Student Exemplars

Book Assignments

Each quarter students are assigned an independent book assignment where they are provided a theme or genre and then choose a book to read independently. The culmination of the reading is an assignment which demonstrates not only their understanding of the novel, but also interests others to read the book. These projects were rated by their peers as ones which made best use of material and creativity and also inspired others to read the book.

In an Honor’s classroom, it is important for students to continue growing their vocabulary and the pace at which they read. With 10% of my students opting to Dual Enroll, a program offered in which students may take college level classes while still in high school, 10% of my students opting to move into an AP class and a majority of the others planning to continue on to college, they need to be able to handle the uptick in reading workload which comes along with college classes. By providing a wide variety of assignments (roughly aligned to Gardner’s Learning styles), the students are able to express their creativity in a manner that is suited to their strengths.

Click on the link under the picture to display the assignment specifications.

Lit Lights

In a world where it is becoming increasingly necessary to re-imagine things, the 'Lit Lights' project based learning assignment does exactly that. Students are tasked with reading several short stories, summarizing them as comic strips in decreasing panel amounts. By the time the students arrive at the fifth short story, they are tasked with summarizing the story in one illustration. This illustration goes on to become the Lit Light.

Working with copper tape, a battery and LED lights, students need to create an image which will summarize their story using the lights as a way to accentuate the scene. The project goes through multiple revisions and trials before it is finalized. For these projects, the groups learned not only about how to build a circuit, they learned about the benefits of communication, importance of teamwork and the needs for being flexible.

The Crucible Pop-Up Book

In American Literature there is no play which is more intricate than that of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Due to the diversity of its themes, and angles from which to teach it, each year’s end of unit assignment differs. For this assignment, students were tasked with creating a storyboard for a scene in the play. In order to complete this assignment, students need to think critically about what scene they would portray if they could only choose one as a director. They then illustrate a storyboard which details, shots, angles, music and camera movement for the scene. This type of analytical thinking prompts students to identify, and justify, the most important aspects of their scene.

One student, struggling with narrowing down the scenes to one, proffered creating a pop-up book of the most critical scenes from the play. Relying on the images to convey her interpretation rather than words, The Crucible pop up begins with the infamous woods scene, the bedroom in which so much is divulged, the flames of the devil reflecting the figurative inferno which engulfs the village, the courtroom where secrets or told and re-told and the gallows which strangles literally and figuratively. This assignment aligns to Common Core Curriculum standards for Reading and Writing.

Literature Sculptures

Multiple studies have shown, how successful a student is is directly correlated to how much they read. Which is why Independent Reading time is so important to include in the classroom. One thing which high school students struggle with, but is crucial to master, is identifying symbolism in texts. For a different book assignment then, students were asked to create Literary Sculptures. In this assignment, the students needs to choose a character, a scene, or an items which symbolizes their book and create a 3 dimensional representation of that symbol (or symbols). The sculpture can be created using any type of material and needs to be accompanied by an index card which lists the title and author of book, along with an explanation of the symbol and its significance to the book.

These assignments showcase a wide array of creativity and diversity of thinking about what to showcase regarding their book. The assignment is an alternate way of encouraging students to think critically about what would best represent the meaning behind the text, creatively about their learning and how best to demonstrate their understanding of it. It also aligns to Common Core Reading and Writing standards.

Peer Feedback

Creating a narrative is always an exciting unit. Students enjoy the freedom writing the narrative provides; there aren’t as many rules an dictates to abide. One thing they thoroughly enjoy as well is being scared and trying to scare each other so turning the narrative into a suspense story appeals to them on several different levels.

If I have learned anything in my graduate school adventure, it’s that student need time to write, revise and talk about writing to others; myself and their peers. So I build into each writing endeavor we embark on some time for peer review. In these examples you will students “talking the talk” of writers and providing clear feedback and suggestion to each other as they fine tune the soon to be submitted suspense narratives. This peer review activity aligns to Common Core standards for Language, Writing, and Speaking and Listening skills.

Suspense Podcasts

Narratives make up roughly half of the reading in an Language Arts classroom. One way to engage students in reading a story, is to appeal to their interests: and no genre appeals to them more than that of suspense. Often times confusing suspense narratives for the horror/slasher films which permeate their social scene, students here have read about and studied the methods involved in the genre, then written their own suspense narratives in writing groups which have provided peer feedback and assistance. The assignment didn't end with the completion of their written narrative however. In their writing group, they then needed to choose, whose story would be best suited to be turned into a drama similar to an old time radio broadcast. Revisions were done, sounds effects were added and Podcasts were created.

These exemplars demonstrate not necessarily the best use of technology and the best use of the methods of suspense; but they are the podcasts chosen by their peers as the ones which came closest to sounding like their exemplars, the radio broadcasts of the 1940s. Click on the "go to link" line under the podcast title to hear the podcast. This assignment incorporates almost every one of the Common Core Speaking and Listening standards as well as some of the Research Standards.

Power Words

As part of the Common Core Standards, students need to read a seminal document from the 16th, 17th or 18th century. No document fits this description better than the Declaration of Independence. With its dense vocabulary though, it can be daunting to a junior in high school. While listening to the document being read aloud, along with a loose "modernization" of what is being said, students are tasked with finding words they don’t know and which “jump out” at them. The unknown words are defined and added to the Class Word Wall. Choosing the 4 they believe are most impressive, they define the word by finding 3 synonyms, then working with a partner proceed to place the synonyms in the sentence in place of their word. Using the connotation of the words to help them, students explain why the "jump out" word is or is not the most powerful word for that sentence.

Going back to their original 4, students the choose the most powerful of their four words and create a mini-poster. The poster consists of four sections; one in which they word art their word (they need to choose a color that represents the word and a text format/picture which describes the word), one where they include the three synonyms, one where they write the original sentence and one where they explain why this word is the most powerful word in the document.

Chosen mostly for how well they illustrate the word, these posters represent the students attempting to dig deeper into a text and understand the reasoning behind why an author would choose one word over another – even when one word is more recognized or common than another. These posters aren’t perfect, but they are an example of students attempting something outside of their comfort zone on a few different levels.