Sunday, September 30, 2012

To Increase Creativity or Not?


My project is going to be “A Day in the Life” of a Native American. Students are going to work in groups and choose a particular tribe they would like to learn more about. They will find facts and pictures related to their tribe. The pictures they find will be put into a PhotoStory to represent the facts they find. These facts will be put into a script and written from the perspective of a Native American.  They must use higher-order thinking skills to portray their tribe and not simply regurgitate facts. They will present their projects to the class. Since each group will be researching a different tribe, students will fill out an information chart to gather facts about the other tribes while watching the presentations.

Another piece of creativity or innovation that I could implement is student choice of presentation material. Students could have a choice of PhotoStory or some other tool similar to that. However, for this project I think that element is best saved for another project. This will be the first time students are introduced to PhotoStory, so I think that will be a challenge in itself. After students have been introduced to this software, they will have a better idea of what there is to work with for a later time.

4 comments:

  1. I agree that saving the student choice might be something that would best be saved for another project. Maybe you could have a conversation with the teacher about this and if she chooses to do another project in the future she could allow the students to choose their tool.

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  2. Yeah the only thing I can think of to be more creative is to allow them to choose "A Day in the Life" through multiple avenues and producing different products. But I don't think that is the right avenue for you at this moment, especially for the level of students you are working with.

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  3. Student choice is always a great way to add a creative twist to a project, so I think that is a great idea. You could also have the student create artifacts they believe are representative of their tribe based on their research.

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  4. Your project seems already creative! I really like the idea of having students write a script/story. I think you can also give students a choice of writing the story from different members of the tribe. For example, one group may choose to write a script written from a perspective of the tribal chief; another group writes from a perspective of a child of the tribal chief. Just an idea! ;)

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