This week the grade 8 students had an opportunity to decide what they want to study for our second unit. They could choose from 4 options: 1. Poetry and Song; 2 Novel Study “The Outsiders”; 3 Gothic, Mystery, or Personal Short Stories; and 4 A Comparative study of Science Fiction versus Dystopian Fiction.
Once students made a choice, they had to decide on the key and related concepts for the focus of the unit, the global context through which to explore the concepts, the ATL skills and the Learner Profile attributes they want to practise and develop. Once this was done, they had to work as a team to deliver a campaign speech to persuade the other students to vote for their topic.
After a democratic voting process, we finalised the unit outline.
The students also created an action plan for completing the reading of the novel by 5 December.
To continue encouraging student engagement in their learning, students have each selected a narrative element for which they will prepare a learning activity and deliver it during one of our lessons over the next 10 weeks. I hope they enjoy this unit and the extent to which they can drive not only their own learning but also that of their peers.