Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Book Ends


In Room 503 when we come to the end of an Independent Reading book, we work on a week-long project that culminates in a classroom presentation. This afternoon we were treated to the first round of presentations.


Five students completed their first Independent book last week and followed up with turning in a Project Form. Just as students get to choose what book they'd like to read (as long as it's not a book they've read before), they also get their choice of project (as long as they don't repeat the same project). Each student is given one week between completion of their book and their project presentation.


Today we had three people who made book jackets for their books Victor Dinh, Claire Ternyik and Samuel Walterscheid. Each student created new cover art and wrote their own summary-version of the book. Each of the book jackets presented were well-done, thoughtful and creative.


Meghan Menendez created a terrific poster/collage for her book, The Sick Cat Poster and Max Steadman dressed up as Ben, from Dragon Rider, and told the story from his character's point of view. He looked terrific and really brought parts of the story to life.


I was very pleased and impressed with this first go-round of presentations. The two main things everyone still needs to work on are articulation and projection. Body carriage and keeping energy focused (as in curbing the habit of flailing arms) is another area that requires attention, as does kicking the ever-nervous habits of interspersing "um" and "like" between every few words.


Nonetheless, I was impressed and inspired by each of these five students' willingness to take the plunge and put in some very good work on their own time. Giving students options to explore what they like and how they like to do it empowers them, in many ways, to take responsibility and dig deeper because they want to. Hopefully, these will become life-long habits and inspire life-long learning.


Cheers,

Ms. Pitman