Pointilism – An Art Project Creation

If my blog posts seem all over the place lately (one about math, one about teaching tools, one about art….) you’ll discover that a big reason for that is I teach a bit of everything!  In this post I wanted to share some amazing pointilism pictures I found on the walls of another school.  It’s a project I’m going to introduce to my own students and use these as my examples.  I thought they were amazing!  I love going to other schools and seeing the art work on their walls.  What creativity we are surrounded by….

Foldables – The Four Window

This is a teaching tool I absolutely love and one of the nice things about it, it’s non-tech.  Although technology is lovely, kids sometimes like to step away from it every now and then.  As one of my kids once said to me….”Sometimes I just want to draw!”

Foldables are a great tool for teaching kids to organize their thoughts.  I’ll show you a basic foldable in this post that I call the “Four Window” foldable.

The requirements are an 11×17 piece of paper.  Fold it in half the “hamburger way” – as my kids say…..

The open it back up so it lays flat again.  You will see your fold line down the center.  Take one flap and fold it back towards the middle line you just created.

Now repeat with the other side.

Take the entire thing and fold it in half again.

Then open it back up – you should have created another fold line that runs across the middle.

Now cut along those fold lines on each side to create four flaps or “windows”.  DO NOT CUT THROUGH THE ENTIRE SHEET OF PAPER.

When you open it up, it should look like this…..

I’ve had kids use these for a variety of reasons:

MATH

On the outside flap find a problem that represents an easy, medium, hard, and challenging question.  On the inside flap solve it mathematically.  Underneath it, describe how you solved the problem or why you took the steps you took.

Or…..this could be used to display the steps in solving a word problem.  They could represent four stages or four elements.  Perhaps four different attempts to solve the same problem?

I’ve also seen this used VERY effectively to teach the 4 co-ordinate plane.  Photocopy a graph into the middle and then each flap represents a quadrant.  Have students investigate to figure out what the rules are for each quadrant and then they write the rules on the front flaps!

SCIENCE

Breaking down vocabulary terms is helpful here.  And you can create as many windows as you need.  I usually have the kids draw a picture of the term on the outside flap, have their won definition of the term on the inside flap and then use the other part for examples of why they need to know that term or examples of when it will be used.  It could also be used for breaking down procedural steps in an experiment.

ELA

The possibilities here are endless.  Planning stories (characters, plot, setting, climax) or (intro, rising action, climax, conclusion), creating characters in depth and details, analyzing a newspaper article and breaking it up into Who, What, Where, When, Why, How.  You could use it to find four samples of poetry that fit a certain theme, break down cartoon strips and analyzing them frame by frame.

Social Studies

Here’s where I actually have some pictures to go with my example!  I use foldables a great deal when I need kids to break down major concepts into manageable chunks.  One of our topic questions for the Grade 8 year is “To what extent should someone force their worldview upon another culture?”  What a loaded question!

To break down a culture’s worldview I usually break it up into four main sections:  Geography, Society, Religion, Values.  In looking at the Aztecs there are two cultures to examine, the Spanish and the Aztecs.  So we do a  mini-case study and then my students produce these as we go along.  One section at a time….

So each window has it’s own category and student’s draw a picture on the outside flap to represent that aspect of Spanish/Aztec worldview.  The picture doesn’t need to be a stellar piece of artwork, but it does need to communicate the heart of what the culture values and believes in.

So what’s on the inside?

All their notes.  We study each section individually and then THEY choose what’s important and write that into their foldable.  It’s a way to capture and summarize the worldview of that section.  And I can tell you this much, by the time the kids ar done with this activity they pretty much know their information inside and out (get it?  There’s an inside and a outside of the foldable…..?  Ok, the kids groaned too.)

In Summary….

Foldable are a great non-tech tool for having kids organize just about anything you want them to categorize.  It’s a pretty effective tool and I use it across different curriculum strands.  Another option for your teacher backpack!

There are other types of foldables and as I have more time I’ll add additional ones to my blog.  But this is a great simple one to get started with and it’s the style I use the most often.

Cheers!

Personal Investment: The Hunger Games Project

My middle school staff has been working on a project involving the book “The Hunger Games” for the past two months.  Really this brain child of ours was conceived waaaaay back at the beginning of the school year.

Our idea was to have our students investigate the book with the mindful purpose of having them film a scene from within it.  This soon became a mixed grade project that involved our students in 6,7, and 8.  Then, through a round of twitter conversations, it grew to include a school to the far north in our division. It grew even bigger than we imagined.

Personal investment is a crazy thing.  Since we had been working on this since September, as teachers our personal investment was really high.  We spent some of our AISI fund working with a Critical Thinking Consultant who helped us to form and shape out paper ideas into reality.  There were many hours of planning, blood, sweat, and tears that went into this project.  Then it came time to actually do it…..

Since our personal investment was so high, it was a little crushing when it didn’t go exactly as we had envisioned it.  Some of the kids weren’t as engaged as we thought they’d be, our timing was a bit off in terms of reading the novel, scripting, and filming scenes, and of course there was the small glitch of having filming right smack during the week of report cards and parent teacher interviews (BIG oops there….)

We spent hours with the kids after school and came in on weekends to help them with this project.  When personal investment is high, you are willing to do pretty much anything to get the job done.  Even if it’s searching google images at 2:00am to try and find the perfect background picture for a green screen because it’s all you can think about anyways and you just can’t sleep…..

But what about the kids?

We knew about 80% of them were highly invested in this project as well.  20 of them even gave up 5 hours on a Sunday to come film at the school.  The brought in costumes and spent forever in the makeup room perfecting their look because they wanted things just right.  They begged me to come in on my day off to help them film because they honestly believed my guidance would get them the scene they wanted (and yes, I did go in…..dragging my 3 year old with me the whole time…..)

So we took them to see the movie in a special screening yesterday.  Their final project is a comparison between the Hollywood Version and their own version to answer the question…..Which movie was a more accurate representation of the novel?  There are several criteria elements that go with that but the layout of the project is another blog post altogether (and yes…..it’s coming).

The results were astonishing.  After the movie, several of my students were looking glum and told me they hated it.  Why?  Because:

1.  Their scene was cut.

2.  Their scene was severally diminished.

3.  Their scene was so different from the one in the Hollywood version.

At first I thought….dear Lord what have we done to these poor kids?  But then I thought better of it.  They were critical of the movie because they were so personally invested in their own work!  They knew their scene inside and out!  The plot, the characters,even the lines in the script had become so personal to them that any deviation from it resulted in a serious negative reaction.

We polled the groups afterwards (all 20 of them) to find out what they thought.  While some kids really liked their scene they were in the minority.  Most kids either gave it a “thumbs down” or a “thumbs to the side”.

Personal investment……I love it.

This project has been huge.  It took over our school, it took over our lives…..I lost many hours of sleep at night simply because my brain would NOT SHUT OFF when it came to planning or ideas that were rolling around in there.

And in the end we are going to have a final product that’s amazing.  And what an experience this has been!  Years from now the students probably won’t remember my lessons on script writing very much, but I bet when they see each other they’ll say….”Hey, do you remember that time in Middle School when we made that movie…..?”

Pi Day

Aw Pi day……a day to eat pie.  Well, it is circular…..

Photo courtesy LeJyBy at Flickr Creative Commons

But if you’re a math teacher like I am, we get kinda giddy about this day.  I like to use it to answer the age old question of, “Why is Pi 3.14?”

This is a really simple activity you can do with your students too.  It requires different sized circles (I bring in cans), cm grid paper, scissors and masking tape.

I usually put my kids into pairs and then the activity goes something like this:

Step One

Place the bottom edge of one of your cans/lids/circular objects at the base of the cm grid paper and trace it.  Now, count the height of your circle (estimating as best you can)….this is also a great time to talk about how this is the diameter of the circle.

Step Two

Have students wind masking tape around the outer edge of the circle (the circumference) – trying to get the edges of the tape to match up as precisely as they can.  The scissors help here.

Take the masking tape carefully off the lid/can and place it on the grid paper next to the circle you just traced.  Make sure the edge of the tape is right along the baseline and try to get it to go as straight up as possible.

Step Three

If you compare the ratio of the height of the traced circle to the height of the masking tape….students ultimately come out with an answer very close to 3.14.  Some of my kids actually got it bang on last year (well, if you cut off the rest of the continuing decimal places).

After all….the formula for circumference of a circle is

C= Pi * d

So it makes sense that C/d = Pi

And if they repeat this with different sized cans/lids (I try to get them with at least three different objects) they will see that this ratio holds constant…..hence why Pi is 3.14.

Cool hey?

Sorry I don’t have pictures to go with this blog post!  I will after tomorrow.

Another Bad Teacher

March is a hard month.

Another round of report cards and parent conferences coming up.  The realization that the school year is a mere 3 1/2 months away from completion and you still have 6 months of curriculum left.  There’s already talk about job placements and course loads for the following year.  Part of me wants to sigh very heavily….

And to make it worse, some of us are getting run down and this makes our thick teaching skin a little thinner.

Recently a colleague of mine in another school confessed that she has a particular parent that has been trying to get her child transferred out of my friend’s classroom because this parent feels her child has a “bad teacher”.  It has resulted in numerous phone calls, e-mails, and meetings with administration.

To her it’s disheartening.  And when she says to me, “Am I a bad teacher?”, the friend part of me wants to say, “Of course not!”  But the teacher in me remembers my own story and says, “You need to consider the source.”

Not this year, but in another year with different kids and a different set of parents, I was contacted by Parent A who was concerned about what she’d heard Parent B saying about me within the community.  Conversations often take place in the skating arenas of small towns where teachers are tried, convicted without even having been present for the conversation.

Parent B had a child in my classroom.  According to her, I was also a “bad teacher”.  And here was my list of transgressions:

1.  I didn’t assign homework.  This means I was failing to get my Grade 8 students ready for high school.  I should be giving out at least 1 – 2 hours of homework a night.

2.  I wasn’t strict enough in class.  I needed to crack down on rules and maintain hard discipline in my classroom.  I was too “lax” with the rules and should have a zero tolerance policy within my classroom.

3.  I spent too much time on projects when the kids should be writing notes and learning how to decipher a textbook.  That’s what would be happening to them in high school and I should be getting them ready now.

4.  I wasn’t testing enough.  I only ever did projects in Social Studies and Language Arts and my tests in Math and Science were too few.  I should be running weekly quizzes and tests and why were my kids not writing spelling tests anymore?

5.  I was focusing too much on “entertaining” my students when I needed to be doing drill and practice.

And as a result……parent B believed I was not doing a good job of teaching any of the skills I should be teaching and had no problem telling the rest of the community that. I should also mention this was after parent conferences when Parent B requested I stop doing so many projects and start giving more “high school like tests”.  Parent B didn’t like my answer.  Parent A was upset because she also had a child in my class and her child felt I was a good teacher.

My response……not a thing.  I didn’t call up Parent B, I didn’t ask my administrator to shut Parent B down.  Why?  Because in all honesty, I thought that Parent B’s definition of what constituted a “good teacher” was a bit archaic.  We often find ourselves teaching children of parents that seems to think drill and kill practices, piling on testing, and boards full or notes are good teaching because that’s the way THEY were taught.  And look how they turned out?

I think it’s also important to consider that of the many professions out there most of us would agree that we could never fly a plane just because we’ve been a passenger on a jet, or perform surgery just because we were in a hospital once, or cater a dinner to hundreds just because we make supper for our family every night.  And yet…..many parents feel qualified to judge the way we teach because after all, everyone has been to school.

I don’t think I’m a bad teacher.  I think I was judged by archaic standards that I no longer believe hold true.  And at the end of the day, while I regret that parent thinks (and likely still tells everyone) what a bad teacher I am, I know I’m doing what’s best for my kids.  And I will continue to think and act accordingly.  If this makes me a bad teacher?  So be it…..  I won’t give in on what I believe are good teaching practices so that parent will like me.  Teaching isn’t a popularity contest.  Over the years I’ve had parents phone me and tell me what a wonderful year their child has had and what a good teacher they think I am.  Other quite obviously believe I’m awful and June couldn’t come fast enough.  Oh well.  My mother always said, You can’t please everyone!

It’s getting harder to maintain that thick skin though.  Where before I was being tried in hockey arenas and only ever found out about it if another parent stepped forward, today’s teachers are finding themselves targeted on Facebook through status comments.  This often allows for that “Band Wagon” effect too since we tend to be friends with people who are like us.

Another teacher recently told me this story:  One parent posts an update to the effect of “Just got through talking to my child’s teacher and I’m considering homeschooling.”  And it blows up when one friend responds with, “Maybe you should remind her it’s your tax dollars paying her salary!”  And another says, “Teacher’s think they know our kids better then we do!”  And yet another….”You should phone and complain.  That will show her….”

You need a thick skin.  And just as creatures evolve over time, so too does the teaching profession.  Remember that you are doing what’s best for your students and that it’s your relationship with them that really counts.  Often engaging a parent in a confrontation over what they said about you in the hockey arena could wind up in forcing that child to take sides, which no one wants.

Stay strong, fight the good fight.  In the end this will make you a “good” teacher.

Redo’s, Late Mark Deduction’s, Zeros…

Oh how I love the staff room conversation around these hot button topics.  Never fails to get someone’s blood pressure rising.  I was recently asked what my personal views are on these three issues.  So here they are:

REDOs

Always and forever will I let kids redo work.  My favourite thing to hear is a student who says, “Can I redo this?  I think I can do a  better job.”  I NEVER turn these kids down.  Why would I?  If they want to put in the work and effort to make their learning better I would be doing them a huge disservice to say, “Sorry, but that assignment is over.”

However, that being said…..I don’t believe in forcing redos.  I don’t hand back things and say, You Must Redo This.  Unless the kid really wants to, it’s pointless.  I encourage and offer guidance and assistance, but I never tell them they have to.

You can drag a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.  And if he isn’t going to drink, why did you waste all that energy dragging him there in the first place?  Wouldn’t it be much better if the horse walked there on his own?

LATE MARK DEDUCTIONS

This subject actually came up in my class today when I gave back an assignment.  One kid, who didn’t have it done yet, asked, “If I still do this and hand it in, will I lose marks?”

“No,” I said.

He gave me this shocked look and said, “Really?  How come?”

I looked at him and said, “Two reasons.  One, I want you to learn it.  It doesn’t matter to me if that’s by your schedule or mine.  And two, taking marks off your assignment because it’s late isn’t a true reflection of what you really learned.”

I firmly believe this.  I set deadlines because I’m forced to adhere to some sort of a schedule, but at the end of the day I don’t really care if you took until Wednesday to learn what I had scheduled for Monday.  It’s simply not fair.  We don’t all learn at the same rate or at the same time.  To penalize someone for that isn’t in my ethical code.

ZEROs

I don’t give zeros.  To give someone a zero is to say that they have learned absolutely nothing.  So if a student fails to hand something in, I can’t give him a zero because I didn’t have anything to assess.

I do give “Insufficient’s”.  Some argue that this a “fancy zero” but I disagree.  A zero is still a method of categorization, whether that student legitimately scored that zero or was given the zero as a method of punishment for non-compliance.  When I give an “insufficient” I’m sending the message that I don’t have enough evidence with which to make an informed decision about your level of competence.  Thankfully these instances are few and far between.

Some kids would rather take a “zero” or an “insufficient” than turn in that assignment and “fail” it.  This is something I struggle with as a teacher and it’s really another post all on it’s own.

But for those who wanted to know, these are my personal policies and beliefs.  They are called hot button topics for a reason.  I’m sure every staff room has debated them at some point and there are no perfect solutions.  Thankfully I teach in a school where I am permitted my own autonomy with these types of decisions.  A strict school wide policy has not been in place to force me to give zeros or deduct marks.  I know other teachers aren’t so lucky.

For those who are still debating about these three issues I encourage you to think about your teaching practice and the message that you want to send to your students about what learning means in your classroom.

Is learning a schedule that needs to be strictly adhered to?  If you don’t learn it when I say you should, is fair for me to punish you because you didn’t learn it on my schedule?  Are you classroom assessments designed to motivate learning, or to gain compliance through fear and punishment?

What hit home for me was when I was asked in a seminar six years ago….do your methods promote learning?  Or stifle it?

 

Science Fair

Ah, it’s good ole Science Fair season!  That time when kids delve into projects of interest and pursue their own passionate questions.

That’s one of the things I love about Science Fair.  It invites students to a) ask a question and b) figure out the answer.  Although it’s a little obvious when you wander around projects as to who had perhaps a bit more parent influence than others.  Really?  Your kindergarten kid decided to make their own telescope out of scrap parts in your garage?  And then use it to map the path of comets and asteroids across the sky? (This is an exaggeration by the way – I’ve never seen a project like this -, but you get my point.)

I think it’s this help that has some people grumbling and ranting about Science Fair.  They think it’s more the parents doing the project than the kids, or that it’s too time consuming, or that it’s just one more thing in an already busy schedule, or…..(cringe)….”I don’t have time for Science Fair, I have curriculum to cover!”

No matter what “help” kids get with their project, the idea of exploring a question just so you can find out the answer is what makes me so in love with Science Fairs.  Sure there are awards, and I admit that it can definitely put a damper on things when kids don’t win them.  That’s why we really try to focus on the project itself with our daughter.

This year it’s all about tornados.  She’s come up with a  list of 8 questions she would like to use to investigate tornados.  They range from what a tornado actually is to how it compares with a hurricane and what kind of damage it actually does.  I think this was spawned by a very real threat our town faced regarding tornados last summer.  We were so concerned that the storm around our town could spawn a tornado that we went so far as to gather up water and emergency supplies in our basement, just in case.

She also read a book called, “The Strongest Man This Side of Cremona,” which is all about when a tornado really did touch down in Cremona, AB.  This is the town where I teach and it’s only twenty minutes from where we live in Carstairs.

That’s the real power of science fair: the ability to take something that fascinates you, investigate it, and then share your learning with others.

When they get older (such as my students in Grade 8) Science Fair kind of becomes an “uncool” thing.  They say it’s boring or that only smart kids enter.  And yet last year when I challenged my students to a “Bust a Myth” competition (inspired by the Discovery Channel show Mythbusters) they were all so eager to formulate some sort of question and then run their experiments.  Hmmmm, sounds remarkably like a Science Fair project doesn’t it?  And I left behind my “curriculum” for an entire month so my students could pursue their projects.  Technically I was still teaching them about running a science experiment so it wasn’t a complete departure, but our studies on Mechanical Systems came to a grinding halt.

I wonder if “Science Fair” perhaps has some negative stereotype connotations that we need to work around.  But I believe in the good a Science Fair project can have on a child’s learning and imagination.  I will continue to encourage my daughter to do one each year.  She already has plans for next year’s project.

Lord, help me…….it’s a lot of work.  I admit it.  But so very worth it when my daughter reads something and the light goes on and she exclaims, “Mom!  Did you know tornados come in different sizes!”  Or when my student’s come up to me and exclaim, “Rice really does save your electronics!” (according to their results….)

And really it doesn’t have to be about science.  I’ve soon schools that run Historica Fair, Renaissance Fair, Identity Day, etc.  All of them give students a chance to pursue a passion and share their knowledge with others.  At the end of the day, as a teacher, this is all I ever want to inspire my kids to achieve.

Question, Investigate, Share!

Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?

I used to hate the television show because it seemed to make a mockery of the education system.  After all….. they were showing successful doctors, lawyers, physicists losing a trivia competition to ten year olds!

Then I thought about it a little more…..

And decided that really what the show seems to prove is that the facts, knowledge, and trivia that are required to be a successful Grade 5 student seem to have little to no impact or bearing on how successful you will become later in life.  What you learn in Grade 5 can be easily forgotten because beyond that grade, you didn’t need that information for anything other than trivial pursuit or other such games.  Do they ever ask anything that I couldn’t google and find the answer to in exactly thirty seconds?

I used to think that maybe the TV show needed changing.  Now I’m thinking maybe it’s the curriculum that needs changing.

Sure it’s funny to have a company CEO with four degrees say, “I am not smarter than a fifth grader,” once he answers wrong the question about what the world’s largest continent is by population.  Are they embarrassed?  Probably.

What I find more embarrassing is that ten years ago when I first started teaching, I think I put that question on a test.

Bluffton School Symposium

 

I drove up with several other teachers to a little hamlet called Bluffton, Alberta today (Go on, Google it.  You know you want to.)  I watched a keynote, attended a few sessions and now I’m reflecting on my personal learning.  Since I was tweeting all day today to the hashtag #bltech, it’s very easy for me to go back and read what my thoughts were as I went about my learning.  Twitter is very handy for that.

After attending a conference of any kind I try to think about what my BIG THREE key learnings or take-aways were from the event.  Too many people try to take back EVERYTHING and then they feel so overwhelmed that they put it all away and the majority of what they learned is lost.  I’ve discovered the magic number of things to try and institute in my class or reflect on seems to be three.  Today I have one key learning and two ideas for my classroom.  So here are my Big Three from Bluffton, Alberta today.

#1:  George Corous – Keynote Speaker

George talked about the fact that we often get together to talk about technology but really it’s not about the technology as much as it’s about the learning.  Technology is no longer just a “tool”.  It is a medium through which we capture creativity, express innovation, engage ourselves as learners, and propel ourselves further into the world.

A teacher’s job is figuring out how to use technology in a purposeful way that captures all of this.  It’s not about “How do I make a YouTube video?”  It’s about “What will I use YouTube to create and display to the world?”  It’s not, “How does Twitter work?” it’s “How will I use Twitter to expand my world?”

George has a line in his keynote that he attributes to Dean Shareski:  If you think the internet is a place to go and look stuff up, you’re missing the best part.

#2:  The Book of Awesome

I found myself in a session that was about digital photography but one of the things mentioned captured my creative interest.  It was mentioned that out there is a project commonly referred to as “The Book of Awesome.”  I think it may have started with the ACTUAL Book of Awesome (a book about things that are simply….well…awesome!)

It’s basically a portfolio that kids put together of all the “awesome” things they have learned/displayed/done.  He was using a digital photography class to create a Book of Awesome pictures but my mind began reeling with other possibilities.

What if every kid had a Book of Awesome for their year?  It could hold entries like when they learned that cool magic trick.  The lunch hour they came up with a cool invention.  Yes, the pictures they have taken.  The song they wrote.  The moment they finally made their first basket from the free throw line.  The cool quote they heard.  When that math problem FINALLY clicked.  The best project they ever completed.  The best creative thing they ever produced.  The teacher that inspired them that day.  A current event that changed their life.  The possibilities are endless…..

A Book of Awesome…..

What a powerful thing to put together and have for student lead conferences.  What an amazing document of a year of learning!

#3:  Edmodo – A Tool for Collaboration

Ok, confession…..I’ve heard people talking about Edmodo forever.  But it was kind of like Twitter for me.  Until I actually experienced it for myself I didn’t see it as anything more than “just another thing”.

The presenter was talking about Edmodo mostly as way of disseminating notes and notifying kids about homework assigned and calendars of events but I saw the potential for something else, since I don’t really assign homework or give tests/quizzes.

Edmodo looks a lot like Facebook at the outset, which is probably why it appeals to so many of the youth in our classrooms.  You get an account as a teacher and create a group that the students can join.  But this is very private.  The teacher has full control over what is seen on the wall and who joins the group.

I see the collaboration possibilities and being huge with this.  It gives students a safe place to have an online community and possibly discuss answers to critical thinking questions, pose a thought or an idea to receive feedback, complete a poll as a method of starting a conversation, keep a calendar of events.

It wouldn’t really be a “social media” outlet per say, but rather a controlled environment (by the teacher) with a specific and intentional purpose.

Parents can get codes to join the group and see what their own child is doing without viewing any other information as well.  What a great classroom communication tool.  Parents and students can even send messages directly to the teacher through this device.  And if you set it up this way, the notifications can go straight to your cell phone.  (Pro?  Con?  Up to you…..)

 

My learning extended to a  great many things today but if I try to do it all then I’m going to feel overwhelmed.  So these are my thoughts on one take-away for myself and two items of interest for my classroom.  What a fabulous day.  Thank you to the teachers of Wolf Creek for sharing what they are doing within their own classrooms.  I’ve always said that as a teacher the most impact you can have within your profession is to simply share what you are doing with others.  Bluffton School put on a fabulous day and I’m so glad I got to be a part of it.

To Exemplar Or Not To Exemplar…..

I’ve had quite a few questions lately about if and when I use exemplars in the classroom.  I’m of two different minds on this issue.  There are definitely pro’s and con’s:

PRO’S

1.  It provides a clear example of what it is you are looking for.  This means students have a clear idea of the target and know what they are aiming for.

2.  They can be used to demonstrate what NOT to do as well as what is good to do.

3.  They can be used as a comparison source for self evaluation.  Is mine as good as the exemplar?  Better?  Not quite there yet?

4.  If student created, it gives an idea of what past students have created and what would be age/grade appropriate at that level.

But with all these pro’s there are also some con’s I’ve found over the years.

CON’S

1.  Student’s might view the exemplar as completely out of their reach.  It seems to them that it’s far better than anything they could ever come up with and so they give up before they even try.  This is the peril of always showing the “best case” exemplar.  You might be able to show some levelled exemplars but then you run into this problem….

2.  Students only aim for what the exemplar is providing.  It stifles the creativity of the higher achievers who may have given you something even better.  And likewise, the lower achievers aim for the “passable minimum” if they think that’s all they have to do.

3.  You get twenty five copies of what you showed them.  Ugh.  I had this situation with a class I taught about 8 years ago.  If I showed them an exemplar of a poster I liked, I got 18 copies of that poster basically.  They aim to recreate the exemplar to this finest detail instead of infusing their own creativity.

4.  Exemplars aren’t always available or appropriate, depending on your assignment.

 

So in other words….I’m neither pro nor against the use of exemplars.  I do use them.  Absolutely.  Especially when it’s something brand new that I may have never asked of them before.  For example, when we started using Glogster to create digital posters I needed to show them exemplars of what was possible to do with this online program.  When we used Fakebook to create profiles for Montezuma and Cortes I showed them what I was looking for (But using another historical character!  I was clever about that at least.)

Most recently I took on a project that required creating an adapted screenplay of a scene from a novel.  I had never done this myself before so we looked at published on line scripts (an exemplar) and then used that to create our own script.  We built one together as a class so they could watch me fight with the formatting and talk about how you take information from a book and fit it into a screenplay.  Now, after having viewed a professional screenplay and a class created screenplay, they are off to do an independent scene.  So I think this is an effective use of an exemplar.

But I pick and choose when I use exemplars with a great deal of thought. I don’t want kids to parrot back to me what they’ve seen in an exemplar.  My general question I ask myself is: Will this help them make their own work better?  Or will it just give them something to copy/mimic?

Use your best judgement, you’ll know what works for you and your students in your classroom.