Introduction
Core Instructional Priority Collaboration
For this year-long assignment, my core instructional priority was collaboration. We embarked on many projects last year in my classroom at Hoover Middle School. By far my favorite was the C23 Community of Storytellers project. This project was a mash up of two tools: Google Slides and Google Sites. One main goal of the project was for students to build on their working relationships with their classmates. Another goal was for students to be able to browse media projects from their fellow classmates in other classes. This was made possible because all of the decks were housed in a Google Site.
This is how we did it. Each team of four created a Google slide deck from a choice of four templates. After each culminating assignment, we added to our shared deck. The collaborative slide deck allowed us to have a resource that we were building all semester and a place where students could hold team members accountable for the work in the classroom. At the outset, I wanted the students to forge a group identity. They had to come up with a name and also had to design a logo. Some used online tools they were familiar with and others picked up a paper and pencil and drew. Then each student put one assignment onto the deck. We put the slides on the shelf for a couple of weeks and dusted it off when we were ready to add to it. This was the cadence that this project took for the entire semester. At the end of the semester each team had a slide deck and it was embedded onto the Google Site so we could peer into each other's classrooms.
Read further along to hear about my successes and challenges embarking on this project. If you stay until the end, there will be useful links so that you can start a project like this in your class.
Student Work Examination
Overview
In this section we will explore student work examples that met the goal and student work samples that did not meet the goal. I'll also share with you artifacts that I used in the classroom to get the information to my students. Below is the rubric I shared with my students before they posted the last assignment and a slide that I shared with them in class so they would know the expectations of this collaborative project. One of the first assignments for this project was for each person to assign themselves: Editor, Artistic Director, Technical Director, Question Asker. That last role helped each team member communicate with each other, as the question asked was the only person that could up to me and ask questions. It really helped to build some good conversations.
Reflections
How will you change your project/scaffold work/support focal students next time?
Like most projects, this one captured the attention of some but not all. How do you capture those students who do not complete projects? If you notice in the example, one of the students had some blank pages in the slide deck. She was absent for most of the semester because she traveled back to her home country. One thing I did do for her and a few others was to have them work one on one or with a small group with a para. You have to prep the para well so that they can help move the work along. I would continue to do this practice. This project asked students to bring four different projects to the group. It was a semester-long project and there were four different multimedia assignments. If you hadn’t done one or two, you were already at a deficit when you joined the group. Maybe for the students who show up with not as many projects completed, there could be an option to engage in one more simple project.
What would you change
If I were to do this project again, I would try to build more of an audience for the publishing of the web site. This could have simply been done with a collaboration with the librarian and joining all my classes together so that they could present key work to their peers. I think it would have benefitted the sixth graders to see their eighth grade counterparts present and vice versa. Maybe also add a transmedia element, where we print out posters advertising the website with qr code. We did that for our bulletin board but we didn’t post this information around the school.
What would you keep?
One thing I would keep is the idea that together we are building something. In this case it was a website. Since we were building something as a community to share to the outside world, the students seemed more invested in the project. I also would keep the structure of differentiating the groups, so each group had a student or two, sometimes even three that would push the work forward. The group roles also worked very well. In one group, a leader who always asked me questions, could not because she wasn’t the question asker. This led to some wonderful conversations in her group as she voiced her questions and the Question Asker asked for clarification or for more information. It was lovely to sit back and watch this interaction, and it happened more than once. I definitely felt like the guide on the side.
Changes in students engagement - attitude - work
Whenever we worked on this project, there was a hum in the classroom. It felt like a well oiled machine moving through its responsibilities. The students became owners of their work and accountable to each other for not completing their work, no longer just accountable to me. This switch was evident as you walked around the classroom and most all were helping to build their projects.
Credits:
Created with images by Rawpixel.com - "Group of Human Hands Holding Together" • photogolfer - "Lac-Superieur, Mont-tremblant, Quebec, Canada" • dizain - "RESOURCES word cloud, business concept"