Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Products Confirmed

We are almost at the end of our planning. In our last meeting, we clarified the actual products we will grade. A couple of the products still lack detail as to what will actually be graded but team mates were assigned the products to produce a rubric by Friday.

There will be a total five assessments. We will assess their research/interview skills. The teacher responsible for the rubrics for this category is the science teacher, DeAnn. Survey is another assessment with a rubric created by Debra (social studies) and myself. A chart will also be graded and rubric created by me. The remaining products are a menu and a proposal. Mary and Ben will grade and create a rubric for those products. Originally, we were looking to do a presentation but it was replaced by just a proposal due to the time needed to present and the lack of time to have all the teams present.

Our next meeting is tomorrow, we are going to focus on the nuts and bolts of the project. This includes when the project will start and end. How we will present the project to students as well as when we will have to teach specific items in the classroom. The most tasking part of the next meeting is dividing the groups into teams.

During this meeting, I presented the idea of incorporating the upper class with freshman. Currently, everyone on the team (but myself) teaches at least one upper level course. I thought it might be helpful for the freshman's work ethic development to be increased because of an upper class person being on the team. This will be ironed out at the meeting.

I am getting more and more excited about the project. I can't wait for the actual launch to see how well our project idea will be received by the students. The principal agreed to be interviewed by the students and review the proposals for consideration. This will really lend weight to the project.

2 comments:

Suzie Boss said...

Hi again,
You guys are making great progress! I love how strongly this topic connects to students' lives and what they care about. At the same time, it relates to all kinds of topics--from where our food comes from and the "locavore" movement to lifelong health habits to world hunger. And you are smart to have your principal primed to listen to student proposals. When a project leads to real action, learning really comes to life.
In case you're looking for some authentic examples, you might want to check out a book called Lunch Lessons by Ann Cooper. The Edible Schoolyard site (http://www.edibleschoolyard.org/homepage.html) is full of resources, too.
Good luck!
--Suzie

Telannia Norfar said...

thanks so much for the resources. I will review this weekend.