Reflection - Pulling It All Together

Last week the 8th grade science teacher met with me to plan 2 projects before the end of the school year. (Since science is now an area for 8th grade MAP testing she postponed these activities until after MAP testing). She wanted students to research diseases and create a PowerPoint. I said, "Do you really want to watch 135 PowerPoints?" So as we talked I kept coming back to the principles of constructivism that I learned in this class. Now the students are working in groups and they are choosing a disease group they are interested in. There are 8 tables in the library so there are 8 disease groups for the students to choose from. The students are given this scenario - More and more people are dying from these diseases. Money is needed for research and you have a chance to get a grant for research money for your disease group. Develop a presentation to convince/persuade a panel from St. Louis University to fund their research project. Yes, they are still doing a PowerPoint but hopefully they won't be "cookie cutter". They are deciding what they need to include to impress and convince the panel. We started the project today and it went really well. On each library table I had put the name of the disease group, some books from the library that might help them and a laptop. They chose their disease group yesterday so when they came in the library today they just sat down at the table and began discussing with their group members. They made a web to develop their guiding questions/topics and then divided up the research among the group members. At the end of the day today the 8th grade science teacher said she heard some of the students say that this project is fun. That's quite a compliment from 8th graders, especially towards the end of the school year.