A teaching mentor once told me that you lose student’s engagement as soon as you tell them what you are going to do for the year. They didn’t choose it, so why should they care? They will go through the motions, but the heart is missing.
This year, with the personal interest project, my co-collaborator Mr. Hines and I are trying to give ownership of some of the content back to the students.
Students select an essential question to explore such as “how can I teach electromagnetism to elementary school kids?” or “How could I demonstrate my knowledge of U.S. history in the form of a novel?” and spend the semester creating a project that effectively answers that question.
Empowered by this ownership, students are often enthusiastic, but suddenly dwarfed by the enormity of the task ahead. Mr. Hines and I are regularly reminded that the difference between a great idea failing or succeeding is scaffolding. We try to provide this in the following ways:
1. Provide clear rubrics of project expectations.
2. Indicate draft deadlines that lead up to project deadlines.
3. Chunk the project down into several steps.
This is surprisingly difficult to do as each project is unique and requires a different series of sub tasks. As students get a period a week to work on their self-designed projects in each of our classes, they get feedback from both of us on their projects as they develop. It is scary as a teacher to give up this much class time to completely self-directed student projects, but students regularly report that this is the most meaningful work for them because they chose it.
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| Ethan getting excited about rubrics cubes |
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