I don't believe that we should have a project over the summer, because that is the time of our break. But the question is should the projects be teacher-designed or student-designed. I believe that if a teacher assigns a summer project it should be teacher-designed. The teacher is the one who knows what they want on the project and knows all of the checkpoints they want the students to mark during the project. The student may also not know exactly how to do the project and if they have a template for them from the teacher it would be easier for them to answer the questions.

When a teacher assigns a project to any class they know what they want the project to be and how they want it done. It would not be fair to the students if the project was student-designed and the project isn't what the teacher is looking for. The student could end up getting a bad grade on the project and it could disrupt their GPA for the rest of the school year since projects are usually a big percentage of your grade. There was this one teacher I had back in sixth grade who went into great detail about every project he gave us. All of the things he did were teacher-designed because he knew exactly what he wanted us to do for every project. We had a template of what we we're suppose to do and every time all of the class did good on our projects because we knew what he wanted from us.

Another reason that projects should be teacher-designed is because the student may not know exactly what the teacher wants them to do on the project. Back in third grade my teacher gave us a project on the different types of clouds. She never went any further with her explanation, she just ended it there so the class and I assumed that we knew what she meant when she said it. She told us we could do it however we wanted to. I went to the store and found some cartoon pictures of clouds that I could staple to the poster boards and put big letters over the various clouds. A few of the other kids had the same idea as me. When we presented our projects our teachers said that we had to actually make the clouds ourselves and not just buy some drawings that someone else made because it was plagiarism even though the watermarks of the person who made it was still on it. Most of us ended up getting an F on the project until we did the entire thing over again. This is why we need teacher-designed projects because we need to know exactly what they want us to do for the project.

These are the reasons why I think that projects over the summer or otherwise should be teacher-designed. The teacher knows what they want from the project and if they know what they want they should tell us. The student is the one who doesn't know what the teacher wants from their project and the student may not understand what the teacher is asking of them and may need a template for the project. Some may disagree and say that a student-designed project is better especially over the summer because they may not be able to get into contact with the teacher if they have a question so the teacher should let them reign free to do what they want on the project. I think that if the teacher gives out a clear template of what they want from the project then the student should be able to follow the template and complete the project successfully.