Post #6

Today, I'm going to talk about how we are using a nonlinguistic representations from Marzano in my class...I had to come up with a final project for our multigenre/The Importance of Being Earnest unit. I really wanted to offer some fun assignments that weren't pencil and paper, but still showed that the student understood the text and understood that writing isn't always in the form of an essay! For this assignment, I came up with about 9 options and let them pick 3 and 2 of them I picked for them. There options were: 1) a movie poster 2) a book cover 3) a travel brochure 4) a video diary (confessional) 5) a collage 6) an essay 7) an eulogy 8) a diorama and 9) a 2 voice poem. I was amazed at the choices most of the students made. We had many collages and they were GREAT! The students really showed that they understood the characters of the story and I think they showed it the collage much better than they could have written in an essay. One of my favorite submissions was a video diary. My student did an EXCELLENT job creating a 5 minute diary from the point of view of Jack. I was amazed at their creativity and I think that if you tap into that creativity in the classroom, the students can really enjoy homework!