Have you ever gotten stuck just staring at your project your teacher has designed because you don't know what to put? I agree that projects which are assigned over the summer should be designed by students. The two main reasons they should be student designed is because students have more control and also creativity.

Students are less stressed when they have full control over their project. Over the summer when I had a summer project that I had to design; I had less tension knowing that I didn't have to follow a certain guideline for my project. Another time when I had full control over my project was when I was assigned to a science project. The teacher did not specify any guidelines or resources, so this allowed me to research various documents and data using websites and databases. This improved the amount of information that I included in my projects, because researching from various sources helped me include more detailed information.

Students also have more creativity when allowed to design their projects. When teachers allow students to design their projects, this removes the boundary of a students creativity. When I was assigned a reading project that I was allowed to design, I chose to design a video; allowing me to choose how to design it helped me in the long run, because it allowed me to use a format that I knew how to use. Also, when students chose their projects, they want to put their best effort into it. For example, when I designed my career related project, I already knew some information about my career, so I had more time to put in creative details into my project. This made my project look its best

Although teachers may think students may not learn effectively when they design their projects. That is not completely true. Since students are designing the project. They have to research different sources, which will teach them new things along the way. Personally, when teachers designed the project and resources to use I did not learn a lot of information, because there wasn't many resources to use. This limits the amount of information a student knows. Unlike teacher-designed projects, students can learn information that can show up in the future in their curriculum, which would help the student.

I agree that projects which are assigned over the summer should be designed by students. Student-designed projects show much more promise, because of how much more control and creativity a student has designing the project. This enables a student to use many more resources and effort into a project that they have thought of on their own.