Pipe Cleaner Dinosaurs as ELA Content

A triceratops made out of pipe cleaners by Jaddus (my 8th grade student and my son)

My Eighth Grade Writing Lab course is my big pedagogical experiment this semester – a real departure from the typical seminar discussion, common readings, and essential questions that anchor my classes.

In Writing Lab, students choose a topic of study, set a project goal that includes a major research and writing component, and use class time to work toward that goal. They keep a journal to plan, learn, and reflect throughout the process. Along they way, they learn how to identify reliable sources, take notes that distinguish important information from extraneous details, communicate with various audiences, cite their sources, give and respond to feedback, and solve problems. There are also more individualized skills kids pick up based on their projects: Eric learned that showing a character’s thoughts and feelings can be crucial to crafting a memorable story; Austin learned how to use paraphrasing and summarizing to simplify his PowerPoint slides, etc.

I didn’t anticipate this, but one of the big skills they’ve come away with is also a more audience-aware approach to this perennial problem: when crafting an article, story, or speech, how do you make other people care about your narrow passion or interest?

Here is the syllabus (feel free to use or modify): MSWritingLabSyllabus

A predictable consequence of letting kids choose what they study and produce is that kids tend to go well beyond basic requirements and expectations. Elling and Jaddus, two eighth grade students in the class, already completed presentations on the possibility of alien life and the Hell Creek ecosystem of the Mesozoic era, respectively.

Here is the handout Jaddus wrote to accompany his presentation: JaddusPresentation (I’ll attach Elling’s science fiction story after his final revision).

Instead of riding out the end of the semester with short reflective writing and choice reading, they’ve decided to extend their research by producing a stop-motion video to communicate what they’ve learned to the school community. They want to create a compelling visualization that engages the viewer in a short, illustrative narrative.

Neither has any experience with filmmaking, stop-motion animation, or dinosaur-themed sculpture. Elling downloaded the free Stop Motion Studio app to his iPhone. After a week of reading tutorials, writing their script, and crafting biologically-accurate pipe cleaner figures, they made a few five-second trial videos to test their skills.

Elling and Jaddus take dozens of photos to test their stop-motion animation skills.

I won’t know how this experiment turned out until the semester ends and I’ve had time to reflect. However, I do have some preliminary observations:

  • I have less control of the content, structure, and direction of this class than any other I’ve ever taught before.
  • I also know less than ever about the texts and fields of study that make up the class’s “content.” On many occasions, I’ve sent kids to my colleagues in biology and physics to get feedback and ideas. Most of the time, I haven’t read the books or articles they’re reading.
  • Certain kinds of students (my son included) learn way more under these conditions than they do in a more traditional English course. This is probably due both to the intrinsic motivation that comes from student choice and the responsibility students must take when the teacher is not the expert.
  • Peer feedback happens more naturally in this class than any other I’ve taught before. Kids have meaningful things to say to each other about their work, and they listen attentively to others’ suggestions. They also are very self-aware (“I have the same problem you’re having: I try to include too much information in my presentation”). I think great peer feedback is a natural outgrowth of the students’ actually caring about their work. I’ll need to think more about how to incorporate these lessons into my more traditional courses.

There are also definitely some improvements I’d make if I re-teach the course (the list will likely grow as the semester ends):

  • Increased structure for students who struggle to find a project that inspires them. In this kind of course, if the student isn’t in love with her project, class time becomes unbearable and pointless.
  • More writing opportunities during the process. If kids came in excited to work on their project, I excused them from writing far too frequently. There should have been more journal entries.
  • More interdisciplinary connections. I worked closely with two science teachers, but there were additional connections that could have been made.
  • Required handout for non-written products: students who made a presentation should have also been required to produce a handout. Writing in multiple formats would have extended their learning and given them additional composition practice.
  • A core set of readings to model the kind of work they could do. Some inspirational articles, TED talks, etc. to energize those without intrinsic motivation. Basically, more scaffolding for kids who didn’t arrive with a project in mind.

Here are the stars of the stop motion film. I’ll update with the video when it’s finished.

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