CBL Overview

-Overview of our storytelling challenge: A major component of high school is figuring out who you are and where you are going. A lot of students also struggle with reconciling those ideas with where they have been. This challenge is about that pairing. 

⧫ Big Idea: Identity and Community

⧫ Essential Question:  What is OUR story?

⧫ Challenge: Find a creative way to tell your group's story.

This project was supposed to be the culminating event in a unit on biography, autobiography, memoir, and author's purpose. We read and discussed several texts in these genres to identify effective storytelling, theme development, author's craft, and how these elements connect to author's purpose. We looked at written texts and non-written texts and did a couple of personal reflective writing assignments to get read for our launch activity on Monday, March 16th. 

So this is where we started...and then on March 13th, we had to change direction. So, this story has become one about flexibility and modification. 

So instead of focusing on group storytelling and working methodically through a series of outlined milestones, I presented the idea via video to the class, made working in a group optional, and presented students with the products they could create to tell their story. 

Here is the video I shared with the students introducing the project:

This project fits perfectly into my English Language Arts Writing curriculum.

Depending on what product students decided to create, the project meets many of the substandards under W.9-10.2, which asks students to "write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content."  If they choose a more narrative approach, the focus in on W.9-10.3, which asks students to "write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences."

All projects also featured research and the use of digital tools to create and publish student work, Writing Standards 9-10.4-6

The original version of the project also included three different presentations, meeting several standards under the Speaking and Listening strand of the standard course of study. Also, multiple drafts of several of the written elements were required under the original version of the project, meeting several standards in the Language strand of the ELA standard course of study. Unfortunately, as you just read, the project had to be modified so these two elements were less of a focus, especially the speaking and listening.