In my first headship I was fortunate to have inherited a school with exceptional capstone experiences, especially in the school's final 3 grade levels. They were above all, distillations of the school's mission which, stripped of the fancy syntax, boiled down to: challenge breeds competence which breeds confidence. It was a school that was comfortable with discomfort, not a school of hard knocks, but one where teachers were expert at setting the bar high and, more importantly, at helping students set the bar high for themselves. Interestingly, it was a PreK - 6 school.
These are the ingredients of excellent capstone experiences.
Antecedent-Rich
They should be the final crescendo of years-long skills and content work, not a rimshot on a unit that just happens to occur at the end of the school year. At their best, earlier grade level ending capstone experiences should have a thematic resemblance.
Stretchy and Multi-Faceted
They should be challenging on multiple fronts--reasoning, expression, executive functioning, physical, social--and include students in goal setting. Capstone experiences should be the most challenging projects the students have encountered that year and complex enough in their make up that all students find challenge in several elements of the work.
Developmentally Attuned
They should leverage the outside edge of the students' developmental moment. A great capstone experience for 6th graders, for example, would be built on their emerging abstract thinking, on the (carefully scaffolded) executive functioning necessary for multi-step, long term projects, on their growing capacity for magnanimity competing with their egocentricity, on their need for physical activity even as their growth spurts make them clumsy.
In my consulting work, when I ask schools about their capstone experiences, too often they respond with a list of class trips, abstract academic rites of passage, and end of year reward activities. The first two experiences may be closely tied to curriculum and/or skills, but they aren't true capstone experiences. The 8th grade trip to Washington, D.C., for instance, is a valuable activity in its capacity to help kids visualize their civic education, but it presents little challenge beyond the social draw of spending a few days away from home with your classmates. Similarly, the 9th grade research paper might test kids' skills in reasoning and expression but misses their primary focus, their social world, where they are testing limits, looking to their friends for cues, trying to find their authentic place. As to the third, trips to theme parks and field days understandably become traditions to which kids look forward, and they play an important role in embracing end of year energy, but it's important not to mistake them for capstone experiences. A true capstone experience should be a confidence flywheel for kids, leaving them authentically emboldened for their next step.
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