I have to be honest. When I got to the end of the day yesterday, I thought to myself, "Crap. What did I do that was new this week??? What am I going to write about in my blog?" All week, my students have just been working on projects, so I didn't actually do much in terms of teaching and trying out new strategies.
My ELD 2 students are writing children's stories (which I mentioned last week), and next Tuesday, we will go visit a friend's 3rd grade class to share those stories. However, even though this is something "new" for me in ELD 2, I actually did this same project - including the part where we go to read to elementary school children - with another class a few years ago. So that doesn't count.
My English 11 students are working on their final projects for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The idea for the project is the same that I used last year, but I tweaked the project a bit for this year... so I guess that counts as "something new" for this week.
We began our unit on Huck Finn by reading "The Lowest Animal" by Mark Twain and discussing the problems that Twain saw in American society. We also talked about satire - how it uses humor in order to bring about some kind of change. This lead to the connection that Twain used his writing in order to raise awareness to the problems he saw and bring about change in American society.
Throughout the unit, I showed the students some videos and we read some articles about different problems in society, such as the female standard of beauty, the inequality of wealth, sexual abuse, suicide, and the way people view mental illness. (Here is a document containing all of the different articles and videos I used.)
Although they didn't know it, all of this was done to prepare students for their final project in which they had to choose a problem and create a solution. (Last year, I just asked students to outline their problem and propose a solution. This year, I raised the stakes by asking them to actually create a solution.) As many educators know, students will do a better job with something if they know that it is going to be presented in some sort of public forum. Often, a class presentation is not enough to really push my students because they are already so comfortable with each other that they don't feel pressured by this. Also, I decided that proposing a solution to their peers wasn't really good enough because it didn't wind up bringing about any real change. Sure, the 36 kids in my classroom were more educated on the topic, but that's not enough if we want to change the world! Therefore, I decided to ask them to create a solution that would be presented in some way that it could potentially reach a much larger audience. I gave them a few ideas - they could create a blog, they could mail a letter to a newspaper, they could make a YouTube video, etc. - but I also told them that they knew a lot more about technology than I do and that they had the freedom to do whatever they wanted to do (aside from making a poster and just presenting it to the class). I told them I wanted them to be as creative as possible, and I showed them the video of The Mimi Foundation's "If Only For A Second" project as well as the commercial for the GoldieBlox toys to help give them some examples of "creative" solutions. I emphasized that I didn't expect them to completely solve a problem in society, because that would be almost impossible; what I wanted was for them to raise awareness about their issue in order to help bring about change.
I started by having them brainstorm at least 4 problems per group, and then they shared out using "Novel Ideas Only" while I recorded their ideas on the board; they came up with ideas ranging from ISIS to cyberbullying, from today's hook-up culture to immigration. Then, they chose the issue they wanted to focus on. Next, they had to decide on the venue they wanted to use to create their solution. I have a group making a blogger, another couple are making blogs through Tumblr, and quite a few groups are creating videos to post to YouTube. I gave them this entire week in class to work (because, as I told them, I really want the projects to be good), and the best part? They all worked on their projects for the entire week! They will present them this week during the first half of their final period, and I am very excited to see what they have to offer. (I will follow up later this week with links to their various blogs and videos.)
-------
Ease of use: The idea for this project took a lot of building with my students. As I mentioned, we read quite a few articles and discussed quite a few problems before I even introduced the project. However, the idea behind the project is that I am having students create some kind of change in the world, and I am giving them free technological range in order to do so. Since kids these days are so creative when it comes to technology, I really didn't have to teach them anything; I just offered some ideas here and there, such as using programs like Screenr or Screencast-O-Matic to help them make their videos.
Would I use this again: Yes. I really like the idea of giving students choice, and they really like being given choice. I may still change this particular project a little bit in the future (because I tend to do that every year), but I will stick with this idea for this project and others.
Downsides: You need to have access to technology if you want to give students time in class to work. You also need to make sure you have some form of accountability in place on a daily basis to keep students on task.
Applications: I think this idea of freedom in presentation could be used for any project that you typically assign as a PowerPoint presentation or poster. Open it up. Let students be creative. Encourage them to step outside their comfort zone of just always making PowerPoints for every project they ever do.
-------
UPDATE: Here are links to some of my students' projects:
http://weareequalsposts.tumblr.com/
http://policeabuse.freeiz.com/
http://helpstop-animalabuse.tumblr.com/
http://lewisfinalperiod1.blogspot.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSwvTXhsmPQ
http://big-brother-etta.tumblr.com/
http://hellosavetheanimals.tumblr.com/
http://obesityislame.tumblr.com/
http://helpstopdomesticviolence.blogspot.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment