Studio Unit Planning
Taking a page from Mr. Beane, I asked my grade seven and eight kids last week to come up with ten questions they have about their lives. I was impressed. They went deep, asking about who their marriage partner will be, when they will die, wondering which university they will attend, whether God exists, and so forth. Five full typed pages of them which I photocopied and handed back out. I then asked the kids to classify the questions some how; an important information management and handling skill.
Away they went in small groups and generally came up with categories such as "religion," "future," relationships / family" and on from there. The next step is to come up with a main descriptor of some sort. An umbrella title of some kind which sums up most of their questions. From here, I am requiring them to come up with all of the possible things they can study about that topic.
It breaks down like this:
Main descriptor: Family / Relationships
Sub - descriptors: family, peer relationships, love, marriage, etc.
They then will need to look at how they can further break up their sub - descriptor topics to make individual questions for them to study. I've been tracking down resources that will fit each main descriptor. I've been searching for novels, short stories, websites, podcasts, videos, and a few websites that will fit each descriptor. The kids will find more once we start, but they need a beginning point.
It is my job to be the connector of kids with each other, of kids with content.
I am still working in planning further. Over the next few days, the kids will finalize their sub - descriptors, and their plans for individual study. The next steps I'm still working out. I want the kids to be responsible for accessing different kinds of content (written fiction, written non - fiction, websites, video files, audio, photos, etc.). I also need to work out responses to this. How will they best respond? Blogging? Wikis? Video or audio response? What about as they move towards some kind of final project and representation? I would like each group to have something to represent to an audience at the school and / or online such as a documentary, series of photos, podcasts, etc. I am wondering about the Marco Torres model of film festival, but I'm wondering about restricting the kids ot one form of representation.
Classroom organization changes have been made, adjustments to pedagogy are being thought through (although, as always, I'm sure there will be many, many unintended consequences both positive and negative that will occur), and curriculum adjustments are discussed here.
From Gaping Void:
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