Help! I need to make
more time for students to share their work with
more time for students to share their work with
This blog is really
two parts – one part is about a helpful tool I learned at iNACOL, and the other is
looking wondering how you make time for students to share their work with one
another…….that doesn’t require the brain numbing 28 person individual presentation.
two parts – one part is about a helpful tool I learned at iNACOL, and the other is
looking wondering how you make time for students to share their work with one
another…….that doesn’t require the brain numbing 28 person individual presentation.
One of the most
helpful takeaways from the iNACOL conference was seeing the ways that other
teachers out there were trying to differentiate learning for their students. My
favorite of these was called “The Learning Menu” – not particularly earth
shattering or mind-blowing – but something that stuck for me and that I implemented
as soon as I got back for my very burnt-out-of-lectures-seniors.
helpful takeaways from the iNACOL conference was seeing the ways that other
teachers out there were trying to differentiate learning for their students. My
favorite of these was called “The Learning Menu” – not particularly earth
shattering or mind-blowing – but something that stuck for me and that I implemented
as soon as I got back for my very burnt-out-of-lectures-seniors.
Here is mine:
My “Learning Menu” is a Google Doc where students in my Psych class went through different topics in the Health Psychology field. Some sections provided choice, while others required them to learn some foundational knowledge, and concluded with a chance to demonstrate some deeper learning. If you are interested in seeing the Google Doc it’s here.
Step 1 – students worked on the first two sections on their own & we jigsawed the mental health conditions out in class the following day so students could learn more about the ones they did not watch the video for.
Step 2 – students did boxes three & four followed by a day in class where we made wellness related goals for ourselves that had to be backed by the research from the videos that they watched for these tasks plus some others that they found online.
Step 3 – students were given a choice about how they wanted to demonstrate their deeper learning (see choices above, and full assignment here) and were off to work on their own for a bit.
The amazing part of this assignment is that I did not have to lecture (my seniors are over lectures AND me at this point in the semester) and I STILL felt like they learned as much if not more than if I had! Because they came to class having digested some content ahead of time. Our conversations were richer, students got to learn about different psychological disorders from one another, and class time was used more effectively overall – if this seems like it would be of any value to you I would love to talk more about it.
BUT as they completed their deeper learning assignment I was excited by their creativity and realness with the assignment. It hadn’t dawned on me that because there was so much freedom with the assignment their final products would be so varied. One student interviewed his sister (a special ed teacher) to see how she practices self care in a stressful job. One student who rarely speaks in class talked about how he cares for a family member with bi-polar disorder & why talking about mental health is so important to him – just to name two. Cool right?
While I gave them a lot of personal feedback/kudos on their assignment, it seemed like a disservice that they completed these projects in a vacuum and didn’t have the opportunity to share out what they did.
So, to my question – how do you get your students to share out their work in a way that is meaningful and engaging?? Twenty-eight separate presentations would be boring as hell, but I worry that if I asked them to share out in small groups they would be off topic (am I just projecting my former student self?) What tips and tricks do you find that works, and how do you do it without taking days out of the unit??
Let me know if you have any ideas please!
I have a nice little app called Popsicle Sticks. You enter student names for the class. The program randomly creates pairs or small groups. You can pair-share for reading each other's essays. For presentations, I find that groups of three works best. Each person gets a little form to fill out for reporting on the presentations they observe. For some reason the dispassionate random selection process makes students take the assignment more seriously.
The original printing of "The Princess Bride" had a "good parts' version. The good parts were printed in red ink. The author said he did this for people who did not want to read the whole book, only the good parts. I tell the students about this and then tell them they must condense their presentation to one minute. The can make the whole presentation available online for those who are interested in reading or watching the whole thing. This is sort of like the elevator pitch idea, which I also use on occasion.
Those are a couple that have worked well.
Hmmm. It doesn't sound to me like this is in a vacuum. The student who interviewed his sister got to have a meaningful conversation with his sister. The student who rarely speaks in class communicated about the importance of mental health. I am not so sure the class as audience would be an improvement. I think if something is important it is worth class time, but I agree 26 presentations might wipe out. I am wondering if you could take your Google Doc and turn it around so students got choice of what they responded to?
Student-centered learning. What a great project and thanks for sharing the links. At the least, I have students use an evaluation rubric for presentations when done in front of an entire class. I try to make these focus on technique as well as content. I think the other consideration is why you want them to present to everyone. If it's to practice presentation skills then that can be accomplished in smaller groups. If your concern is that they will be boring because there are so many then I go back to the purpose of the presentation. I guess it's the idea of backward design again….they get to choose how they present the final product, but what emphasis do you want to place on this in terms of skill and content demonstration. What if you had them create a "pitch" and you selected 5 projects to demonstrate based on the quality of the pitch..similar to a company that bids on a project or is seeking out business. Those get shared with everyone and others are reviewed in small groups or on Schoology where each project needs a response from at least 3-4 other students.
what an awesome project… wondering if the same system could work for the share out of the projects…
like a conference type thing where they do a walk through of projects… or a peer review of projects…