What Teacher Effort Goes into Supporting a Student-Selected Project?

This morning I recorded a periscope talking about student projects and what a teacher has to do to support those. I just gave the endgame of that - what happens toward the finale of the project, which in this case is teaching 4th graders next week.

What about the beginning? To create a student-selected project, the teacher has to have a skill set in mind for students. We know that we learn best when we teach others, so I often lean toward that kind of project: creating products for others' consumption. I've had students make narrated slideshows and videos to reflect their own understanding of topics, and then shared those links with others, for example. Here's one on homesteading in Montana.

We learned a lot about the Montana Gold Rush first. We did some reading with primary and secondary sources, and we took a field trip to Helena to learn with Montana historian Ellen Baumler. Each student did mini-research projects and shared their learning with the class. Then I gave students the project's parameters and based on this, they selected their groups and their topics.

Student writes hashtag for primary source photo on hydraulic mining

Every day they have to check in on our google classroom - what did you accomplish today, and what is your goal for tomorrow. Each morning I read their goal back to them. A couple of days ago we made a to-do list on the board as the countdown to dress rehearsal day neared.

Today is the dress rehearsal, and we are on a tight timeline for practicing each others' activities. The fourth graders will be here after only one more class! 

Montana History projects - high schoolers teach fourth graders

This morning I shared via periscope some of the work the Montana History class is doing to teach fourth graders about the Montana gold rush.

I'm attaching our assignment/schedule here and I'll add pictures as we progress.

I love this type of project because it involves service learning where the older students are teaching the younger students, and also as we know, when we have to teach someone, we learn the content better.

Incorporating Blogging into High School Writing Instruction

Today's periscope discussed how I incorporate blogs into my high school writing instruction. I described my senior writing classes and how I ease them into blogging by having them read some student blogs and other, professional blogs. I have some student blogs located here on my school webpage. In particular, I like to show them Eula's and Jess's blogs from the 2013 class because they are good examples of focused blogs. Eula chose to write about technology and Jess wrote about her passion, running.

Then I show students how to use blogger by demonstrating it on the board with a test page. It's important model the following skills:
1. creating a new post
2. typing and editing material
3. adding a link

Finally, I showed my rubric, which is linked here.

I think teaching blogging gives teachers a chance to show students how our audience can, and sometimes should be, bigger than just the people in the classroom. For this reason I share blogs with outside readership. I also think it lets students see how our voice and our register can make a difference in how effective our blogs are.

It's not fool-proof! Problems I still encounter with blogging: general resistance to publishing, getting students to revise, and making meaningful comments.

Got some good blogging advice? Comment away!