We had several good Powerpoint presentations, videos, radio plays, and computer games submitted as projects for this unit. As teachers, we were very pleased with the way we were able to spend time with the kids, and teach them the skills that they wanted and needed to learn in order to finish their projects. Each student got personalized instruction for a small part of the day to learn something they were interested in learning how to do to complete their projects. In the end, everyone was sad to see Literature Circles end. Our project-based method was off to a good start, and we were committed to continuing with it.
Students get to make choices, select partners and tasks, and do multiple types of assignments.
We wanted to make some improvements to this project-based approach, particularly in the area of information retrieval and manipulation. From our experience as teachers, we were frustrated that most research reports were plagiarized, and that kids didn't even know the basics of how to do a good report. The Internet was making this problem worse. The major task for the teachers was to teach the kids how to put other peoples' thoughts and ideas into their own words. We spent a lot of time with the students on these to ensure they understood how to do it, and why they were doing it.