In 7th and 8th grade, students work on goals developed independently. Some of the goals are developed to work in collaboration with peers, others are done individually. Students write goals to be part of an academic competition, write a novel, create a stop motion animation, or other activities. In conferencing with students regarding these ideas I ask them about three key components that each goal needs:
- Your goal must lead to you gaining new knowledge. I am sure you know a lot of stuff about some topic that you enjoy. I am sure there are topics that you could create an entire project based solely on the stuff that you already know. That is impressive! It also is unacceptable for a Journey goal. In your goal, it must be clear how you are going to gain new knowledge. That might be researching a topic, that might be working with a knowledgeable person, that might be through experimentation. There are many ways to learn, but your goal must involve learning.
- Your goal must focus on you creating something. You can create a story, a portfolio, an airplane, a series of posters, an iBook, a collection of artwork, a musical recording, or roughly 243,835 other things. Your goal should be built around what you are going to create, though.
- Your goal must describe how you are going to share your work. You have a unique and wonderful opportunity in the Journey room. Part of the expectation I have for you is that you use this opportunity to better the community around you - whether that is the classroom community, the school community or something larger. Each of your goals needs to be shared in some way with some part of that community.
Once we lay out the school year’s goals, these goals become the student’s GIEP goals and their gifted curriculum.
For the brainstorming process, I give students this:
With these three goals in mind, think about what you would like to do in Journey this year. It could be something you always wanted to learn about. It could be something you do every day and want more time to focus your energy. It could be part of a big, annual competition like History Day, Future City, Odyssey of the Mind, or Science Olympiad. It could be smaller competitions, like entering a poetry contest or writing an essay. It could be something completely from your own imagination - like creating a green screen movie or conducting a survey to measure social bias. It could be a collaborative project, like planning a trip or designing a website.
Once you have ideas about what you want to do, we will meet to talk about how they fit the requirements above, and how we can fit them into a school year. For now, just think about what you would like to do.
Big competitions:
- Future City
- History Day
- Science Olympiad
- Odyssey of the Mind
- Adventures in Health Science and Medicine
Smaller competitions:
- Verizon App Challenge
- DAR History Essay Contest
- Law Day Essay
- Poetry contests
- Spelling Bee
Family-themed:
- Research/Interview family history
- Chronicle grandparent’s or relative’s life story.
Past student projects:
- Art Enrichment
- Plan a trip
- Learn coding
- Design an airplane
- Makey-makey
- Create/present an iBook
- Creative writing
- Family history
- Create a commercial
- Build birdhouses
- Create a guidebook
- Quilting project
- Teach a 10th period elective
- Instruct Meditation
- Conduct social research
- Morning announcement segment.
- Given access to rules, deadlines, and entry criteria, student will develop and submit an entry to at least one academic competition which meets all the entry requirements.
- Given a focusing topic and access to research materials, student will demonstrate an understanding of design, engineering, and sustainability challenges by creating a presentation, and/or written research paper meeting the expectations in an established rubric.
- Given access to materials and resources, student will develop a plan for a fictitious trip, including a supplies list, expense estimate, and itinerary, to meet the self-chosen criteria.
- Given access to guides and information, student will research and build a project from student supplied materials that meets goals he develops, such as an original board game.
- Given access to technology, materials, and time to work with peers, student will create a short original film to meet the criteria set forth in a checklist.
- Given access to an instructional program, time, and resources, student will learn a language, focusing on vocabulary and language conventions to communicate in the chosen language.
- Given access to materials and time, STUDENT will research a self-selected topic to gather information on a historical art theme, which will be used as inspiration for original artwork.
- Given access to a group of younger age children, materials, and time and guidance in planning, student will develop lessons and possibly teach them on a topic of interest to meet expectations developed in communications with elementary teachers.