Assembling the Romeo and Juliet Portfolio

Just a note while this is fresh in my mind... assembling the portfolio was not nearly as easy as I imagined it would be.  It took nearly 30 minutes to get all the students to get the handouts and put them in the right order in the duo-tang.  I think maybe we need to put the framework for the portfolio together ahead of time.  You just never know when a task you think will be simple turns out to be much too complicated for your audience.  The learning centers went smoothly but putting together a duo-tang was a bumpy ride. 

Liana

Some photos from our first learning centers

Here are a few photos from the Learning Stations Activity

The kinesthetic station - Masks

 One of the bins (for the kinesthetic station)

Our pocket charts for the choice board assessment

The Romeo & Juliet project was great

Daniella and I ran the learning centers last week and they were a success.  We had help from Joe (who ran the podcast studio).  We saw some problem areas and have a few adjustments to make for next semester but all our students loved it.  The next few blog posts will include our personal reflections, successes, areas for improvement and some pictures of the stations.  All the documents/handouts and rubrics will be archived on the project site.  Stay tuned.

After establishing several DI approaches and target group for our TLLP in November, 2011 we used the January, 2012 session to discuss implementation and budgetary issues. Marc and I will be ready to launch our DI activity for his BBI class in April. Thus far, our TLLP is well under budget and we will be able to achieve all learning/teaching goals without going over. Although we have not completed going through our DI resources and texts as of yet, we have committed to having done so by our next meeting.

Here We Go

Well the implementation has begun. With a few hiccups at the beginning we have begun the Romeo and Juilet unit. The GLE100 class seems to be enjoying the play so far and loved the KWL chart - partly because they were familiar with the concept and partly because they could 'show off' what they knew about the play. Reading was a bit difficult because they struggle to follow along and several student forgot their role by the time it was there turn. In order to deal with this Liana and I created a chart with the cast of characters and velcro name tags so that it was visible for all to see. Yesterday the kids thought we should use a dry erase marker to mark a red X as characters died - the boys especially liked this marker of death. We should finish today and begin the centres tomorrow.

Planning List for Romeo and Juliet Project

Updated on Jan 18

I am going to put our planning list for Romeo and Juliet so I don't lose it.

• Romeo and Juliet character chart (done)

• student name tags to assign roles on chart (done)

• Assignment sheet for students

List of tasks accomplished by students

• complete survey (done)
• read play (done)
• Minds On (done)
• KWL chart
• journal entries (Would you date someone your parents disapproved of?)
• Action
• reading play (done)
• guided reading (done)
• inferencing discussions (done)
• vocabulary - word wall
• making predictions (done)
• verbal questions to class (done)
• cubing - using Blooms to make questions
• Learning Centers (ready)
• masks
• letter (Juliet to Romeo after banishment)
• podcast of scene
• watch scene from Gnomeo and Juliet (2011)/Zeffirelli (1968)/Lurhmann (1996) - respond to media interpretation
•  Laminated Instructions for each Learning Station (x2 classes)
•  Consolidation 
• use choice board - pick some of the completed learning center work to polish and submit
• Rubric for Summative Assessment -  Choice Board/Learning Center hybrid
• Signs for Visual/Auditory/Reading&Writing/Kinesthetic  

 All documents will be uploaded to Equal is Not the Same Google Site

Surveys

Revised surveys are live!!

Pre-Survey Link:
https://docs.google.com/a/wecdsb.on.ca/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFNPZHZNRjJzYkZrMHNzOTJrdUdoTkE6MQ

Post-Survey Link:
https://docs.google.com/a/wecdsb.on.ca/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHA1TENyZlgyenJzVVdqSUpKeUIzcWc6MQ

Marc

Upcoming release time: final preparations

We have a release period on Monday to finalize all our activities for next week's unit.  Joe will be working on the budget.  Marc will be working on the surveys and Daniella and I will complete all the handouts, instructions, learning center stations, assessments and rubrics.  I am quite excited to put all our ideas into final form and my students are excited to begin.

Liana

The implementation phase begins

I began the implementation phase with my ENG 1P0 class today.  We did the pre-survey and it was easy for them to understand the questions and complete the survey.  It took them less than 5 minutes.  I am very anxious to take a look at the results for my class. 

We chose to use the term "topic" rather than be specific about the subject matter so that we could all use the same survey.  I was a bit worried that some students might find that wording hard to follow but I explained the topic was Shakespeare and/or Romeo & Juliet and there were no problems at all.  Daniella is having her ENG 1L0 class try the survey tomorrow and we will see if her Locally Developed or Life Skills students have any trouble with the wording.

A few reminders for us later, when we write up the project:

• To make it easier for them, I turned the url into a bit.ly url : http://bit.ly/cotesurvey.
• There is a repeat question in the survey which needs to be changed.

Liana