Portfolios are projects ILS students complete to showcase their learning. Students in the 7th and 8th grades complete one portfolio project each year. Beginning in the fall and extending through the academic year, students work through a nine-step process to reach their final result. Working individually with a single faculty member, students first must have their proposals approved, then develop a thesis statement and source list. Students spend much of the year in reading, studying, experimenting, and taking robust notes on their given topic. Faculty review and approve initial outlines, then students begin writing the first of three drafts. Their final products are diverse reflections of student personalities, interests, family backgrounds, and aptitudes.
Immanuel's faculty note that not all learning is best represented or imagined via written papers. However, the rigorous and creative process of working on a major project to completion guides students to value excellence and produce their best academic work. This honors the intellect and abilities of the individual student, pushing all to learn and grow, believing all are capable of such in depth work. While no student projects are ever perfect in the end, we celebrate each student's sense of wonder and delight, demonstrated through their dedicated efforts throughout the course of the year.
Science Portfolio Project: The Power of Intention through Words on Plant Growth (Gabriel, 7th Grade)
Introduction
The power of the tongue is a serious thing (Delphine Stewart, 2019 ). God tells us in Proverbs 18:21 that death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits. ESV (Crossway, 2001) It is unusual to test God’s word with a science experiment, but God made science too. I wanted to test if I could influence life with my words, so I chose to use plants (Vanderlinden, 2019). The idea that I could make a plant stop growing or grow bigger than normal based on the intention of my words would prove that there is power in words (Life, n.d.).
There are four stages in the life of a bean plant. The seed is the shell in which the new plant lives. Germination is the process in which the baby plant or seedling comes out from the seed. Leaf growth begins when the seedling grows adult leaves. The following figure shows the life cycles of a bean plant (Martin, 2020). The normal lifecycle of a bean plant does not include encouragement or chastisement from the gardener. However, many biologists are studying how plants respond to sound waves. The evidence from these experiments indicate that plants are highly sensitive organisms that generate and react to the sound in their environment. (Jihye Jung, Kim, Kim, Jeong, & Ryu, 2018). Many experiments have been carried out to show how sound and words affect plant growth.
Hypothesis
My hypothesis for this experiment is that the plants that spoken to in an encouraging manner with kindness will grow and flourish better than the plants that are spoken to negatively in a harsh manner to include the control plants.