I’ll admit, I’m a sucker for a good story. David Jakes turned me onto a story told by some high school students and showed it to me at NECC.
Good stuff.
The work my kids produced last year was not up to par, in my opinion, because my assignment lacked something. I figure that something is the personal connection. Previously, I had kids working in groups, the perfect antidote to a good, personal story. This is partly due to a lack of equipment.
While I was in Peru, I bought 30 headphones with inline mic’s, the kind that are all over Peru in Internet cabinas. These are designed to hold up over time, oh, and they only cost me around $3 a piece, far cheaper than I can find them here. They are imported from China, and I cannot even find them to buy here.
So this time around, each kid gets his or her own PC and headphones/mic. I’ll reserve time in the computer lab for this project, and offer them two entire class periods to finish (with some prep time beforehand).
I intend to download a slew of creative commons licensed pictures from flickr and maybe another source or two and provide them to kids as a picture pool. They will need a minimum of x pictures, but I’ll give them many more. I may do this with music as well, or I may just allow them to use the canned photo story music (no macs in my school!).
What I need is a good assignment.
So I’m asking you.
Remember, I teach Spanish and Latin, and the assignment needs to incorporate that in some regard. Not sure how. This can’t be about technology, this has to be about kids telling their story and it needs to relate to my content. I have a few ideas, but the truth is they are cheesy and exactly what you’d expect me to come up with. So rather than spoil you with my lame ideas, I need help with a good lesson idea. I can implement like crazy but this is where I get stuck.
So, ideas?
How about having them “introduce” their school to a newcomer type scenario. (It could REALLY be used.) Also, you might consider some storytelling where the kids take their handbook and make a video that is a video interpretation–high interest, and effective in getting the message about school rules across. We all know most of the kids NEVER read the handbook other than what their teachers make them read in class the first day. Making it a video that is current, modern, and in their voice may make them HAPPILY read it for once. Perhaps the final products could be shared at an open-house, a PTO meeting, a Board meeting, or on the morning news program if your school has one. I you are going to be doing some collaborative work with any of your friendly schools from Peru, maybe they can make videos about purely American things, like the bus ride to school, attending the games on Friday Night, or more to share with the students from Peru.
Just some random thoughts here, but hopefully you’ll fond them useful. I look forward to seeing the responses posted here.
First, you might want to check out Yotophoto to search for your free images. It’s a metasearch that includes multiple sources of Creative Commons, public domain, and GFDL licensed images. http://yotophoto.com/
Second, for some story ideas. I know that I enjoyed retelling fairy tales in my German courses, although maybe that’s just my personal preference. Also, although it isn’t exactly storytelling in the traditional sense, what about creating ads for products in another language? We had a blast in our German courses creating videos of commercials, some for made-up products, some for American ones, some for German ones.
We also did a great project where we introduced German to 3rd graders at a nearby elementary school. The whole project was around them taking a “trip” to Germany. They created passports, which some students then checked and stamped as “customs officials”. I believe they drew suitcases with items inside (labeled in German), which the “customs officials” checked as well. We put up signs in the auditorium to make it look like airplane windows; we gave directions and served koolaid and cookies speaking German. We also put on a play for them to watch. Students at different levels of German all had different jobs depending on their skills. Even though that was all face to face, I wonder if you could create something like that in a virtual environment. This is sort of building on Cathy’s idea of the tour.
Good luck!
Hi Chris,
This may not be at all what you are looking for but this post made me think of numerous ideas and you may be able to adapt it. I went from your post to Dave Pollard’s post and had an “aha” moment. The post is
Sixty Seconds With…You (The Personal Elevator Pitch) and you could adapt this however but I like the idea. You could change the time for whatever would work for your students or just take parts of the idea. I love taking ideas like this and making them work for my kids. My brain is going off in all directions. If it is not at all what you had in mind just ignore
Best,
Anne
We did a writing exercise during the Central California Writing Project’s Summer Intensive based on the book “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien [http://www.amazon.com/Things-They-Carried-Tim-OBrien/dp/0767902890]…
I can look up the lesson plan if you like, but just thumbing through the book will give you lots of ideas. A great story prompt…
I am just thinking off the cuff here BUT isn’t the ESOL population (specifically Spanish speaking) building in your district? I know when I was working next door to you my ESOL #’s sky rocketed from 2 to 7 in my social studies classes over a 2 month period.
OK, how about this… have the ESOL students or their parents come in to your class to talk to your students about adapting to America, how their culture is different from American culture, or way of life in their homeland. From the discussions that take place have your students create a photo story based on something they heard (something that struck them) through the eyes of someone new to American Culture or vis versa … them going to a Spanish cultural area.
I think bringing in the real world aspect of it will really make an impact. It would be really great if you could turn it in to some type of field study BUT I know time won’t allow for that and our location probably won’t either.