Final ImagineIT Report
As I reflect on my ImagineIT project, I’m really happy with the steps I went through and the results I have seen happen so far. My ImagineIT project was to make history more relevant to my students by connecting to their culture and making the topics we study relevant to their own lives. What I learned from my book, The Dreamkeepers, is that I need to do what is best for my students despite what administration thinks I should do in my classroom. This is especially true for this project since I am supposed to be having students read articles that I choose and we focus on main idea, transferable vocabulary words, and constant cold calling and questioning the entire class period. I tried this earlier in the school year and it was a complete disaster. Students were bored, the learning was rote, and students were not engaged in any higher level thinking through these strategies. So I followed the Dreamkeepers suggestions and did what was best for my students. I switched how history was being taught at the school and took a step back so the students could make more decisions on what to study and how to display their knowledge.
I had this idea earlier in the school year when I was told I would be teaching history this year, but the focus group really put the new teaching style in motion. I had done smaller student choice projects that lasted one or two days and during the focus group discussions, these were considered the most popular and where the students were interested in learning and did learn the most. So I knew there was student interest in doing something different than usual, but I wanted to also see what my colleagues thought. They were very impressed and gave good suggestions about other topics that could be taught with a more hands off approach and letting the students do more inquiry based learning. One of the teachers in a part time administrator as well and he was especially supportive despite it being against the principal’s directives for our classes.
Since I began my project, I have learned that I need to do better job of setting up expectations for the result or the depth of the project that the students should accomplish. It is good to give the students the options of what to read and create, but I can do a better job of giving them collaboration rubrics and presentation rubrics.
Looking forward, I plan to have students pick groups that they work with based on presentation choice rather than topic choice. I think this will motivate the reading and creating more since the end goal will be in mind from the beginning.
I had this idea earlier in the school year when I was told I would be teaching history this year, but the focus group really put the new teaching style in motion. I had done smaller student choice projects that lasted one or two days and during the focus group discussions, these were considered the most popular and where the students were interested in learning and did learn the most. So I knew there was student interest in doing something different than usual, but I wanted to also see what my colleagues thought. They were very impressed and gave good suggestions about other topics that could be taught with a more hands off approach and letting the students do more inquiry based learning. One of the teachers in a part time administrator as well and he was especially supportive despite it being against the principal’s directives for our classes.
Since I began my project, I have learned that I need to do better job of setting up expectations for the result or the depth of the project that the students should accomplish. It is good to give the students the options of what to read and create, but I can do a better job of giving them collaboration rubrics and presentation rubrics.
Looking forward, I plan to have students pick groups that they work with based on presentation choice rather than topic choice. I think this will motivate the reading and creating more since the end goal will be in mind from the beginning.
