Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Today was the conclusion of this semester's multi-genre projects with my Honors English IV class.  I had nine teachers, administrators and community members come in to evaluate my students on what they had learned.  The students had selected the five multi-genre projects that they though were the best.  I made copies of the students work and distributed it to the panel members on Monday.  The panel interviews were today, Wednesday.  
Students performed really well.  Almost all of the interviewers seemed impressed.  
Now I have to decide how I feel about this project, whether I will repeat it in the future, and if I do repeat it, how I will change it.  One of the students really vocalized my feelings about the work when she said "It especially helps with doing your own work and not being able to plagiarize. You do so many projects in your own unique way. You can't just take the easy way out. You have to put thought and consideration in each project."
I do appreciate the fact that students had to put their thoughts into their own words.  I don't have to worry about what students copied and pasted because students have to demonstrate a thorough understanding in order to create their projects.  Students are responsible for expressing their learning to their panel at the end of the semester, so what students learned is obvious.
So, my biggest concern and the only concern expressed by panel members was that students did not have to write a traditional research paper.  I believe that one way that I can overcome this weakness in the process is by requiring that one of the genres students are required to complete is a summary of an article (a good, meaty article).  Perhaps I can think of other genres that would be more like traditional research.  
I also probably need to split the list of potential genres up into categories and have students only be able to select one genre from each category.  That would solve the problem of too many genres that seem too easy.