Organizing Project Work
Here are three ideas for organizing students review of Learning
Circle project materials:
1. Creating a Database to Organize Project Work
Your Learning Circle project might provide an opportunity
to teach your students how to use a database program. Here are some ideas
of how to use a database either to analyze information collected for their
Learning Circle project or to organize the review process of the articles
received from the other classrooms
Analyzing Project Information:
Students can set up a database for the project and add information
as it is supplied by the other classrooms. Help the students understand
how to code, display and print different presentations of the data. In
this way, students can see how this tool helps them understand the relationships
in their information.
Organizing the Review Process
As each article is received, students can code it for site,
topic, length. Two reviewers can rate the article for quality and interest
using a set of criteria that students have agreed on. This information
is entered into the database program. At the end of the period of exchange,
the students display the information by school and use it to help decide
which articles will be selected from each of the partner schools.
2. Team Analysis of Project Information
A team approach can be a very effective way of involving
the whole class in the analysis of the information. Divide your class
into teams so that there is one team for each of the schools responding
to your project. As information is received, the team can send back questions
about anything that is unclear. They will become the "classroom experts"
on the distant location. Each team works on writing a short summary of
their information. Then have a class discussion in which you ask the students
to compare the results from your classroom, item by item, with the information
from the other sites. Each team representing a different classroom should
be able to see relationships between their own class data and that of
the distant classroom. In this way, the group discussion should help everyone
see the differences and similarities across the locations.
3. Individual Evaluation (Student Writing)
Another strategy is to put all written work in a special
folder with evaluation sheets. Across the top of the evaluation sheets
are headings like the following: Interesting Topic, Well Written, Rich
in Details, Informative, Strong Beginning, Good Organization, Unusual
Ending. At the bottom of the evaluation sheets are three lines for final
recommendations: accept, accept with revisions, reject.
Whenever students have time, they read an article and make
comments under the appropriate headings with their initials and fill out
one line at the bottom of the page recommending an action (accept, revise
or reject) on the article. When an article has been read by three different
readers, with at least two people agreeing on a recommendation, the article
is moved to the action folders. Students can create graphics to accompany
accepted articles.
Return
to ORGANIZING THE PUBLICATION
Copyright © 1997, 2002, Margaret
Riel
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