Projects to foster globally-minded academic skills
The key to acquiring and using thinking and expressive skills is to learn and gain experience from the real world. At Yamanashi Gakuin Junior High School, students actively engage in independent learning efforts called “projects”, which play a vital role in their learning alongside their academic studies. In “team projects”, students work in vertical teams, which teaches them the importance of teamwork and knowing what each member’s role in the team is in the learning process. “Personal projects”, which are centered on research done individually, are the culmination of students’ independent study throughout junior high school.
Students decide the theme of their research themselves. This is where the buds of curiosity that have grown from wanting to know more about things that they have enjoyed since childhood, things they have learned about in class, or other things they are interested in can grow and bear fruit. In that process, tips for how to learn in the future can be found.
Major Project Activities
Team Projects
The “Autumn Project” is a school-wide event. Students form groups ranging in size from a few members to more than a dozen, delve into their issues, and present the results of their efforts. Through the division of roles and collaborative work in teams, students learn by experiencing the joy of conducting research with their peers, as well as what is expected of them and what they must do in a teamwork setting.
Personal Projects
Personal projects involve selecting a theme based on one’s interests, gathering information and conducting research on it, and then summarizing the results in a thesis. Each year, students spend the whole school year searching for literature, conducting experiments and observations, and summarizing the results to create a thesis as the culmination of their efforts. Students then condense that into a presentation, which is given for their class and then the whole grade. Lastly, presentations by representative students are given for the entire school.