A change in plans

Image by Magnascan from Pixabay

So, I’ve been thinking about whether to change the parameters on a class project.

Here’s the background. Our unit focuses on the monster portions of The Odyssey and several retellings or inspired-by texts. I told the class as we started the unit that their final project would be to come up with a plan for their own retelling or inspired-by story. I’ve mentioned it on day 1 and have been referencing this as our goal as we’ve progressed.

Anyway, I officially introduced the project the other with this hyperdoc. I planned for the project/presentation to be a group project. I’ve done “make a book plan” as a final assessment many times. I always do it as a group and plan on about 3 days of work time before the presentations. I have found that the groups generate a lot of ideas in their class time and then use the homework time to solidify and make progress. It has been one of my more successful group projects over the years. I knew several students had been thinking about it. However, I didn’t know they had been THINKING about it. Well, it turns out several of my students have been thinking about enough that they really wanted to do their own plan and one asked about doing an independent project/presentation.

I told my student I would consider the question and have more information the next day.

Honestly, after some consideration, I felt I could honor the request, with a few modifications. Here’s why. The group aspect of the project is for idea generation and to get work done in the time frame I am willing to devote to the work. This time the directions specify some individual and some collective tasks in the process. So, I am considering allowing those who want to work independently (if it is a small number) to do some of the collective tasks of sharing with each other but then allowing them to revert to independent work. I think having some amount of talking through their ideas with someone else is critical, and I can’t give on that, but if I have a few folks who are so engaged by the idea that they want to go it alone, I’m going to let them.

I came to class. Some groups formed. Some students decided to work independently. I told the independent folks that I was counting on them to be honest about their progress on day two and seriously consider joining forces if it seems the task is too large for one person, no judgment.

I crossed my fingers and set them to work.

Closet Clean-out

So, I’ve been thinking about what is in my closet. My school closet-not my clothes closet. There are clearly too many shoes in the one, and a lot of work from previous students in the other.

I rearranged my classroom, again, just a minor change this time. That means that I have  a spare small book-case that I planned to put in my supply closet to try to help manage the mayhem in there. I know there is at least one teacher at my school whose closet looks like a little office; a student can actually work in there. This is in my closet. So, to get the bookcase in, I had to take a lot of stuff out first. Post clean-out it is looking mighty fine. Anyway, the point is I got to look at a bunch of old work and it got me thinking about what I do now and what I did then. This is my seventh year at this school and in this grade, which honestly I cannot believe. At my old school in Chicago I never taught in the same grade more than 2 years in a row. My principal moved people all the time.

When I started pulling things out of the closet, I found some old assignments that I want to remember. I also found some old assignments that I would like to forget. It’s not that they were bad; they weren’t. They just didn’t need some of the coloring and artsy bits to them. Before anyone gets upset here, let me say that I LOVE art. I used to teach art in an after school program; in my fantasy life (the one where I have green eyes and go to yoga classes regularly) I am a sculptor. At my old school I used to give art time as a reward for my class because they had, if everything went perfectly, 1 brief art class a week. Now, however, I teach at a school with a great art program. The projects they do and skills they learn add to the curriculum. I don’t have to make up for anything.

So when I look back at some of the webs that students did that they colored and decorated, I wonder what I was thinking about when I asked them to do that. It was certainly not necessary. For some, it did add to the final ideas, but mostly it was decoration, pure and simple. I had a few students, girls, that first year who loved to color and draw on their webs and they looked so nice that I think I just added decoration as part of the assignment. It should have been optional if it had to be done by hand. It must have been SO tedious for some students. And, for what end?

Well, they did look great in the hallway!

In the years since, I have been moving more and more away from craft projects that I can’t justify educationally. I still love art when it is art. I just don’t think that having fifth graders make a paper puppets of book characters, for example, is good use of language arts time. Now, if we are making a scale drawing of the classroom or some historical structure that’s different. There’s a lot going on: fractions, measuring, researching, etc. I know that a lot of those crafty projects are stereotypically “girl” projects. I teach in a co-ed school with lots of artistic students. And, in non-art classes I think it is up to me to encourage, insist on, facilitate, and model creativity in the broadest of terms. So, while traditional art and craft are part of that, so are inspiration webs, glogs, skits, blog writing, and on and on. As a teacher of all the students in my room, it’s up to me to make sure everyone has a way to access creativity, not just the colorers. So, there are crafty options, but there are also creative, non-crafty options, which means that not all of them make for exciting bulletin boards.

Mostly, I think that’s progress.

 

(Creative commons licensed photo by Quack the Wooley Duck)