Symbolic Me Project - As a beginning of the year project I gave students a “Symbolic Me” collage where students picked animals, climates, songs, famous people and quotes that best represented them as a learner at the beginning of the school year. This project was open-ended with the only parameter being that they had to identify objects and words that represented them as learners. This project gave me insight into how students created products, and I was be able to identify if students just “do” projects without fear or if they hit roadblocks and get stuck because of the open-endedness. I recorded student feedback in my field notes journal, noting how students reacted when encountering a problem that was open-ended as well as how they viewed themselves as learners. This project gave me direction in the way I approached designing lessons.
Critical Friend Work - Using "Jots!"
The CF Wall Was Born!
During a class discussion about the National School Reform Faculty's Critical Friends Feedback Form, I was pleasantly surprised when one student shouted, “Hey, let’s create a CF wall.” I said to him, “Tell me more. Why? What would it be for?” He said, “We can post questions on the wall that we want more feedback from.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “If our question or wonder goes on the wall, a lot of people can give their input and I can get more ideas to help me with my problem.” All the students in the class got super excited about this idea. Another student said, “Let’s use blue post-its for questions and yellow post its for people’s answers to the question.” The CF wall was born. So, it was decided that whenever someone had a dilemma they could post it on the wall and that anyone could go to the board and add their thoughts and comments to the question.
When I showed the 6th grade scholars the CF wall, several students were excited to post their questions. The next day a few 8th graders saw that someone from 6th grade had posted a question, so a couple of 8th graders wrote a response. This interactive CF wall was another tool students could use to get personal feedback from others in a non-threatening way and students created it!
When I showed the 6th grade scholars the CF wall, several students were excited to post their questions. The next day a few 8th graders saw that someone from 6th grade had posted a question, so a couple of 8th graders wrote a response. This interactive CF wall was another tool students could use to get personal feedback from others in a non-threatening way and students created it!
Dialogue Journals - Cross-Age conversations with our Critical Friends
Rights Out Loud Exhibition
The 7th grade students at Phoenix presented their "Rights Out Loud" Spoken Storytelling Projects to the whole school and people in our community. This was a super exciting moment for me and my scholars. Every student learned so much from this project on an academic level as well as an emotional level. They thoroughly enjoyed being able to express their views on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Scholars were given the opportunity to use student voice and choice when creating this product. Some students created song lyrics, composed music scores to go with their lyrics, and created an imovie (basically created their own music video in which they posted to YouTube). Other students created poems and used PowerPoint to show the audience visually their interpretation of human rights while other students created an online poster called Glogster, where students had links to food shelters and the United Nations Website. This project was huge and had a big impact on my students' lives.
Nolan, Cole, and Tanner composed the lyrics, musical score, and created this video to represent their spoken storytelling and beliefs about Human Rights. Click on the video to see and listen to their creation!