Reflecting On and Assessing Our Community Project

My colleagues and I wanted to share our Boy Who Harnessed the Wind project with the community (see my previous posts).  I worked with Ingrid Mayyasi and Alice Johnson and Dedham TV to create a video about our experiences:


To wrap up our project I shared this video with my students and had them take a self-assessment.  I wanted students to dig a little deeper and reflect on their work.

I gave what I thought was ample time to complete this but not all groups got to finish

All 1st grade students and many 2nd grade students were assigned a drawing.  Other classes got to choose (time constraints)

Expectations are posted on the SmartBoard for every class so everyone knows what is expected of them even if I am occupied with a student or a group


The final question had students finishing the sentence "Mrs. Garland should know that..."
  • We worked hard
  • We should do this again
  • My team loved it so much
  • It was fun and I'm looking forward to doing it again
  • You get a lot more work done with a friend
  • I am a good team mate
  • We worked together and didn't get off track
  • I loved this project
  • I learned something new
  • He was the best windmill maker
  • This project is fun and should be done all around the US
  • There are a lot of problems here
  • The challenge was kind of fun

My takeaways

The assessment confirmed what I felt and saw - students were engaged and invested in their project and their thinking.  I enjoyed this project that allowed me to ask the same "big questions" to everyone from grades 1-5.  Genuine problems in my students' minds were valued and creative solutions were demonstrated in the project they chose.   Students had voice and choice in this project and I would do it again in a heartbeat.  


Concluding the project

On our final day I read Emmanuel's Dream: The True Story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah by Laurie Ann Thompson & Sean Qualls to many classes and we made connections between the two stories.



  • They are both about a young boy
  • They are both true
  • They both take place in Africa
  • Both boys were trying to make things better
  • Both boys had challenges
  • Both boys made a difference

After we chose books students could choose an activity - they could look at student work or take a selfie using the app Comic Touch and share what is great about our school and community.












Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Reading Identity: Who am I as a reader?

Image
This lesson was about making a visual representation of our reading selves.  We drew, we laughed, we learned about each other as readers, and started building a reading community.  We did this on a remote day.  *This was developed in conjunction with my brilliant colleagues.* Standards:  AASL: Inquire/Share I.C.1 . Interacting with content presented by others. I decided we needed a theme to tie a disjointed year together and settled on the question:  I spent much of my summer thinking about "identity" but needed a concrete landing place for those big, abstract thoughts.  I wondered what would happen if we thought about "identity" through a reading lens. We read Reading Makes You Feel Good We practiced looking at two options and showing our choice for where we like to read by holding up that number of fingers. Next, we moved on to our directed draw. When we were done drawing, we had a big reveal.  Students were tasked with looking for someone with a similar piece of
Read more

Books as mirrors and windows (with sticky notes & reflections)!

Image
Every year I examine books as mirrors and windows with my students.  Every year I tweak the exploration and this year was no different.  This year's additions included sticky notes and reflections.   Day 1: Mirror moments Sticky notes I created with Tony Vincent's template (link below) After modeling mirror moments (and having students make "me too" signals), students identified a mirror moment from a stack of books at their table.  "This is like my sister and I.  We fight all the time." - 3rd grader "When my mom tells me to clean my room I just sit because I don't know where to start." - 3rd grader Day 2: Window moments In the next class I modeled "window moments" and we drew windows in the air when we heard moments that were "not like us."   Students identified "window moments" at their tables with sticky notes. Students shared their "window moments" through the window we passed around our sharing circl
Read more

Emoji Book Titles

Image
Solving and creating our own emoji book titles was a creative challenge I first started exploring four years ago. It has evolved over time, and this latest version is the one that makes the most sense to me. Try it out  here ! Student-created emoji book titles (From top left corner clockwise: Magic Ramen, Catstronauts, Tiger Rising, Wings of Fire) I love this activity because It requires creative thinking (to both solve and create more) Students choose how they interact - do they want to solve or create? All the activities are student-generated I was able to use Google tools for all aspects of the project Solving emoji book titles I created an interactive activity which allows them to check the answer.  In this google slide activity, students use the emoji clues to guess the title of the book.  By moving the magnifying glass over the box, the answer is revealed. Creating emoji book titles While this activity engages many of our learners, I wanted to offer an option for students to cre
Read more