Hi There! Thank you very much to the inspiration of @cluzniak and https://clopendebate.wordpress.com/ for this College Readiness Project. The class is Pre-Calc for the Liberal Arts--those not going into stem fields (they don't think), don't want to take AP Stats, and aren't strong enough for a STEM Pre-Calc class, but they do want to keep their math chops up after Algebra 2 and want to A) do well on their ACT and SAT's and B) place directly into a college level class.

The students had serious Senioritis. As bad as I remember it. I was getting 25% homework in. (In class they were fine, the students just didn't produce outside of class--Senior Project presentations feels like their capstone, and those were delivered April 24. For their final weeks I wanted them to be engaged in the math we had studied. I saw Chris' idea of using Margaret Wise Brown's, The Important Book for a project in his Pre-calculus and Calculus classes. "The important thing about a spoon is that you eat with it." I played some of it being read for the students on Youtube (Chris was much smarter and had each student read a section aloud). I then explained to the students we had a three part final:

Part 1: Each pair of students received a manila folder. The cover needed the topic, and three facts or properties about the topic. The inside cover was a continuation of the properties and rules of the topic, or examples and non-examples. The back inside were two worked problems for the topic. I encouraged students to find an SAT or ACT question as one of them. And the back cover was a Stand and Talk (see https://www.saravanderwerf.com/stand-talks-the-best-thing-i-ever-did-to-get-students-talking-to-one-another/) with one blank copy and one annotated copy.

This worked fabulously. I gave the students 3 full classes to pick topics (each student pair got a number, then I random generated numbers for the pair to choose in the order their number came up) including choosing their topic, researching it, and having me print anything they needed.

Part 2: On the due date, the students made flip books with all the topics. They could use each other's "Important Books." They needed a minimum of five topics from the eleven, but they could have all eleven, because they got to use the information to answer Part 3 that was given on the day of the final.

Part 3: One non-cheatable non-replicable  question based on the role of a twelve-sided die and the number assigned to the ELEVEN topics. That is right, ELEVEN. So if you rolled a 12, you automatically got the 10 points. It was soooooo fun and the students really committed to the process. Some felt over confident given their flipbooks, but in general there was cheering, "Yes I got Lines," and total groans, "I got Logs, NO!"
I was really proud of the questions. Here is a sample:

Given a system of the equations of two parabolas, how do you know they will intersect and how many times. Be thorough in your investigation.

Given system of two linear equations, how do you know if they are parallel, perpendicular or neither. Be thorough in your investigation.

Can two matrices that can be multiplied, be added? Be thorough in your investigation.

Lines Cover

Logs for Finance Inside

Probability Stand and Talk

Logs Stand and Talk

Parent Functions Cover