Excellence West students began this process by generating a list of 100 things they love. Using that list, students narrowed down their topic. To narrow down our topics we used three questions:

1. What do I care about?

2. What interests me to the point that I lose track of time?

3. What makes me happy?

After students chose a topic, they utilized "Jamboard" to participate in virtual student-to-student collaboration. Students helped each other generate "deep" questions about their topic in addition to brainstorming ideas for including the subject areas of reading, writing, science, social studies, math and technology. Collaboration was an integral part of the planning process as well as the learning process. Lastly, students reflected often on their collaboration skills and progress. It is important to learn from the process as well as the product.

Our students have a developed a wide variety of expertise throughout this process. We are using this platform to demonstrate our learning after three weeks of research and preparation. We look forward to seeing where these projects take them because as we know, the learning process never ends!