Have you ever received the most boring Summer assignment from a teacher and waited till the last week to do it? Many would answer yes. Summer projects are designed to allow for a child to continue to grow cognitively, while away from a continuous study at school. However, many fail to consider that kids are still on Summer break, resulting in fun activities rather than working on a project due 3 months away. In order for Summer projects to succeed, they should be student-designed to ensure engagement within the project, allow them to grow in a field of interest, and give the students an opportunity to express themselves.

Keeping students engaged in a Summer project is critical to the success of the assignments. A student is more likely to spend more time on a project that they are interest in, rather than completing required tasks that they don't want to do. Enacting student-designed projects allows for them to voice what they are likely to do that will keep them engaged in a learning activity. This allows the students to feel control over their Summer, and how they may want to incorporate learning into a fun growing experience. While they may voice their thoughts, they will also have a better understanding on what exactly to do for their project ahead of time keeping them engaged in whatever they need to accomplish. Providing a platform for students to express their ideas, leads to engagement and a product that succeeds the purpose.

For many students, their engagement in an activity comes from the topic, allowing them to have freedom as to what they create, helps them further their mind. This also allows for fun because they are more engaged based on their topic choice. Many people say that they are prone to doing better on an assignment involving a topic of interest because they care more about the product. Student's who care about a topic will give you a product that means something to them, expressing their creativity and effort that they put into an assignment. Lastly, these projects are designed to cognitively grow and maintain a child's mind over break. Learning about themselves is one of the most important ways of doing that; by allowing them to design their own project and have freedom as to what they want to do, you are allowing an opportunity for them to find out what they are interested in and understand more about themselves.

Finally, Summer is defined in a kid's mind to be a time of enjoyment and relaxation after a dwelling school year. With these Summer projects they should be associated with a similar thought. Student's designing their own project will allow for a creative outlook and give them an opportunity to create a better project than a poster board. Creativity proves to be effective in allowing for more growth than ever about how you may want to present what you learned over a break. Also when allowing a student to express creativity you are creating opportunity for them to incorporate something unique into their assignment which will further their engagement and growth.

In all, Summer projects would be more effective and beneficial to student's if they were designed by student's themselves based on an increase of interest, opportunity to grow in a field of interest, and ability to incorporate a personable and creative outlook. Student's will feel empowered and confident in their assignment by self-designing an opportunity to grow themselves. Overall the result and product will be more detailed and purposeful when engaging a student in something they enjoy while allowing growth in their self as well as their minds.