Week 2 of the GAME Plan

       Last week I set my goal: create one project and one assessment that allow students to use a different technology than we have used in class to reflect diverse learning styles, allow for collaboration, and utilize students’ creativity as they plan their project and self-assess upon completion. Moving into action, I spoke with my English 10 team and we came up with some ideas for fun projects and assessments that will coincide with the standards we are covering for our Hunger Games unit. We kept in mind our essential questions, looked at the ways students could learn it, and came up with ideas as to how students could access the information differently (Howard, 2004).
       Right now, my students are working collaboratively to create the next arena where the Games could be held. They are focusing on setting, elements that would make the games strategic, symbolism used within the arena like logos, icons, and signals, the influence of another time period, and the characters that would be competing. In between reading the book, watching supporting video clips, and working as a team on this project, students are also completing some supplemental activities. One was to look at song lyrics and compare Katy Perry’s “Roar” and Alicia Keys “Girl on Fire” to our protagonist, Katniss Everdeen.
      The activity and challenge I have given my students is to find another song that relates to any character from the novel and create either a podcast, a video, or a slideshow that uses the music, the lyrics, and an explanation of the connections made between the song and a character. For the assessment activity, I have created a project using the idea of the social media platform Vine: students are to create a series of three Vine videos, or six second videos using their smart phones, that highlight a significant event of the novel, a symbol from the novel, and a character’s personality and relationship to others from the novel.
      Materials I will need are laptops and student smart phones or other video recording devices. The students may upload videos to our class wiki and may present their projects using our Smart Board. I still need to create the specific assignment sheets and rubrics for the activity and assessment, and making my own exemplar to model ideas will be very helpful for students (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2010, p. 101). I will continue to collaborate with my team to complete that step. Incorporating universal design for learning (UDL), I will hopefully find ways of sharing information that students are not able to use in a more traditional classroom or assignment and provide flexibility in terms of options for materials, methods, and assessments (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2010, p. 117).
        As I continue to monitor my progress, I will finalize the assignment sheet and the rubric this weekend. I have already reserved laptops for the week before Thanksgiving break, and will monitor student progress to decide if they will be needed after break as well. Anticipating student absences, I think this may be necessary. I am anxious to see what the students think about their new “test”!

 References 

Cennamo, K., Ross, J., & Ertmer, P. (2010). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A     standards-based approach. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

Howard, K. L. (2004). Universal design for learning: Meeting the needs of all students. Learning and 
     Leading with Technology, 31(5), 26–29.