Final projects can help students summarize and review content from the entire semester. Plus, they can create fantastic products with what they've learned!
After months and months of learning, it all comes down to this. The end of the semester project. How can your students encapsulate the most important parts of the semester to demonstrate learning?
At the end of the semester, it’s easy to slip into “review for the test” mode.
Projects let students take what they’ve learned, put it all together and show off a little of their own creativity and personality.
And maybe, just maybe, that project may spark a passion that may stick with them for the rest of their lives.
These projects are, in many ways, summative assessments.
We aren’t checking for fact recall from the latest activity. These cumulative activities pull from lessons learned throughout the whole semester — or year.
Some ideas for making end-of-semester projects as effective as possible:
So, how can we pull a semester’s worth of learning together in one project?
Here are some ideas to use — or to spark your own creative ideas!
Websites are easier to create than ever — and more attractive, too.
Websites are highly organizational tools. They help students pull information together in sub-pages with headings. By organizing information for their readers, they’re also organizing it and making sense of it for themselves.
Resources:
Screencast videos are an alternative to the traditional “talk in front of the class” presentations.
They’re efficient: students can create and view them independently.
They let students avoid the nerves of talking in front of the class and focus on presenting what they know and have learned.
(And if you want to go the “they have to get over their nerves and learn public speaking” route, that may be true, but also consider this. It’s likely NOT in your standards for kids to defeat their fears. And if their fears have an adverse effect on their grade despite being SOLID on their content knowledge, that may not be a fair way to assess.)
Screencast videos can take many forms:
Suggested tool: ScreenPal (Google Chrome) and the Flip screen casting option (web browser)
Resources:
Creating a website can be pretty comprehensive. If you want your students to summarize everything on a single, attractive, multimedia-rich page, then some of these single-page web design tools may be a great option.
You can add text, links, images, videos and more.
Students can create custom images to add to their pages with tools like Google Drawings and Adobe Express.
With many of these tools, they create fancy design features for you with no coding or web design experience necessary.
Suggested tool: Adobe Express or Genially.
Resources:
This plays back to the purpose tip at the top of this article. Can your student use the skills and information they’ve acquired to benefit others? It could be …
Some internet searching — or discussions with students and others — can reveal a cause. A video call with a representative of the cause or organization could shed new light for students and motivate them. You can set this up yourself or use
Empatico.org is a fantastic (and free) platform that gives teachers everything you need to connect your classrooms to another. Empatico automatically finds potential matches for you based on similar interest in activities, classroom schedules, and student ages. See the video below to learn how to get started.
Doing something in service of others can get higher motivation and better results.
Infographics are very brain-friendly. They create a powerful verbal/visual mix that helps encode information in students’ long-term memory.
Plus, they can be fun to create! They can end up being these visually stimulating products of student learning … the kind that students want to share with others!
I love pulling in icons from The Noun Project or Flat Icon to blend with short snippets of text — phrases or single sentences.
Pro tip: To keep students from spending inordinate amounts of time searching for the perfect icon, share a Google Drawings template for them to use where you’ve provided lots of icons. I’ve done this in my “icon boards” templates. Make something of your own — or copy one of mine (links below) and assign it to your students!
As mentioned earlier, end-of-semester final projects won’t include everything students have learned. Infographics force them to summarize, to be succinct, to curate and choose carefully.
Resources:
Podcasts are like on-demand radio shows you can download on your phone and listen to anywhere. The popularity and listenership of podcasts continues to grow. It’s an easy-to-access medium for information. You can consume podcasts while you exercise, garden, drive or commute.
Students can listen to podcasts. But they can also create them.
Many podcasts produce regular episodes on a schedule (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.). However, a special series of podcasts would be a great fit for an end-of-semester final project.
Students can plan the content. Divide it into episodes. Record episodes. Edit them to add sound effects and transition music. And, in some cases, produce the podcasts for the world to listen to.
GZM Media has made turning your students into Podcasters as easy as possible with their podcast about podcast. A How to Show for Students is a fantastic resource for anyone interested in the art of podcasting.
In each episode, lasting just 5-10 minutes, Jess takes us behind the scenes of podcast production. She covers everything from brainstorming ideas to navigating the technicalities of post-production!
Suggested recording tools: Spotify for Podcasters (formerly Anchor), Audio Only mode in Flip
Resources for planning/creating podcasts:
Resources for recording podcasts:
Genius hour — or 20 percent time — encourages students to spend 20 percent of their class time pursuing something they’re passionate about. Educators have given students free rein or asked them to find something within the confines of their content that they’re passionate about.
This is less a project type (what to make) and more a project topic (what to talk about).
Giving students choice within the confines of the class standards can give them some independence and help them see themselves in the content.
Getting started with Genius Hour:
Step 1: Understand the Concept of Genius Hour
Genius Hour is a movement that allows students to explore their own passions and encourages creativity in the classroom. It’s based on the idea that students are given a set amount of time (usually 20% of their class time) to work on projects they are passionate about.
Step 2: Set Clear Rules and Expectations
Projects should have a driving question that guides the research. Students must conduct research to learn more about their topic. The results or product of the project should be shared with others.
Step 3: Brainstorm Project Ideas
Encourage students to choose a topic they are passionate about. Help them formulate open-ended questions that will drive their research.
Step 4: Plan the Research
Assist students in planning how they will gather information. Discuss different research methods and sources they can use.
Resources:
Step 5: Execute the Project
Provide time and resources for students to work on their projects. Monitor progress and offer guidance as needed.
Resources:
Step 6: Share the Results
Have students prepare a presentation or demonstration of what they’ve learned. Create an opportunity for students to share their work with the class or a broader audience.
Step 7: Reflect on the Learning Process
After the presentation, encourage students to reflect on what they learned and how they can apply it in the future. Discuss any new questions that arose during the project that could lead to further exploration.
Additional Resources:
Curation is defined as “the action or process of selecting, organizing, and looking after the items in a collection or exhibition.”
The Internet is ever-growing. Our problem isn’t a lack of information or access. It’s trying to choose carefully from more resources than we could ever consume.
In short: curation is a valuable tool for the future.
Instead of creating, students could curate. They can gather the best resources from the web that represent what they’ve learned.
And after gathering them, they can annotate — write short descriptions of why these are good resources, why they represent what they’ve learned, how what they’ve learned fits. Those annotations help add a layer of critical thinking.
Suggested tool: Wakelet
Resources:
I really believe there is a story in anything. Our brains love stories. It’s how we passed information down through the generations in history.
Instead of relaying lots of facts, how can we put them into a story? Can we frame information through the story of someone who would use them? Can we tell the story of someone who went through what we just studied?
Storytelling techniques are powerful. Consider using vivid language. Pauses. Gestures. Quotes and dialogue.
Ask yourself: How can we use the powerful features of storytelling to make content compelling — or bring out the unique compelling parts of what we’re learning?
Suggested tools: Book Creator or Google Slides/Drawings (see templates below)
Book Creator Resources:
Google Slides Resources:
Explainer videos are all over the Internet and YouTube. We love a good, short, clear explainer video.
Many of them include sketching and simple images.
Many of them aren’t more than a minute or two.
With some of the free explainer video tools out there, students can create short videos that demonstrate what they’ve learned. They can create voice-overs where they explain what’s being displayed on the screen.
If all the important topics are spread over all the students in class, your class can create a great set of explainer videos that every student can use to review at the end of the semester.
Suggested tools: Canva, Adobe Express or WeVideo (You can also use Powtoon or SimpleShow)
Resources:
The Community Service Capstone Project in Applied Digital Skills is a comprehensive program designed to help students plan, organize, and execute a community service project that benefits their school or local community. This project is part of a lesson collection that encourages students to apply their digital skills in a practical, real-world setting.
These 7 lessons help your students plan, organize, and execute a community service project to give back to their school or community. You can do any or all of them depending on the needs of your class.
Each lesson includes tutorial videos for students, an example project, rubric and a lesson plan. These Applied Digital Skills lessons can be assigned directly to Google Classroom.
Sure our students know how to take a quiz but do they know how to make one? Creating good questions and writing those multiple choice answer options is a great way for them to dive into the content and look at it from a new perspective.
Level up! A fun way to get take this further is to take the multiple choice questions from different quizzes and create a class Kahoot, Booket or Quizizz.
Go beyond multiple choice: Have students create short or long answer questions too and a simple rubric to go along with it. What would a 1 point answer look like? What about a 4 point answer? You might be surprised at how good their assessments would be!
Suggested tool: Google Forms, Microsoft Forms and an online quiz tool like Kahoot, Blooket or Quizizz
Resources:
If your students all want to be YouTubers, let them use that to show what they've learned! Unboxing videos are popular on YouTube, and students can use that type of video to show what they know.
Unboxing videos can be a really fun, really effective way for your students to show what they know. Instead of showing off a box full of makeup, students can open a package of items sent by or to a character you've just met, from a time you're learning about, from a location you're studying.
Open the box. Show and describe what's inside. React to the contents. Fill the viewer in on the backstory or history. While creating a video with all of this, the student is constantly asking: How does this show what I've learned?
Suggested tool: Flip
Resources:
While playing games is a popular and enjoyable way to engage with others, designing a game can be a fantastic way to demonstrate understanding. Having your students create their own game using the content you studied is a great end of unit activity.
Students can create a game digitally using one of the game board templates below OR have students use supplies found around the classroom to create a physical game with cardboard, markers, cards, dice, chips etc. The only limit is their imagination!
Suggested tool: Google Slides or PPT, Genially, Paper/Markers/Cardboard/Dice
Resources:
Google's CS first curriculum makes it easy to infuse computer science into any class. Like the Applied Digital Skills curriculum, CS First has everything you need to get started right away with your class. Lessons include tutorial videos for students, example projects, lesson plans and a getting started guide.
In the Interactive Presentation activity students use a presentation they have already created (or make a new one) and make it interactive with Scratch. Students can take any final presentation from any unit and add this option as a way for students to present! Such an easy way to add coding to class.
Suggested tool: Google CS First/Scratch
Resources:
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