Summer break for most students is a time when they can relax and enjoy a break from school and socialize with friends and family. While it may be in the students best interest to continue learning during the break while not in school, most times students are very reluctant to do their work if there is no in school motivation. If teachers insist on requiring students to complete a project over summer break they may receive better results if the project is student-designed. Having the students pick a teacher-approved topic that they are curious about would make them more interested in learning about their topic, give more effort to the project, and enjoy learning.

When students are interested in what they are learning about they pay more attention, and that is very important in the learning process. Letting the student decide what they get to research would not only motivate them, but keep them interested. For example, over the years I myself have been assigned homework over summer break, usually reading, and my classmates and I were much more inclined to complete the homework when the teachers let us choose what books we wanted to read, rather than forcing us to read something we didnt want to. This translates to almost any age of student, if they are given choices, they feel less forced to spend their summer break completing a project, and are more likely to complete the project.

As most students know, homework is not enjoyable most of the time and we procrastinate until the last possible minute to get our schoolwork done, and most of the time when we do this the product is sub par. This is not because of the lack of intelligence, it is because of the lack if interest and effort. When students do not care about the work they are creating they will put very little effort into what they are doing. While if it is something that they are passionate about they will put much more time and effort into what they are doing. Say there is a student who loves to learn about plants and animals and how they live and survive, giving them a project on the Civil War would not interest them, and therefore they would produce a project created with little effort, bare minimum. If this same student was allowed to research plants and animals over the summer, their project would most likely be something they are proud of not only because of the effort that was put in, but because they would feel accomplished that they learned something new.

When students enjoy learning it makes them more curious about learning new things. When Students are told what to learn and are kept uninterested, they begin to associate learning with boredom. This can be detrimental for the the growth children, if they no longer want to learn. More times then not, when a student feels defeated, or unintelligent they give up, and that discourages them from learning in the future as well. While it is a teachers job to guide and teach the essential information in the curriculum, it is also their job to foster creativity and instill the love for learning within their students. Teaches giving students freedom of choice would not decrease the teachers authority, it would simply give variety, especially during the summer when students are not particularly wanting to learn. A summer project where the student gets to pick their own topic would be a good opportunity to instill within them that learning can be fun and enjoyable.

A teacher-approved Student-designed project over the summer would be the superior choice over a teacher-designed project. This would not only produce better results but produce better retaining of the information that they learned, to be used in the following school year. Overall giving the students control over what they learn during the summer, would still assure that they are learning over their break while also keeping them interested in learning, allowing them to give more effort to the project, and enjoy learning.