Moving on to the planning phase

Students have completed their work on the google doc that related to their jobs and are now back in their mission groups working on a plan for their entertaining and educational presentations.

I had the drama teacher come in and talk to the students about the importance of having a good tight plan and also how to go about making this plan. She also talked about some of the aspects that make a movie, skit, animation, etc entertaining. It was excellent to have her advice and feedback for students on this portion of the project.

Over the weekend I looked at all the 'job' google docs and highlighted the portions that need to be in their presentations. In general, the documents were excellent; they were well researched, logically flowing concise documents that covered most if not all of the information that was required. There was only 1 group that did not seem to get the idea of working collaboratively and as such their document had fragmented parts representing each person's work. Even after extensive feedback throughout, they did not seem willing to work together. Since it is important for all students to have a good document, I copied the doc from the other class into their google doc so that everyone would have good information to work from. I have spoken with the group members and have emphasized the need to step it up for the next phase of the project.

So, the intention of the planning phase is for groups to break their project into 5-10 chunks. In each chunk they will give an overview of what is happening during this section of the story and also explain which of the curricular connections will be addressed in that chunk of the presentation. Students are struggling a bit right now, but I have a few groups who really get what is needed and so tomorrow I will show their work to other groups so that they don't waste too much time before getting back on track. They are excited to get developing their presentation, but they will not be allowed to do this until I have approved their plan.

The students still seem very excited about the project, but I think they are happy to be back working with their originally chosen groups.