In both my junior honors and regular senior classes, I had students create historical magazines. I need them to research and I didn't want to read 85 5-7 page research papers. I wanted them to have some real world experience in both collaboration and research.
In my Junior Honors class, we are getting ready to start reading The Great Gatsby and in stead of lecturing them on the 1920s, I decided to have them do the work. Each group picked a year and they compiled a "Year in Review" Magazine. Each member had to write a 500 word article and a 200 word article (with correct MLA citations).
In my senior class, we are starting 1984 and instead of lecturing I had students research a year between 1939 and 1954. Each group picked a year and created a "Year in Review" Magazine as well.
I learned a lot through this project (possibly more than my students). I made some assumptions about their understanding of magazine layouts--but then realized THEY DON"T READ MAGAZINES. Over all I was happy with the finished products as a first go with this assignment. I know what I'll do different moving forward. I enjoy doing multigenre assignments as I think it's important for students to explore ideas/events in multiple ways.
My students struggled with research and the process of doing research. They are so use to having all of the information needed at their fingertips, that they really struggled to move beyond Wikipedia, About, and Infoplease as sources. Teaching them to become critical consumers of information is something they need, but not something they fully understand how to do. I'll make sure to do more frontloading of how to find sources and to work on evaluating sources.
Here are a few of their projects.
In my Junior Honors class, we are getting ready to start reading The Great Gatsby and in stead of lecturing them on the 1920s, I decided to have them do the work. Each group picked a year and they compiled a "Year in Review" Magazine. Each member had to write a 500 word article and a 200 word article (with correct MLA citations).
In my senior class, we are starting 1984 and instead of lecturing I had students research a year between 1939 and 1954. Each group picked a year and created a "Year in Review" Magazine as well.
I learned a lot through this project (possibly more than my students). I made some assumptions about their understanding of magazine layouts--but then realized THEY DON"T READ MAGAZINES. Over all I was happy with the finished products as a first go with this assignment. I know what I'll do different moving forward. I enjoy doing multigenre assignments as I think it's important for students to explore ideas/events in multiple ways.
My students struggled with research and the process of doing research. They are so use to having all of the information needed at their fingertips, that they really struggled to move beyond Wikipedia, About, and Infoplease as sources. Teaching them to become critical consumers of information is something they need, but not something they fully understand how to do. I'll make sure to do more frontloading of how to find sources and to work on evaluating sources.
Here are a few of their projects.