SOAR

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SOAR (Student Opportunity for Advanced Research)

If a 7^th or 8^th grade student is ready to push beyond the regular curriculum expectations, we have a place for that!  SOAR is designed for students who can take on the challenge of a research project as a way to develop their research, writing, and presentation skills---skills that are great preparation for high school as well as careers, ministry, and other venues.

SOAR meets two days a week during 2^nd and 3^rd quarters as an exploratory class.  Because SOAR is designed to challenge and requires work in addition to the regular class load, an application process is used to determine if a student is well-suited for the class.  Students need to have some ability to work independently and incorporate higher level thinking skills to succeed.  Admission to the program is based on application, parent evaluation, and teacher evaluations.

Students will practice a variety of research methods and documentation and become familiar with MLA format for presenting research information.  Based on this research, each student will express the research information in written format that includes his personal analysis and evaluation of what he has learned.  As a final project, the student will synthesize his work into a final presentation including a variety of creative and informative skills.  All of this is done under the direction of the instructor whose goal is to provide interesting lessons, individualized feedback, and lots of guidance.

The program rotates through a two year cycle so that students who participate in both 7^th and 8^th grades can experience two different projects.  One is not a prerequisite to the other.

PROJECT A – A Glance at the Past:  Students will research a significant historical person, write three papers, evaluate and analyze the contributions of that person, and prepare a 10 minute multi-media presentation before an audience and a panel of judges who will score them.

PROJECT B - The Power of Persuasion:  Students will research a current issue which is debatable and take a position on the issue.  In addition to a traditional persuasive research paper, students will also explore the issue in a variety of other persuasive techniques; they will use research methods to find samples in the media and evaluate them for their persuasive skill as well as create samples of their own.  These samples and analyses will be compiled into a portfolio to be presented to an audience.

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