Documentaries, Children's Books, and MiddleEastProjectsQuoteAnalysis, Oh My!

Documentaries

Today students worked in their human rights groups to determine an "angle" for their documentaries. They drafted essential questions, listed sources to consult, and considered the role they want to tackle for this challenge. 

• Reporters: grassroots work, plan/set-up/conduct interviews, transcribe interviews, gather research (including information,photos, videos, b-roll, music, etc.), keep log of all actions/findings
• Screenwriters: view & edit research/interviews (from reporters), study action logs & provide guidance, pull sound bites, storyboarding, script writing
• Producers: computer editing work, create final product, take all pieces from reporters and screenwriters and match-up (put together narration/script with photos, videos, music, etc.), transition rough work to professional quality

Next week, groups will continue researching, mapping and storyboarding. A rough draft of story boards will be due for critique on Wednesday, March 19th. 

Students are using the project management app Basecamp to organize themselves, their thoughts, their research, their to-do lists, and their deadlines. (And it helps us keep us with them too!) 

Children's Books

Mrs. Soblo returned children's book drafts with LOTS of feedback for students! The next steps, which began with fervor today, have students revising, correcting, and re-drafting their books and then passing these new and improved drafts among their peers for critique and even more feedback. 

Middle East Projects

On Monday Mr. Mayes wants to see a final draft of students' Middle East Culture Project. They will have a BINGO opportunity for this assignment if they need one, but final products are now due. 

Book Thief Quote Analysis

Quote Analysis #2 (as well as any quote analysis BINGOs) is due Monday as well. 

Students had class time Wednesday and Thursday to work on this assignment and receive feedback and extra assistance from Mrs. A. It's apparent that students are getting better and better at this skill with each attempt. Many students finished early this time and have already turned it in! 

It's documentary, my dear Watson.

I crack myself up.

Today we worked in halves.

With Coach K, students were introduced to the idea that we would be putting on a film festival to feature student written, produced, and filmed documentaries highlighting their human right group and violations. Some were more enthusiastic than others but there is SO much potential here for creative license and amazing products, we just can't pass it up. We're shooting for a showing on May 9th to collaborate with D10 and their 'The Other F Word' design challenge on fitness. They are also producing videos and documentaries so we are hoping to offer a double feature and invite the community and school to attend. With a May 9th deadline, this gives students approximately six weeks to plan, write, film, and edit their 5-8 minute films.

Students took notes on the 6 different forms of documentaries according to Bill Nichols, author of Introduction to Documentary. Here are those notes for anyone who did not get them, or needs them again. There is also a page with extra resources and other video examples than the ones we viewed in class.

Students also spent some time with Mrs. A. They finished Part 9 of The Book Thief and she has graciously offered her lunch tomorrow to provide extra help for students who are struggling with their quote analysis. PLEASE take advantage of this opportunity if you are having a hard time, or even just want extra help. She'll be in her classroom during lunch.

11.20.13 The Independent Reader

Students are currently reading the New York Times bestseller The Book Thief, set in 1939 Germany, as we embark on a study of human rights. They are really loving the novel! (They are also excited by the prospect of the movie coming out, which was news to me! I have begged them all NOT to go and see it yet, lest they spoil the rest of the book for themselves. We will see who can hold out!)

We began by reading the book aloud in class, stopping to discuss and take notes as we read. Throughout our reading of the prologue, I did a "think-aloud" for students, questioning the text, deciphering unknown words, and modeling how I determine which parts of the text are important enough to take notes on, and which parts are just extra details. Once we finished reading and discussing the prologue we wrote a class summary of it, and again I modeled how to write a successful summary and how to select which details are important enough to include and which we could leave out.

Since then we also began reading Part One of the novel aloud in class, continuing to take notes as we read, in an effort to engage in active reading, reading with the intent to critically engage the text, understand it, and ultimately be able to analyze and evaluate it. For days, students have been engaged in class, taking notes, making predictions, asking great questions, providing evidence from the text to support their points, and staying really focused as we work!!

And then something happened.

I sent students home over the weekend with a few chapters to read by themselves and the promise of a quiz on the material when they returned. For the most part, the quiz was a disaster. When I said, "But you were doing so well in class as we worked together - What happened?!," students responded, in writing:

"I did not comprehend."
"Some of the questions on the quiz didn't match the notes I had taken."
"I didn't read it at all. I completely forgot I had to read."
"I think when I was reading I wasn't paying attention to detail because I was also watching TV while I was reading."
"I really wasn't expecting some of the questions."
"I couldn't remember what I read."
"I didn't attempt to read the book. I wanted to play basketball instead."
"I didn't pay attention to what I was reading."

Students' answers indicate a wide range of issues. Some students simply are not completing work unless someone is standing over them, making them do it. Some students are not managing their time wisely and are only completing portions of their assignments. Some students aren't keeping up with assignments and deadlines because they aren't using a calendar and a daily "to-do" list. These are issues we can and do address each and every day in Studio D.

But the real issue I want to address, the issue I HAVE to address, is the issue of reading but not comprehending, reading but then forgetting what they've read, reading but not being able to distinguish which details are the most important or not being able to anticipate what questions might be on a quiz. THIS is what we began working on today. Students began taking notes on reading strategies that will help them succeed, and we will continue this discussion in the coming days and weeks. We will take more time to read The Book Thief aloud together in class, and to discuss and analyze the novel. But students also know that more and more they will be expected to read independently, and actively, and that ultimately they DO have enough strategies at their disposal to read successfully.

11.15.13 Curious George and Human Rights

We started off this morning with a surprise quiz. Happy Friday!

I told students their quiz was to identify the steps of the design process in the video I showed, as well as identify the problem the design process was creating a solution for.

Students had to identify the problem, and then how each stage of the design process was shown in the video clip.

Just as a reminder, our design process goes like this:
GATHER
GLEAN
GENERATE
GAUGE
GO

The responses could be bullet pointed or written out.


Here's the link to the video for anyone who was out, or just wants to watch it again.

Windmill Monkey

After the quiz had been turned in, students split into thirds.
Here's a note on progress with the Educational Tools from Mrs. Soblo:

The educational tools are coming along as the due date (11/26) is quickly approaching.  So this past week students learned a new presentation tool- Voice Thread.  To showcase their educational tools & get feedback from both peers & users, students created a Voice Thread presentation of progress.  Our hope is that through this feedback process, the finished product will be really awesome!
Check out the rubric for the presentations & what they've done so far here.

Mrs. Auspelmyer worked with the students on how to do a quote analysis and close reading in The Book Thief. Here are the notes from class today:

Quote Analysis Notes

In Foundations, students re-wrote the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into more simple terms, and we posted them in the classroom. Next week, students will look more closely into the categories of human rights and how they have been broken internationally and here in the United States.