text: Teachers should design summer projects so they can follow their curriculum as close as they want. If the projects were designed by students, they might not cover what the teacher intended to cover. In fifth grade, my teacher told us to do a project on whatever we wanted. The only guideline was that we had to present our findings to the class in some way. The variety of the projects was immense. However, this did not bother my teacher because her goal was to get us used to doing research projects before we went to middle school. While it may have seemed as if we, the students, were designing out own project, we were really doing the teacher designed project of practicing research. Another time, in tenth grade chemistry, our teacher told us for the end of year project to do whatever we wanted. She never specified that it had to relate to chemistry, even though it was implied. So when it came time to present our projects, a group of boys went up to the front of the class and started explaining the rules of spikeball. When asked what spikeball had to do with chemistry they said they did not know the project had to be related to chemistry. Confusion like this is easily caused when the teacher does not design the project and leaves it up to the students. That is why if the teacher wants to stick to their curriculum, they should be in charge of designing summer projects, not students.