For years, 5th graders in Scarsdale, NY did a 6 week culminating project at the end of the year. Capstone. They researched an area of interest, developed questions they sought answers to, talked to industry experts, and then they shared their learning. On tri-fold boards. With paragraph summaries of the answers to their questions. Pasted to the board. And a picture or two. Maybe some glitter. But is that really inspired, passionate learning? We didn’t think so. We are now entering year three of CapCon! A Capstone Learning Conference. There are no tri-folds. Instead, students do Ignite talks summarizing the story of their experience. They do TED talks and demonstrate their learning in individual and creative ways. They make movies; live action and stop-motion, to tell their story. This session will dive into rethinking the notion of student driven learning and presenting in modern, engaging ways. How one school flipped the staid tri-fold model and turned it on it’s head. We will outline the year-long process to prepare students to truly culminate their elementary experience is a mic-drop kinda way. Students telling their stories their ways
