Franklin Capstone Project

The Franklin capstone project is designed to highlight the personal interest areas, skill sets, and knowledge developed throughout a student’s high school years. It encapsulates the integration of acquired knowledge with real-world systems and applications. The emphases are on providing students with the opportunity to complete a project that has relevance to areas that go beyond the traditional curriculum.

Providing students with the opportunity to be active contributors to the learning process, the capstone project puts students at the center rather than their mentor or supervisor. It provides students with a system that promotes critical and creative problem solving, higher-order thinking, and processing, as well as challenging them to make authentic interdisciplinary connections.

The capstone project is completed in a student’s senior year; however, the conceptual knowledge, scaffolding, and skill development begin in their freshman year through our Franklin capstone continuum program. Students participate in workshops that expose them to the research, self-management, critical writing, and presentation skills required for them to prepare and succeed in the project.

Benefits of the Franklin Capstone Project:

  • Engages students in their senior year, providing the sustained academic rigor necessary to ensure ideal preparation for postsecondary success
  • Provides early exposure to the skills and processes needed for success in research-based projects 
  • Encourages students to utilize their previously developed areas of knowledge to produce critically evaluated, logically presented, and innovative projects 
  • Creates opportunity to develop leadership skills, interact with experts in the field, and integrate global perspectives into their areas of focus
  • Provides another experiential opportunity in their preparation for college and career-readiness   

Capstone Timeline:

  • Grade 9: Introduction to capstone skills and portfolio development
  • Grade 10: Building on learned skills and exposure to global mini-capstone projects
  • Grade 11: Scaffolding and rehearsal of capstone research and presentation processes
  • Grade 12: Completion and presentation of final project

Capstone Examples:

  • Product design
  • Internship portfolios
  • Student-driven laboratory experiment
  • System design 
  • Research paper
  • Video production and performance