1) What Essential Questions will drive this project ?
- What Essential Questions may help drive this project?
- How can teacher provided questions lead to student generated questions?
- What will all students learn (the floor)?
- What unique content might be obtained (the ceiling)?
2) What will your students produce? What will this artifact provide evidence of?
- What content will be covered? How does this fit into your semester plans?
- Are there models? What could be shown to the students to get their creative juices flowing?
- Create a prototype/exemplar. Doing the project yourself will be valuable for the students to reference and to give you a better idea of the process they will go through.
- How will you incorporate student choice?
- Conceptual vs. specific. Are all students learning the same specific content or is it possible to illustrate general concepts through specific examples? Ex. Revolutions and the mechanisms of political change. Ex. 2 – Diseases and homeostasis.
- Can students become specialists and teach each other? Can they play a role in the assessment of that learning?
3) What are the interdisciplinary connections?
This is best brainstormed through a discussion with colleagues from different disciplines. Be careful, this may lead to partnerships and collaboration!
4) What scaffolding needs to take place? What are the intermediate deliverables?
- How can the students get into active, creative mode right away?
- Can the teacher let go? Is letting go making them vulnerable? What is the attitude of admin?
- Student research? Student presentations? Group Collaborations – Labs – Activities – Demonstrations – Guest speakers/involvement – Mentor-student interaction?
- When are intermediate deliverables due? What role do they play in grade?
5) How might technology be integrated?
- How will this content be obtained? How distributed (parachute model…web-like model)?
6) What possible community connections are there? Mentors? Who/what entity might benefit from this work?
7) What are the opportunities for draft, critique and revision?
- How will the work be accessed for critique?
- How are the students accountable for drafts and revisions?
8) What is the projected timeline/calendar for this project?
9) How will students be assessed?
- POL(s)?
- Exam(s)?
- Exhibition?
- Rubrics?
10) What might Exhibition look like?
- Although this question is posed last because it occurs last, a good argument could be made for this question to be number two.