Students’ Background and Readiness

Students in my class have created an after school club called the “Wonderbolts” that meet to research and create Google Slides presentations.  About half of the class is a member of the Wonderbolts, and after a new presentation is created, they always want to share their hard work in class.  I thought that this was a great opportunity to incorporate my students’ interests and hobbies into the classroom.  There are enough Wonderbolts in the class to be able to put a couple of them in each group to ensure that all students had the support they need to create effective Google Slides presentations.  I also invited the leaders of the Wonderbolts, Nylah and David, to prepare a presentation of some “tips and tricks” about how to create a Google Slides presentation in order to help their classmates get started.  Using my students’ funds of knowledge as a base for this project helped encourage their enthusiasm to complete quality work.

Student Development

Some students are more confident in researching and presenting their research than others.  This is why I have ensured that each group was made heterogeneously so that each team had at least a couple members with experience and confidence in making these kinds of presentations, and could assist me in ensuring that each student is supported in their research and development of their slides.  In this way, I am fostering a classroom community in which students help students to learn.  This encourages students to try new things and reach out to their peers and teachers whenever needed.

Student Needs

I started this unit with plenty of direct instruction that included checks for understanding that were low stakes but gave students opportunities to add valuable participation to the discussion.  For my students on IEPs, I made heterogeneous research groups to pair them with students who have experience in Google Slides, and I left the prompting questions intentionally vague.  While these vague questions meant some of these students had trouble getting started, with my support as well as with support from their peers, they were able to find an entry point that was based in their personal interests, and once they got the hang of the pattern of research, they were able to produce more research independently.

Research and Evidence Based Powerful Learning Practices

This unit worked towards building the identity, skills and intellect components of Goldi Muhammed’s framework for culturally responsive teaching.  This unit not only taught them content connected to the Massachusetts history standards, but also research skills that they will carry without them throughout and beyond the rest of their school years.  By connecting the topic with their personal interests and helping them to form opinions, I engaged with my students’ identities.  As Goldi Muhammed states, “once these two pursuits (identity and skills) are developed, the possibility is created for intellect, and when students develop intellectualism, they can express their ideas, work through justice centered solutions to the world’s problems, and expand their mental capacities.”  This intellectualism takes place in the form of their presentations, where they got to decide what pieces of information that they learned through research were crucial to share with their classmates, and were able to start a conversation about how they felt about what they learned and shared.