Week 8: February 19-22

Draft 2 of Literature Review due on Friday, February 22!

This week, we will focus on learning about properly using in-text citation for your second drafts. Research should be done, because you will be focusing on preparing for your presentations beginning next week.

Week 7: February 11-14

This week, you should be looking at your papers and making the necessary edits. As I meet with you this week, I will be looking at your papers and your plans, and seeing where you are with your work in preparation for parent conferences.

I will also be schedulinng the dates for your presentations.

Week 6: February 4-February 8

Now that most of your first drafts are done, start looking towards planning your presentations and finishing up your projects.

Presentation week is a little over a month away!

Week 5: January 29-February 1

This week you should be finishing up your first rough draft. You should get 2 edits for this paper before it gets turned in--one by a peer and one by a teacher.

Sources should be cited using parenthetical citation format, and a works cited paper should be attached (at least 5 websites, one book, and one article).

Further instructions are in your folders and on the Dashboard.

Week 4: January 22-25

This week you should be finalizing notes, completing your outlines and beginning to work on your papers.

Thesis statements are important to setting the theme of your project. You have information on thesis statements in your packets, on the Dashboard and you can check out these sites as well:

Creating a Thesis Statement
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/545/01/

Thesis Statements
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/545/01/

Once you have created your thesis statement, please post it as a comment to this blog.

Week 3: January 14-18

This week, you should be focusing on finishing up your background research. Remember that you will need information from the following resources for your paper:

• 5+ websites
• 1+ book
• 1+ article from a magazine or newspaper (online articles are okay)

Information from your interviews, as well as images or other explanatory diagrams or graphics are also useful. Make sure that you are answering your foundation questions fully!

Week 2: Jan. 7-11

This week you will have your first *official* meeting to go over your Individualized Plan. This plan will be the checklist by which you will know that you are getting all of the parts of your graduation project complete. The first major deadline is coming up soon (Feb. 1) for the rough draft of the paper, so you will need to finish up your research as soon as possible so you can begin writing your paper.

Remember, you need the following resources in your paper:

• 5 websites
• 1 article
• 1 book
• an interview

Welcome to the Senior Grad Project! Week 1: 1/2/08-1/4/08

This is going to be a very exciting trimester for you. This week you will be setting up your online record of your grad project (a blog using Blogger.com) and revisiting your action plans. By the end of the week you should know what the major deadlines are that you need to meet to complete all of your project components on time.

Your first task is to set-up your blog (or update from last year) and post about any changes, updates or revisions to your grad project.

By the end of the week you should have posted your updated action plan to your blog.

(See the Dashboard for more information on setting up your blog.)