Both Honors classes have now presented their collaborative context research pieces and overall, their presentations were as impressive as those given by the AP class (see above for examples of both their work and that of the AP class). I was treated to a Town Crier, a poem, recipe, map, several timelines, a menu and 'Did You Know?' lists. Even more unique was the 3D warrior head, decorated with stained glass mosiac and musical notes to represent how the stories of a warrior's achievements were told, a rather realistic issue of Time magazine and a rap!
The sports-themed game show quiz (complete with opening theme music) also seemed to work well as a consolidation task: students were given ownership of writing both the questions and finding the answers beforehand and their answers demonstrated a solid grasp of the contextual information. They seemed excited by the theme music and prizes and became quite impassioned at times! I did get several students requiring clarification on how they were being graded though, as the expectation seems to be that I would grade them for such a task (and even the word 'quiz' itself has a very different meaning for them; I had to emphasise the 'game show' element in order to enable my students to fully grasp the nature of the activity). In the end, I opted to give them a class participation grade as their true understanding of context will become apparent in their ability to apply it to their analysis of Beowulf.
Those projects looked great! I especially liked the Time Magazine one! Wow!
ReplyDeleteThey really were, and they're not half as impressive out of context as they were when used as a tool for the presentations, when they students were talking/ performing around them.
ReplyDeleteThe Time magazine looks entirely real at first glance :)