Video stuff below. Looking for Podcast stuff? Here’s a link to my slides on all things podcasting!
Kind of starting from the end, but grading? It’s a common question. Do you grade on ABCDF scale? SBAC Exceeded, Met, Nearly Met, Not Met? What are the criteria? How do you give feedback on all that? Isn’t your feedback more important than a grade, anyway? And hasn’t the rubric craze burned itself out by now? Sadly, no. So here’s my “solution:” do them ALL. Why in quotation marks? Because even though I’m suggesting this as A solution, I still feel the need to fix it every year, which implies it’s not perfect, yet. No… it’s probably not perfect, but stop judging! Jeez! You’re so high maintenance, teacher-reader! Nearly perfect rubric example here that includes ABCDF, SBAC 4 point scale, and descriptors. The project example should meet specific skill standards, be informational, be entertaining, and have a collaboration element.
Part of an individual Final Project for ELA.
Skills applied: theme/life lesson, tone, conflict and other plot elements, author’s choices (analyzed own work as a summative reflection/close read activity, impact of sound effects versus silence, revision in the writing process, communication, tech, etc.
This was from the 3rd Phase of an individual writing assignment Personifying an Element as a collaborative project with rockin’ science teacher, thanks Lisa!
Phase 1: Personify an element in a narrative story. Phase 2: record yourself reading your story aloud. Phase 3: In groups of 3, create a 3-act podcast episode incorporating the audio from Phase 2 around a common theme of your choice. Here is the first 3 minutes of an 8 minute podcast. (Limit was 10 minute episode)
SO MANY skills here. My favorite part aside from all the creativity, was how I now have a recording of students analyzing their own writing, while applying what they learned from analyzing popular podcasts like Radiolab.
Project: Students were given a piece of music to create a silent film. No text, no words.
Literary Devices applied: perspective, tone, pacing/cadence, repetition, plot elements: exposition through resolution.
Specific to film making: when to use closeups (but is transferable to reading analysis on when to give your reader details on settings/characters.
Silent Film Project: Students once again given the music and asked to create a silent film. No text, no speaking. Highly recommend if you are concerned with having a noisy classroom!
Skills: acting (physically and facial expression), tone, how to build suspense, perspective, foreshadowing, unexpected resolution, in media res, collaboration- working together, color/author’s choices, lighting changes.
Project for Spanish 1: Write a children’s book practicing reflexive verbs and sentence structure. Then: narrate reading your book aloud and add sound effects. Also read book aloud to Kindergarten classes after had perfected read-aloud for tech project.
Skills practiced: content area skills, speaking, revision, collaboration, presenting to an audience, and tech skills.
6th graders can do this, too! Here’s a project of students fairly new to digital media production. Project for Science Class: Explain the main functions of a yeast cell.
Literacy skills: Using complete sentences in the content areas, collaboration, revision, speaking, tech.
Teacheree 