Sunday, November 20, 2011

New Student Directed Learning Assignment

Our first student directed learning project wrapped up last week and was a huge success. Students explored non-fiction text types and then created something to demonstrate their learning. They were in (almost) complete control--they picked what they wanted to learn about and how they were going to present it.

The final piece of the puzzle was a "gallery walk" where students showed off their learning to their classmates. I think it worked, because when we took a quiz on Friday about non-fiction text types, the class average was about 80 percent!

We're going to try it again with a new and important topic for readers: Idioms. Students will be exploring idioms an have to do the following:


  1. Clearly explain what idioms are.
  2. Provide several examples
  3. Provide "translations" for each example
  4. Any additional information they discover along the way. (books about idioms, idiom origins a.k.a. where they come from, etc)
It's completely up to them how far they go with this. I want them to explore, discover, and enjoy. I have challenged them to present their learning in a different way than they did with the previous assignment.

They'll be working on this in class with the goal of finishing by Christmas break. Of course, if they want to work on it at home, that's good, too. Especially the research stage.

I will keep you posted as we go!

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