Friday, October 21, 2011

Thumbs Up

The presentation left the audience feeling upbeat. Our principal gave it high praise in an e-mail to teachers last night when he described it as "interesting and...well paced..."
Congratulations to all.
Natalie, Louis and I will figure out a way to post a link to the presentation so anyone who missed it can have a look. I'll be posting a link to students' sources shortly.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Run Through tomorrow

After today's practice presentation and feedback, I'm really excited to see the run-through tomorrow afternoon at Waterman's. It will give us one more shot to smooth out the transitions and prepare to shine in the evening. Everyone's presentations have coalesced into a real group presentation, a synthesis of like experience from different perspectives.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Crunch Time

Though Friday morning's run through had the expected rough spots, the order felt logical and students seemed to begin to see the flow of the presentation.

 I urged students to use this space as a forum for sharing ideas. Again. I am finding it surprising that though they will share their thoughts on FaceBook w/ abandon, putting them on another form of digital publishing meets with resistance.

In general the presentations are better, more focused, more coherent, than the last time we saw them. However, several people, Riley, Avery/Ethan, Dalton, Gabe, Kennedy should get some advice on punctuation and language issues. Apostrophes seem to present a challenge. Remember, an apostrophe goes in "it's" only when it is short for "it is." "Its" is already possessive. Ex: Its zebra-like stripes were black and white. Also, Kristen wished for bigger fonts a few times.

I have specific notes for almost everyone, so I urge students to contact me via comments here, email, GoogleDocs, or at school Monday for those.

The assessment for this process and production is fully half your first trimester English grade.
 


Wednesday, October 12, 2011

PSAT-lightened class

Kristen, Janis, Courtney and I rivaled the student numbers this morning as students worked on their fall presentations.

For the kids who were here, we made a GoogleDoc for a script as a place they can write an outline of their presentation.

Leta led a discussion to help us find an logic for the presentation and also connect the work we do for the presentation to the expedition itself.

We decided that we would find the logic of people's choices of topics according to the chronology of the trip. Click here for the current presentation order.

Each "Day Group" is responsible for writing its own introduction connecting the happenings of the day with the topics about to be explored.

Here is the place to make sure you are meeting our expectations regarding the rubrics that contain the word "script."

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Deadline Alert

We'll have another showing of work in progress Thursday morning first thing. For the most productive use of our time (part of our expectation), students will fill any major gaps in information or logic by then. We will address individually or collectively timing, script and/or technical issues and questions.

Between now and then, for the best possible presentation and best possible grade, students should take another look at the rubric(s).

No HS meeting this busy, short week...

means Thank-yous are still pending.

Friday I delivered the school's thank-you gift to my neighbors the Camerons, and they were delighted.

Ethan and Kennedy's note to the school board has been edited and forwarded to Kennedy, who will revise by tomorrow.




Friday, October 7, 2011

We saw two more presentations...

this morning, Dalton's look at log driving and Megan's work on solutions for polluting paper mills. Though we all thought the pictures worked well, the fact that he didn't know where many were taken creates a problem both as far as the project's focus on the Penobscot Watershed and the requirement that all information be carefully sourced.

Megan wants to work on her script and fill out her story more with details of obstacles to the closed system mill.

Riley finished his thank-you note. Others will work on them in advisory.

1005 update: Craig finished his time w/ G. Canter and showed us his presentation on electro-fishing. We agreed that it contained lots of information we'd never seen. Craig wants to replace his Wikipedia sourcing w/ the sources Wikipedia is using--double-checking, of course, that it is the actual source of his information.

When do we want to try hotlinking w/in the presentation? Tuesday?