What a fun day! The students were very excited about getting into their research groups! Students were grouped by their interests. All the students who were interested in school buildings of the past formed a group. Students interested in the people of the past who played a role in American education, including some of the saints, were put in another group and so on. This group of students will do their research collaboratively. The students were then given a list of activities for each topic to choose from to be their vignette for our virtual museum. The students could choose from the list or develop one of their own. The activities were created to reflect each intelligence for each topic. For example, if the student's multiple intelligence strength is musical and their interest was an invention affecting American education, they could write a song about the printing press, or create a jump rope rhyme. Finally, the students were given a rubric so they know what their project must contain for assessment purposes. The rubrics are based on the Content Standards for Social Studies. We were excited by the children's excitement.
I floated from room to room observing the process and helping when I could. I noticed something that was very interesting to me. The younger students (K-5), seemed to be excited about their intelligence smarts, what their project was going to be, and how they were going to do it. They were able to form questions about what they wanted to learn quite easily. The older students (6-8) seemed to be more concerned about which project would be the easiest to accomplish the rubrics to get a decent grade. The questions about what they wanted to learn were harder to extract. Any thoughts about this difference of approaches?
I floated from room to room observing the process and helping when I could. I noticed something that was very interesting to me. The younger students (K-5), seemed to be excited about their intelligence smarts, what their project was going to be, and how they were going to do it. They were able to form questions about what they wanted to learn quite easily. The older students (6-8) seemed to be more concerned about which project would be the easiest to accomplish the rubrics to get a decent grade. The questions about what they wanted to learn were harder to extract. Any thoughts about this difference of approaches?
 A research group beginning to think about what they want to find out and how they can use that information in their vignette. |  Kindergarten and first graders forming their research group! A picture is worth a thousand words! |
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