Community Partner -- Baker Youth Club Tues 12/4

Tonight five students volunteered at Baker Youth Club in Warsaw. The students had the opportunity to read their short stories to the students. They read three stories and did two activities that went along with their stories.

The students read:
"A Knights Tale" by Eric Hammer
"The Case of Missing Herold"
& "The Words I'd Hoped I'd Never Hear"

After reading to a group of K-2nd graders and a group of third graders the students were in charge of activity time. They played dragons & knights (sharks and minnows) and freeze tag where the person who was "it" got to wear a white dentists coat, which went with the story "The Words I'd Hoped I'd Never Hear".

The students and the kids at BYC had a blast. Some of the staff members said the kids said the activities were really fun. After Stephen read "The Words I'd Hoped I'd Never Hear" a lot of the kids said "I remember the time I went to the dentist!" and they kept talking about things that had happened to them. They were very impressed that my students were "authors and illustrators" which is something the kids at BYC had learned in their after school class.

One of the best things that made my night was when one of my students came walking out of the office two volunteer applications for himself and another student. They promised the kids they'd be back!

Awesome, awesome night for PBL. The way that Shelby talked about it after we left made the whole project worth it and really affirmed that this PBL thing can have a great outcome. Imagine when I perfect it and it's not longer our first rodeo!

Senior Project 2: Celebrating Unsung Heroes, almost complete

I'm thinking we're going to be finished with the senior project #2 Celebrating Unsung Heroes early next week! They're finishing up their final drafts of their essays tomorrow and I'm going to give them their edited epics back on Friday.

We wills start laying the projects out in Open Office Draw. I think I came up with a layout that is going to work today and I think I want the kids to all do the same layout. However, I'm debating if that is "true" PBL. I'm thinking I'd like them to all look the same in when we print them out so they all look cohesive and are well organized. I've thought about asking one of the students in my class that is good at graphic design if he'd like to come up with a template.

This is what's left on our to do list:

• Final edits to epic
• Check essay final draft one last time
• Get pictures of their hero to me if I need to scan them OR save pictures to the computer
• Get things laid out in Open Office Draw
• Check one last time
• Print
• Laminate
• Display! 

Laying them out in Draw should take too terribly long, especially if we're using a template.  I'm going to try to take some pictures of them working on the computers on Friday and I want to take a final
picture of them with their posters when they're completed.

I'll try to remember to post a few of the epics on here as well!

Freshmen Project 2 Finished! Reflections & Reading with Community Partner

The freshmen have finished "Project 2: Becoming Published Authors"! Thank goodness!!! I need to learn how to keep these projects to 6 weeks max if not shorter! The kids complained they didn't have enough time, but I need to find the balance between enough time and too much time. I was ready to move on and have been for a few weeks. Although, I don't feel that way about the senior projects.

Reflection Writing: 
Yesterday I had the kids do some small reflection on their jobs (Publisher, Illustrator/Liaison, Lesson Planner) and what was good/bad about those. Then they got into groups with people who had the same job and discussed.

Today we reviewed how to write a reflection today looking at formatting, content, and the purpose. We created a short bullet list in each class that discussed the things I would be looking for and why we write them. I'm a little disappointed in my kids and their discussion skills thus far. I just don't think they're at the level they should be. That is part of the reason I'd like to create tighter, better planned projects so that we can really dig in and focus on those types of skills. I can definitely see how the project will change for the better next year. The kids will write a 1+ page reflection on their experience during this project focusing on the following four questions. They can go beyond these questions, but I should see them discuss each of these at some point in their reflection paper.

• Your favorite part of the project overall, why?Pieces of the project that you struggled with (beginning - end), how did you overcome these problems?
• What skill do you think you bring to the table in your group? What are you good at that a group would need?
• How could you have collaborated better with group members? What is a "group skill" you need to work on?
• What two things do you want to improve or work on during the next project?

Those are due on Friday so we'll see what I get. I'll post some of the better written ones here, without names of course. 

Baker's Youth Club -- Community Partner, Wrapping Up Project 2:
To wrap up this second project we had the books published at Hardesty Printing in Warsaw, Ind. I have four students that are going to Baker's Youth Club tonight at 5:30 to read to the kids and play through a few activities that they planned.  I'll post some pictures as soon as I get home. I think I'm going to spend some time writing my own reflection to share with the kids and I will post it here as well. I'll probably do that on the drive to my PBL Conference in Fort Wayne tomorrow since I don't have to drive.

Until tomorrow. 

Research Tool in Google Docs!

Research Tool Added to Google Presentation

This is awesome!!! We're definitely using this when we do our research papers during the opinion/editorial project! Hopefully all the kids will have Google accounts by that point!