Assessment

  What has been the largest struggle as teachers and students involved in this project so far is how to assess the product?  We sat down this week to try to hammer that out.  What we have decided (for now) is that we will be using a COPS sheet that has been created by the board. We also created Learning Goals and Success Criteria to present to the students which are on the back of the handout for students.  We did hit a snag this week with our work period.  Many students were away for 4 days on a school trip so we chose the 5th day as a work day.  The unfortunate part was that one class was not able to participate so many groups were not complete for the work period.  Students were given shown the Learning Goals and Success Criteria as well as their next steps and the expectation that they will have a proposal put together by the end of the next work period.  We had initially thought we would have teachers choose which groups they would like to be advisors for, but have changed our thinking.  Instead, we will look over all of the proposals and decide what would be the best fit based on the product they will create.  For example:  a group that would like to create something in the metal shop will be advised by the metal shop teacher and a group that would like to create an art exhibit will be advised by the art teacher.  Furniture and materials are starting to arrive and so far we have our large-format printer, stools, and a new Chromebook Cart.

The Kids are Getting Started

We had our first session yesterday that allowed the kids to finally get together in their groups and get to work.  After our Group Dynamics session last week, they were keen to start.  Groups got together and started to brainstorm about the goal that they had chosen and things they could do to promote that goal to others.  There is still some confusion with the kids regarding what the project is really all about, but there were some great ideas flowing once they got over their initial shyness with their group members.  One thing we found is that there are some students that are not arriving at the Innovation Centre after leaving their classroom.  We changed a couple of groups so that the kids that were there and really want to be involved in the project are working together.  We had a happy coincidence occur in that a cart full of Chromebooks arrived at school on Thursday so they were charged and ready to go.  Students also have a cart full of MacBooks at their disposal once they start to work on their actual products.  We tried to be clear that they will not have a great deal of time to work on their project since we need them completed by May 20.  The teachers are going to need to meet sometime soon to come up with the assessment rubric and figure out that whole piece.  The next question to be answered is:  If the students don't end up doing something related to the subject matter in my specific class, how will we assess them?  We really don't have an answer to that at this point, but I hope we can come up with one very soon.

Brainstorming

Researching Ideas For Life Under Water