I have never worked so hard in my life. I have been working around the clock to finish end of year projects. I was very ambitious in the beginning of the year and it has seemed nearly impossible to realize all of these commitments! I am working on four enormous student-generated projects for my classes, including a book of participatory teaching strategies, a book of stories about inspiring teachers, a newspaper, and a news video broadcast.
I have now completed three of the four projects! I am still making the final touches on the video! I have loved working on these projects and seeing the work of my students presented in a professional format is truly rewarding. I can not wait to share the final products with them. I will unveil these projects on Sunday, when I am hosting an English Trivia Challenge between my two classes. It will be a marvelous event, if all goes as planned!
I have been working until three in the morning every night for the past three weeks to finish these projects. I even stayed up all night on Wednesday and went right to class. I decided that these projects would look best if I used publisher, but since I have never used this program I didn't know how time-consuming it is! I learned the program and then worked tirelessly to add the design and all of the students' content. I had to meet with students at all hours of the day and during weekends to ensure that the students were involved in every stage of the project because I want them to have complete ownership over the final products.
The student newspaper can be viewed here
Although I believe I may have worked harder on these projects than my students, I am confident that in the end, they will believe in their abilities and skills. The final product will reinforce their confidence in themselves and they will see the importance of their ideas. Perhaps most importantly, my teacher-trainees will see how valuable these types of projects can be to validate and share the hard work of their future students!
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