Presentation Prep

Today is crazy! Our final presentations will be next Thursday so students are madly working on speeches, posters, multi-media components and interactive presentations. We've sent out our invites and are super excited to see who shows up next week. Please come see what these students have prepared for you!

Speeches before Beaches!

It's almost the end of the year - 14 more days of school left. That means it's time for us to wrap up our 20% Time Projects before we hit the beaches this summer. What a great way to end the year!

Students are currently working on outlines for their speeches and thinking about how they will present their projects. I've given them outlining resources and pointed them in the direction of some of the top speeches last year (at least that were posted on the blogs) to get inspiration.

To read some of last year's speeches, check out the following students' blogs:

Celeigh
Annes
Brooke
Donghan
Gabriel
Luke
Nate
Meredith
Kevia

April 8th Update

Good Morning!

It's a beautiful Friday morning in Auburn, AL. This morning, I'm taking some time to peruse the student blogs. Some exciting things have been happening lately. First, I'm starting to notice students taking more control and independence in their projects.

Luke set up a personal tour with Officer Roberson of our local police station and got to go with him and see all sorts of behind the scenes stuff. This is really cool to me, because Luke really wants to be in law enforcement when he graduates. It is so awesome that he was able to get a hands-on experience like that! Many students this age have a general idea of what kind of job they want when they "grow up," but often, students at this age don't really realize what that job entails or what the day-to-day work in the job might be like.

Kekeli is working on composing and strengthening her drumming skills. I'm loving reading her blog and watching her videos. It seems like she's actually learning quite a bit about teaching music - much of her time has been spent working with other students with musical projects. I'm interested to see what her final learnings will be at the end of 20% time this year.

Shelton and Sarah have been working hard to find someone to help them learn to play guitar. I'm proud of them for expanding their horizons and tracking down teachers who are available during 3rd block to help them. I got an email yesterday from Mrs. Carson, our library aide, asking when our 20% time started so she could bring her guitar - which means Sarah and Shelton worked out a lesson arrangement with Mrs. Carson all on their own.

I know some of this might seem silly to some, but these are big steps for 8th graders. Sometimes talking to adults you don't know, teaching peers and experiencing new things can be scary and intimidating (let's be real, those things still scare and intimidate me too!). I'm so happy that they are pushing their comfort zones and learning to do this stuff before they get to high school and college.

I just highlighted a few today, but please take the time to look through more of the student blogs linked on this page. They are all in different phases of their learning, and each phase is valuable and important. I can't wait to see what they come up with next!

Brain Space

Today is exactly one week until spring break. Even though student (and teacher) brains stop working during the few days before any school holiday, our 20% time brains are fully functioning.

I think students are finally getting their minds wrapped around these projects because I'm getting a lot of questions today like "Can I change my project to specialize in making Lacrosse sticks instead of writing a sports blog?" and "Can I work on my project outside of school too?"

These are exciting questions for me because it shows me that they're reaching a more realistic thinking zone in terms of their projects. They're really visualizing what the end result might be and starting to understand that to live up to their own standards, they'll want to work on their projects during times other than that I will be providing in class.

Project Proposal Day (a little late)...

Okay, so it's actually the week after project proposal day. I've been sick since last Friday and I am literally just now starting to look at the proposals students submitted last week. I can already see the magic happening. The very first student proposal I read today started with this:

"I wanted to do photography, but I also wanted to do something outside of my comfort zone. Usually I take pictures of objects or of nature. For this project I wanted to do pictures of people. I’ve noticed that a lot of girls feel insecure when taking pictures without makeup on. Society seems to tell people that they need it to look okay. I wanted to do photography of people with little to no makeup on so we can see that everyone is beautiful." 

Well, I think it goes without saying, but I have to say it anyway - the type of thought Katie put into her project proposal is already getting me excited! I can't wait to see how this project turns out.

By the way, I decided to buy some 20% Time teacher literature this year to check up on myself and see if I could get some new ideas. I've been reading Donalyn Miller's The Book Whisperer and Penny Kittle's Book Love and what rings true in both of these books is that kids need to find love and passion in learning! I ordered The 20time Project by Keven Brookhouser which was super reaffirming and gave me some great new ideas. One big change that I think helps a lot is that I used his project proposal template for my students this year. It's a lot more user-friendly for 8th graders and I love the timeline layout - I'm predicting that this will help students achieve their goals and understand how to revise goals throughout the project a little more clearly.

Now, on to helping students set up blogs, post proposals using Google Docs, and giving myself time to read through each project proposal and discuss them with each student.

20% Time 2015-2016

Yay! It's 20% time again! I'm so excited and a little bummed that we're getting a later start this year (last year we started in November), but I think it will help keep us focused and possibly give us a little more oomf in motivation to get projects done by May. Today we started out with our traditional (totally non-traditional) "Bad Ideas Brainstorm." Boy, oh boy, did my students this year have some horrible ideas for what to do with our 20% time projects! Here is a sample of what they came up with: staple all our fingers together, shank someone, dig a hole to China with a spoon, stick a fork up your nose, sleep, eat a desk, drive through a wall.... Yep, I sure am glad we recognized those as bad ideas! Of course, some of those bad ideas became good ideas. Some interesting ideas I heard today were write a travel blog, take self defense classes, and learn how to cook BBQ. I can't wait to see what these kiddos come up with next week when we start our project proposals.