Capstone is the infamous year-long research project of English IV. The purpose of Capstone is to help students improve their public speaking, group dynamics, and long-term project planning skills.
Capstone is divided into four quarters with one activity per quarter.
The first quarter activity is focused on creating a PowerPoint presentation including an overarching research question and 5 essential questions.
The second quarter activity involves making another presentation that includes experts’ input. Students are given full freedom on how they format this presentation, as long as it is not a slideshow or PowerPoint presentation.
The third quarter activity is when students break off from their groups. Choose a topic under their original broad topic and work on making an annotated bibliography, creating research notecards/outlines, and writing their paper.
The final activity is where the students actually present their paper/topic as a speech.
All these activities are focused on a single abstract noun that all the English IV teachers come up with over the course of the summer.
Lauren Peterson, an English IV teacher, explained the process of choosing an abstract noun.
“Each summer, the English IV teachers sit down and think about all of the events and “things” that have happened in the last year, topics and subjects that students are interested in, and we brainstorm a bunch of different abstract nouns. Then, we web and map it out to make sure there are tons and tons of subtopics that can work with that single word so students have flexibility and choice.”
Although Capstone follows an outline, students have many choices and decisions to make regarding their projects. Peterson explained the freedoms students are allowed during Capstone.
“Students get to choose their topic from a generated list first, then they get to narrow that with their group; they decide the entire direction of their research by creating a research question and subsequent essential questions. Then, after the second quarter/the second part, they are able to focus on one individual topic related to their group’s general topic. They also have freedom as to how they present their information during the second part of Capstone after they speak with experts.”
Seniors Sydney Bowling and Raegan Zieglar commented on how they viewed their Capstone presentations. Senior Sydney Bowling did her group’s presentation on fear, religion, and spirituality. Her group chose this topic as they found it really intriguing how people have a true fearful intention connected with religion.
Bowling talked about what she was most excited and most nervous about during the process: “I was most excited about working in a group, but I was so nervous to present.”
Ziegler did her group’s presentation about fear, literature, and art. Her group decided on this topic because they were all familiar with literature and media.
Ziegler explained what she was most excited and most nervous about during the process: “I’m most excited to get into the real world examples, but I’m nervous about it all coming together at the same time, as we all research different things and they don’t always go together as we want them to.”