The first was teaching Internet Safety to 7th grade and then having them assist me in teaching it to grades 3-6. What a great success. Talk about ownership of material. It reinforced my belief that if students have a real purpose for learning something they put more into and get more out of it. We presented yesterday with a mix of video, skits, and teaching. I did learn that guidance is ever important when having students create their own products. I met with each group every class period and really had to steer them in the right direction. It's more tiring than presenting content but worth it.
My second project was assisting our 8th grade students create book trailers about novels based on Fairy Tales. Our English teacher led the project and brought me in for lessons on storyboarding, construction using PhotoStory, and technical assistance. I think they turned out well. Below are two examples.
My final project was working with our 5th grade teachers to create "Nature's Fury" newscasts. This was a cross curricular unit that both of our teachers worked on together. They read about various storms as apart of their ELA curriculum and learned about the storms in Science. As a culminating project, they researched one type of storm, worked in pairs to write a newscast about that storm and then filmed them with me. We used iMovie's green screen picture which made it a breeze. What I loved about this unit is that it covered so standards and content, but was engaging and stimulating at the same time. To view the finished products, visit the 5th Grade's wiki at http://thefiftyunitedstates.wikispaces.com/NaturesFury.
Now that those three big projects are wrapped up I'm looking forward to working with teachers to figure out what's next!
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