Projects
The Towns Project
This is a cross-curricular project that I am very excited about. I found a wonderful lesson plan based on Garrison Keillor's "Lake Wobegon", the fictional hometown that is a part of his long-running radio show on NPR, A Prairie Home Companion. We love to listen to the show while making dinner or doing cooking projects. It airs live from 5:00-7:00pm on Saturdays.
PHC has been running since 1974 and a weekly feature is his "News from Lake Wobegon" monologue. For over 35 years, Keillor has been telling stories about the residents of Lake Wobegon. The stories are rich and varied and include a huge cast of characters that populate the town. For our project, students are working in small groups. They are researching and inventing their own towns, writing their histories, mapping the towns, creating realistic, quirky residents of their towns, and writing interweaving stories about those people. If time permits, I would also love to have each group write a script from one of these stories and produce a radio drama from it. Last year's class loved this project and I am excited to experience it again. | Investigation Posters
Through the year, we will be creating what I call Investigation Posters as culminating projects for certain units. I describe these as a bit like magazine 'spreads' that include well-written text, a catchy title, an interesting border, illustrations and diagrams, and other elements like photos, charts, graphs, etc.
Investigation posters allow students to research and explore a specific topic within the broader unit subject that they are most interested in. I have found that kids have a high degree of enthusiasm for these pieces. They also provide an assessment that is different from written tests. |