Week 14 - We search with research

This week I gave students a break from blogging to focus on research.  I wanted the students to learn more about whatever it is that they are working on.  In my last class of the day, a student asked, "I don't need to do any research for my project."  Questions like this, where students don't really think about what they are asking make a bit upset, especially at the end of the day.

When I found out that she was doing her project on movie reviews,  she totally opened up the gates for a teachable moment.  I suggested that she read professional reviews of movies that she has reviewed.  I suggested she look up how other reviewers leave their stamps on their reviews, be it a thumbs up, stars, rotten tomatoes, etc.  I said, are you including the names of the actors, directors, producers, what movies the actors have been in previously.  She began to see that she needed to do a little digging before moving on with her reviews.

It had never occurred to the student that she could learn from looking at other people's work.  This is precisely why I had students spend today's class period doing that.  Of course I want to keep kids accountable for the time spent in class, so I made a Google Form where they had to reflect on what their goal was and whether or not they accomplished their research goal.

Knowing a few of the projects and how they needed some more information, I also posited that they could search how to take better pictures and videos, find recipes, how to get more traffic on their blogs and websites.  Ultimately, it was open ended and they just needed to research something related to their project that will improve the work they are doing.  Below area couple of students' summary of what they found from the research.

I hope that today was time well spent.  What they did today will hopefully make for good blogging material for the students as well.  I hope that they will periodically do some research on their own and make it a process they internalize so they can apply it to other situations.  I guess that is the whole point of a project like this right?

Week 13 - Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.

I felt a bit like Mercutio when Romeo said, "Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much."  Today I had my students share about their progress so far, about 10 weeks into the project.  I was anticipating that today was going to rough.  Students ill prepared.  Students having done no work.  Students just skating by doing the minimum.  On the most part, I was actually really encouraged by the effort and the types of things my students are doing.

 Each group had to create a Google Presentation to share with the class.  For me the genesis of this project came from Kevin Brookhouser's session on 20 Percent Time at the CA GAFE Summit.  From his hour session I was sold and decided to implement the project this school year.

There have been some difficult times and I've questioned myself about whether or not this time we are spending, is time well spent.  Last night I browsed how some other people have implemented the project and I read over Kate Petty's Google Presentation that she shared at the same conference (Kate Petty's 20 Time in Education).  Although there are some common themes between the two presenters and how they ran the project, Ms. Petty incorporates the notion of "Genius Hour" for the first quarter of her class.  Students use this time to brainstorm, explore, and present their findings on topics that they always had questions about.

I gave my students a couple of weeks to figure out a project that they wanted to do, but I never really gave them time to research the projects that they were taking on.  I wanted students to just jump into the project, but in my haste, I didn't build in time for them to become experts or even somewhat versed in the area they are toiling in to prepare themselves.  I think that the really good students did this instinctively, but I know that some have only scratched the surface of research.

After Thanksgiving break, we will spend some time on research and figuring out how to make our projects better.  Students that are doing reviews on restaurants and movies could surely benefit from looking at reviews on Yelp or Rotten Tomatoes.  Students creating videos could learn from watching Youtube videos on editing, shooting, adding effects.

Ms. Petty also dedicates a quarter to becoming a "Presentation Ninja."  This is a thorough exercise in studying what makes someone a good presenter.

I give a two-minute lesson on not reading from the projector screen, but instead address the audience.  I tell them to not have your body all clammed up and look awkward.  I tell them to not write giant paragraphs on their slides, but instead use bullets.

I suppose speaking is one of the four parts of the common core and language in general and after seeing some poor presentations, this will be something that I'm going to address as we move forward not only during our 20 Percent Time.  I think it will be well worth the time, because being able to speak well and communicate verbally, with your body movements, and gestures will open the doors to a lot of things.

Returning to the students' presentations, I was mostly impressed.  The 11th graders did a far better job presenting.  One year of experience in high school is like 5 regular years.  They are so much more mature and responsible than my 10th graders.

One group is creating a Role Playing Game.  When the student presented, she talked about learning to code so that she can create the game to become a computer game.  What???  I had no idea some students were going to these lengths to work on their projects.  I've included their presentation below.
Making an RPG

Finally, this blog has been so helpful for me to reflect on not only what my students are doing for this project, but what I'm doing.

Hope you're finding this helpful.  Thanks for reading.