As stated in an earlier post, my collaborating teacher, Jeff, is teaching this Romeo and Juliet unit and has requested that I fill the role of a resource person and teach a couple of specific lessons dealing with proper citation and creating a reference page. He will assess and evaluate the students on all aspects of this 4-5 week unit, but has asked me to evaluate their reference page which will be an extra page attached to the end of their Elizabethan newspaper (the culminating project). The newspaper is intended to help the students research the time period of Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare, the Elizabethan theatre, etc. and to express what they have learned in creative “news” features of the times including interesting tidbits about science, inventions, historical happenings, and important people from around the world. I would be responsible for assessing how well the students are meeting the learning goals of the lessons which I teach, make adjustments, and reteach as necessary. I plan to begin with a survey to see how much they remember about creating proper citations and references. According to Jeff, they need these lessons to be re-taught as they have not transfered the skills to their written creations!
Jeff plans to send copies of the student’s newspapers home with them with a comment page for parents. It is his hope that they will read their child’s paper, write comments about it on the comment page, and send it back to him. It is his goal to increase communication between his high school classroom and the parents/guardians of his students, and he sees this as an exciting step towards that goal.
The students’ newspapers will be featured in our Second Annual “Celebration of the Arts” in which K-12 original student work is showcased for parents, grandparents, and the community at large to view. The first night kicks off with an “open house” which includes a “grand opening” of the display areas and live performance presentations (Talent Show and Odyssey of the Mind), and refreshments provided and served by the PTO. The displays include art work of all mediums, creative writing, technology presentations, classroom projects, etc. The physical displays remain open for a couple of weeks to allow ample opportunity for browsing. If Jeff decides to have the students expand their newspaper projects into “news” program style video presentations (which we have talked about and he is considering), then they too will be incorporated into the Celebration of the Arts displays, possibly via the large-screen kiosk in the main hall outside of the media center.
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It occurred to me as I read your post that one of the challenges that we face in getting teachers to see as more than resource consultants and bibliographic instructors is that the average age of teachers is probably mid-fifties and their experience in the school library was quite different than today's LMC. Thus, it seems important for us to catch the younger teachers and begin collaborating with them in more expansive ways.
ReplyDeleteI like that Jeff plans to allow parents to also weigh in on the evaluation aspect of the unit. That seems genius! I wonder has he done this in the past and, if so, whether he had full participation from parents. Do you know?
Sharing this project at the "Celebration of the Arts" is an excellent way to get the exposure you want to the community stakeholders. However, even in your limited capacity of grading student bibliographies, can you think of ways to show evidence of student learning with stakeholders in the community?