We are approaching Presentations...Finally!

We are one week away from presenting our Innovation Project, and it has proved to be really difficult to finish these products with exams right around the corner too. The students have steadily been working on business proposals, letters to our principal, speeches, designs, models, etc and I'm excited to see how they will all come together. Today, we are going to talk about how to create presentations/speeches and this is the part the students have been the most worried or scared about. There is something about speaking in front of the class that can completely cause a student to come undone. However, I am explained to them several times that if you no your stuff, then presenting is just like having a conversation with a group of friends. Hopefully that stick with them and ease their nerves a little. We shall see :)

Creating the product is proving to be really difficult!

Last week my classes moved into the actual "product creation" phase of the Innovation Project. Personally, I thought this would be the part of the project that would give them the most satisfaction. However, it has been the most difficult part of the project so far. My students appear to be frozen and unable to begin creating. Initially, I was very frustrated by our lack of progress but upon further thought I reminded myself what I was really asking them to do. I was asking my students to truly create something from scratch that I had not already set up for them with baby steps to follow. I had essentially turned their learning over to them and I should expect them to freeze.  How often as teachers do we really turn the learning over to our students? Usually, we have some controlling factor in the project and ultimately what we want them to create.

In today's class, we are going to try to "start again", and I am going to provide a little more guidance to get them going. I think by doing this I may be able to attempt to get them a little less stuck :)

Back in the Blue Room Today!

Today we are back in the "Blue Room" and the kids are super excited. My goal for today's class is for each group to have a solid plan for creation of their products by the end of class, so that when we return to the "Blue Room" on Friday they can actually work on creating their products. I'm very fortunate that our technology facilitator will be co-teaching with me today as well, so it will help while working with small groups. It can be a challenge when you are one teacher and 30 kids are going in 30 different directions and they all need help and guidance.

The biggest challenge I anticipate we will face today is getting the kids to actually "start." It can seem overwhelming when we place all of the responsibility on the student to create and give them "carte blanche." (spelling?) Since these are ninth graders, I assume they will need more prodding! I am hopeful we will get them all where they need to be :)

Getting Ready to Move into the Implementation Phase!

The class and I stepped away from the Innovation Project for the last two weeks to focus on reading Romeo and Juliet, but now we are ready to start thinking about how we are going to implement a solution to our questions. For me, this is the most exciting part because my students can start to employ their own creativity to truly be innovative.

Our goal for Wednesday's class will be to work a little on blogs and websites to upload what the students have already completed on the project. During Thursday's class, my goal is for students to start hashing out a plan for their implementation and final products, so when we return from Spring Break--they will be ready to start creating.

Before we know it, it will be the end of the year and our journey will be coming to an end. I cannot wait to see what the students create :)

Until next time!

Research is DONE!!! Yippee!!!

It has been a long two weeks in the library with my CP English 9 classes as we learned about the research process. I will admit, at the beginning of our time in the library, I was seriously thinking I was a crazy person for not limiting the students in what they could research-- like we have done in the past. Typically, I would provide the students with a list of topics I knew for sure our library had resources on, so I could easily manage the research process and effectively move my students through the various stages with very little hiccups along the way.  However, this year I came to a realization that by limiting my students too much, I was really negating what I wanted them to learn about research--the research itself. If I continued to do the preliminary work for them, then I was the only person getting better at choosing topics and evaluating resources. Furthermore, when my students and I embarked on this "Innovation Project", I allowed them to pursue questions they wanted to answer, so there really was no going back at that point. 

I'm so glad I didn't limit them now. What I witnessed happening in the library this last two weeks was far more than I ever expected. Each day we were in the library learning about locating resources, and then writing thesis statements and outlines, taking notes, and finally putting it all into a paper was thrilling and impressive. Students who had been shy or reluctant suddenly had the "ah ha" moments and became frontrunners in my class and experts to help the other students. I saw my students taking ownership of their own learning and taking command of the research process. Now, don't think it was all rainbows and sunshine. There are always some who struggle and there are still some who haven't quite finished, but overall I feel like everyone learned something and is "getting there." That is all I could have hoped for with 9th graders embarking on research for the first time. 

This week we will be working on updating our blogs about the research process and uploading completed research papers to our websites. 

I'm excited to move into our 3rd phase of the project which is the "Implementation" stage where the kids will finally get to design their final products in an attempt to answer their "Innovation Project Question." I cannot wait to see how they solve their issues! 

More to come. 

We Have Officially Begun Our Time in the Library!

So, for English teachers, time spent teaching students how to conduct research and then use that research to write any type of persuasive paper can be both exciting and the most frustrating experience all in one. In today's age, teaching students to research is more complicated because Google exists, therefore, students don't really understand the need or even possess the desire to a certain extent to check out a book or even use an academic database. It becomes even trickier when you have a class full of students who have come up with their own topics, and as a teacher you aren't really sure if they will even find research on their topics. Hence has been the struggle we have been enduring this week in English 9. 

But, today we made a breakthrough.  I could finally start to see the wheels turning slowly in each student as they have his or her "ah ha" moment where the idea of what you want to research starts to connect with what you actually find research on, and then how you can take that research and devise your own "plan of action." As a teacher, I did the proverbial "sigh of relief" today when I finally started to see all the pieces come together. Of course, like with any class, we still have some who are struggling and behind, but there are fewer of those students then there was yesterday. I will count that as a step in the right direction.  

My hope and my goal for the rest of this week will be to show the students how to take notes from the research they have found, cite that information correctly. If I can accomplish that by the end of Friday, I will feel like we have had a successful week! 

Getting Ready to Move into the Research Phase!

We are about 1 week away from moving into the research phase of our innovation projects. In this phase, the kids are going to learn to take their "Driving Questions" and persuasively convince an audience that their chosen problems are valid while also learning proper researching techniques and paper writing skills. By the end of our two weeks in the library all students will have learned how to effectively write an outline with a thesis statement, take notes, choose credible resources, write a persuasive essay and then edit their essays. We'll see what happens!