Grade 10s Showcase Personal Projects

March 5, 2021

Academics

GNS

After months of hard work, the Grade 10s have wrapped up their IB Middle Years Programme Personal Projects. The Personal Project is an independent research project that all students at International Baccalaureate schools undertake. It is designed to demonstrate a student’s ability to organize, create, and complete a significant body of work.

Students got creative, which led to a variety of different projects that were displayed in the Guidewill Gym, Learning Commons and Dining Hall as faculty, staff and small groups of other students came by to learn more about the projects.

We caught up with some of the Grade 10s to learn about their projects. Cole Marriette chose to construct a small, functioning trebuchet.

“I chose this project because it combined two of aspects that I enjoyed while being highly challenging,” he explained. “I really enjoy engineering and history, so to combine the two I wanted to create an invention from history, but I wanted to make sure it was challenging so I set the invention–a medieval trebuchet– far behind my normal lens of history.”

Cole said his project turned out how he expected it to, and while there were some worries throughout the process, the construction was smooth and he made adjustments as he went.

“What I liked the most about the process was the freedom. Usually with a project it’s very scheduled…for the Personal Project it was more fluid and you were able to choose what you wanted to do, the global context you wanted and it was good life experience because it allowed me to take away lessons of time management, keeping myself motivated that I think will be very useful.”

Louisa Eder’s project was to build a bike-powered cell phone charger, with the global context of scientific and technological innovation. She focused on the environmental impacts of her design and the effects on developing communities.

“Because I take energy from a bike, I’m not using any fossil fuels so it’s more environmentally friendly than typical methods of charging your phone, and small environmental initiatives like this can be beneficial to helping communities who don’t have access to electricity,” she said.

While tackling her project, Louisa said there were times when she wasn’t sure it was going to work and had some bumps along the way.

“In the end it did work, and it charges about one per cent every two minutes,” she said. “I liked learning about all the new tools and techniques like soldering, crimping wires and such. Since I didn’t know much about this project going in or how to use these tools it was difficult to get new knowledge.”

Faye Dryden’s Personal Project was to create all-natural shampoos. The goal of her project was to research ingredients and information, then create four all-natural shampoos for oily hair, while keeping it healthy and sustainable for the environment. The global context she looked at was globalization and sustainability, and she connected her goal by looking into how small changes in one’s lifestyles can have an impact on the environment.

“I choose to do this project because I’m interested in how the little changes can make a big difference in our environment, and how we can reduce our footprint,” she said. “I also really enjoy experimenting with different things and creating my projects. I think it was pretty successful, I was able to make all four of my shampoos and conclude which shampoo worked best out of the four.”

Faye made a green clay shampoo, seaweed shampoo, aloe-vera shampoo, and an apple cider vinegar shampoo.

“I enjoyed making the shampoos and combining the ingredients, researching what ingredients would work best and how oils in the hair are produced. Also, the adjustment times between switching from regular shampoo to an all-natural shampoo,” she said.

There were so many great projects by the Grade 10s, congratulations to everyone!