Week 14

The past week was quite uneventful. I did not have anything new planned. The students are in the middle of presenting their Civil War photographic analysis presentations. This is an activity I have done for the past three years. The students are assigned a photo of from the war, they research the photo in order to find out the story behind the photo and present their findings to class. The change I instituted this year was that instead of having all the students present over a 2 to 3 day period, I am having them present in chronological order. They are presenting in coordination with our study of the war. I am hoping to make better connections between their presentations and the content. We are 2 days into the presentations and the connections are being made. The disappointing piece is that the presentations are far below the quality of the past years. I have been trying to figure this out and feel that a couple of the changes my teaching partner made to the project have not been good. He wanted to make it more rigorous, and I am all for that, but I believe it is to complex for seventh graders. The project has engaged the students, but it is frustrating watching sub par presentations. The data I collected this past week was from student exit cards about the project. I kept it simple, on a scale of 1 to 5, what is you enjoyment of the project. The rehire have been at a 4. I anticipated this, knowing how well students in the past enjoyed it. I plan to continue to do the analysis in the future, but wil go back to a more basic analysis. What do you see in the photo? What can you learn from the photo without conducting any research? What have you learned about the photo through your research? We will see how the rest of the presentations go this week. Until next time, Happy Teaching!!