Power of Persuasion *Week 3-5
Last week we started our first official quest, "Power and Persuasion". The objective of this three week quest is for students to discover that they have the power to change the world. Last week, students focused on discovering some of their own physical, mental, and emotional powers through a series of group challenges. This week, they will take a look at what gives others their powers through watching famous speeches, exchanging hero "trading cards with their classmates", and interviewing one of their personal heroes. The culminating mission in week three will be for them use the powers they have discovered to write their own persuasive speech on a topic they care about.
Catherine & Sara ~ Acton West Guides
Team Building Challenge - Lip Dub ~Session one * week 1-2
The lip dub video is a beginning of the year challenge to get all of the students involved and working together. The students planned out the video entirely themselves from start to finish. Besides getting to know their new school mates while working to accomplish a common goal, some of the concepts covered through this project include:
working on a team (each team planned a section of the video)
working across teams (each team had to communicate with each other to ensure the video would flow from one part to the next)
critiquing exemplar work (students watched examples from other Acton locations and other schools to identify strengths and weaknesses)
creating a rubric (students created criteria for their own rubric based on the strengths they identified in model videos)
self-evaluation/reflection (students will evaluate and reflect on their final product using the rubric they created)
Building self confidence: (First hand experience building something from the ground up that is completely student led. This helps them understand their potential here at Acton and what they can accomplish on their own, without teachers, this is an important lesson when adapting to this new learning environment.)