On Tuesday, Dec. 2, York’s Research in Social Science Honors first semester class held their final Capstone project. This project displayed the student’s hard work and their learning from the entire semester.  All of this hard work ultimately led students to Tuesday night, where they showed all of their hard work to family, teachers, and friends.

The class Research in Social Science Honors is a social studies elective that focuses majorly in researching in writing in the social sciences.

This class is open to sophomores, juniors, and seniors. The wide variety of grade levels help to create different perspectives of students in different grade levels.

Students enrolled in this class learn the basics of properly researching information, writing research papers, and performing behavioral science experiments.

For the final project, students had the option to either conduct a behavioral science experiment or to write a historical research paper.

The behavioral science project required students to pick a social phenomenon they were interested in and then carry out an experiment testing their hypothesis.

The historical research paper required students to pick any topic that they were interested in, research it, and construct a thorough research paper on their subject.

After weeks of preparing, the research class took over the Learning Commons on a Tuesday night and scattered their final presentations all over for their guests to walk around and observe the students present their hard work.

Students were thrilled with how the night turned out.

“I thought the Capstone Project was fun because I enjoyed seeing others projects and showing our friends and families how hard we worked to get where we are,” said sophomore student in the class Nicole Polizzi.

Polizzi was not the only student who thought that the night was a success.

“I enjoyed how invested the parents were in trying to understand our projects,” said sophomore student Katie Wegmann. “I also loved how they continued to ask us how we would improve [our projects for] the next time.”

Teachers who attended the event were  just as excited about the event as the students were.

“I was thoroughly impressed with the students’ presentations of their Capstone projects. It is powerful to see the results of students exploring their individual curiosities in an academically rigorous manner. I learned a lot and it’s clear that they did too, said Ms. Drumm, librarian.

Students, parents, and teachers alike were thrilled with the outcome of the night.
The class runs second semester as well, so listen to the announcements near the end of the year so you can hear how you can experience an event that is sure to not disappoint.