PCCS Honor's Project

An important part of the 5th grade experience at Prairie Creek Community School is the Honor's Project. As a progressive school, much of the student's studies are emergent, integrated, experiential and student-driven. As a kind of "capstone" project, the children are to select a mentor, choose a topic, research it and present it in 4 different ways: a written paper, an oral presentation, a poster board, and a "doing" component where they engage the other students. As a kind of joke we said that Emma had to "defend her 5th grade thesis." It really is a big deal, and an incredible accomplishment.

Emma chose for her topic "Ancient China" and a friend from our church was her mentor. She chose this topic because she had studied other ancient cultures and now wanted to know more; she was fascinated by pictures she had seen. I realized at the beginning that she was probably "biting off more than she could chew" and would need a lot of involvement from her mentor and from me.


Early on we developed a pattern that worked for us. Seeing the project as a learning experience, we read the books together and talked about what was useful information and notecard worthy. Sometimes I read aloud; sometimes Emma read. She wrote out some of the notecards or dictated to me what she wanted written. After we'd read a few books, we made a mind map of the topics. After we'd read all of the books we made a "road map" for the paper. (For a young mind, the traditional outline with Roman numerals and letters didn't make sense.)


As we began the paper, Emma sorted out her notecards into the various topics. She quickly learned that not all of the information fit nicely into her paper and would need to be omitted. She also found that gaps in information meant more research. As with the notecards, some of the paper was written in Emma's own hand and some was dictated to me. I did very little editing except to occasionally say, "That's a bad sentence. Try it again."

I was very proud of Emma's project. I felt she learned so much not only about ancient China but how to research and compile information. She learned how to plan and pace herself. She learned that she can work longer and harder than she thought she could.