Grade Level: 6-8

Teacher Name: Bailee Wolfert-Brown

Artist Name: Ronnie Malley

Big Idea:

Inquiry Question:

—1—

How did your team conceive your project? How was inquiry introduced to students and how did you integrate the inquiry process into your project?

• We began by identifying an anchor in the curriculum that all students would be able to latch onto and create from. That assignment happened to be a narrative that all grade levels in the school were writing near the same time, which allowed us to accommodate all 3 grade levels that were represented in our class. Once we knew what assignment we could use as a baseboard for our final project, we knew that we needed to work through the process of creating material to enhance this idea. Ronnie helped students focus on different ways to express emotion and creativity and enhance their understanding of the process of making music, which was present in all aspects of the project. Each time this process was demonstrated, students were asked to repeat the necessary steps with a different topic which allowed them to prepare for their final project.

• We were very adamant about making this student driven, and staying true to CAPE's inquiry project based learning. Students had input in all topics and gave us ideas for practicing the creative process through common interests and shared experiences among our students at this time. (e.g anime and student interest slides)

—2—

How did your team’s project change?

• The "topic" or subject of our project was the same from the beginning, but the structure and format of definitely changed and grew throughout this process. Ronnie and I originally thought students might choose or gravitate to a digital story board, with maybe music that supports their personal stories. But with the land of covid, what ended up happening, was a deep dive into the creative processes for students utilizing almost every tool we had at our disposal: the entire Google suite, jamboard, flipgrid, sountrap, and more.

• We actually utilized more mediums than originally intended and ended up having students who not only wrote stories and music to go with their stories, but also some who drew pictures and scenes from their stories. In the beginning, we demonstrated the process in pieces; how to come up with ideas, brainstorm possible formats, how to turn those ideas into sountrap songs, how to add sounds and effects to convey emotions, and then how to publish those songs and make them shareable with others WHILE potentially adding visuals.

• Each time students completed an activity, we started the process again, focusing on student ownership of their own ideas but with different topics (some of them student chosen). This turned our focus to the freedom of expression rather than content, and it also ended up enhancing our end product as students now have stories, songs, and visuals in their portfolios. (e.g student choice slides)

• Students also used bilingual skills to either integrate or translate

—3—

How did you integrate English Language Arts into your projects?

• ELA standards have been incorporated in a variety of ways during this project. We have used writing or expression in every activity that we did with students, whether students were writing, sharing, or recording their own descriptions and explanations of parts of our creative process.

• Another fun example of ELA incorporation was the use of standard R.L.8.5 which is to compare and contrast the structure of two or more texts and analyze how the differing structure of each text contributes to its meaning and style. Students in our CAPE class actually used the same "text" (a popular movie trailer!) and they designed their own (sound track? backtrack? audio?) that went with the trailer segment they chose according to an emotion they intended to convey to the audience. This resulted in multiple students using the same segment of a movie trailer to express different emotions using the tools we learned in class.

• SL.8.1 Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 8 topics, texts, and issues, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly.

• SL.8.1.C Pose questions that connect the ideas of several speakers and respond to others' questions and comments with relevant evidence, observations, and ideas.

• SL.8.2 Analyze the purpose of information presented in diverse media and formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) and evaluate the motives (e.g., social, commercial, political) behind its presentation.

• SL.8.5 Integrate multimedia and visual displays into presentations to clarify information, strengthen claims and evidence, and add interest.

• W.8.6 Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and present the relationships between information and ideas efficiently as well as to interact and collaborate with others.

• W.8.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences.

• W.8.7 Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration.

—4—

What did you learn about your students and how they learned? What did you learn about the way you teach?

• We definitely learned the importance of student input and ownership in their own projects. We also learned that when students were introduced to a technology that was new to them but could relate to their own interests, they were very motivated to use it and even worked with these programs during free time outside of class.

• Teaching this class definitely encouraged me to appeal to different types of learners. Creativity shows itself in many different ways, and even though music tied us all together, the way students wanted to work with music varied person to person, and each student needed and deserved a place to express that.

• We also learned the importance of teacher driven vs. student driven learning, and how these two can be woven into most if not all lessons both inside the classroom and out.

• This experience reminded us to remain open minded to learning about students, and of course, technology. This affirms that anyone who wished to embark on this journey must be committed to life long learning.