GRASPS Tasks:
Goal: Develop an authentic and engaging project derived from the main character's experiences in the novel, Speak, whereby advanced ELLs can 1) develop cultural understandings tied to managing teen issues, 2) improve their language proficiency via authentic communication, and 2) grapple with monitoring output and risk-taking as effective L2 strategies.
Role: Students are both researchers and communicators. Their job for this task is to begin local and go global in their investigations regarding the best resources to tap into and utilize to help solve teen issues and traumas, and then share their findings.
Audience: There are multiple audiences involved: school counselors, professionals in the local community, professionals in on-line communities, other needy students reading their communications, and the book's author, Laurie Halse Anderson.
Situation:
- Students first use their blogs to explore who they might trust (as this value varies from culture to culture) and who to go to for their own problems/ issues—both within their own families, among their friends—f2f and especially online from social networks and related help sites. One prompt for this post could be: Where do you go for help when you have a problem, and with whom do you trust to communicate?
- Next, students branch out to other professionals at school or within local and online communities. The task is to set up a f2f meeting with their counselors (this could be take place in groups according to their assigned counselors), to interview and get ideas on how young people can communicate about a problem or trauma in their own lives (or that of a friend's), and what local community members are available in or outside of the school. One requirement here is to have students ask their counselors to send them a list contacts via email or to their social networking page, if appropriate.
They further gather data from google searches to see what kinds of 'help' sites are available and where 'experts' might be found online.
- To communicate with professionals/ experts, students write up a practice information-gathering email, based on the information received from their counselors and online searches. A teacher model is provided. (The practice writing could be a blog post or postings could be made to the ELW at ISB Ning.) Students then study the content and style of others before officially sending their emails out to the real professionals and experts.
The language functions to target here include: asking for advice/ information on how to best deal with emotional trauma/problems, seeking information on when to go outside their immediate comfort zone to ask for help as well as asking where to find professionals of different languages with whom to communicate. Sample text: When someone is experiencing an unsolved problem at home or at school, and friends can't help.
Student-teacher conferences take place during the draft stage.
- Students would then copy and paste these blog posts (or Ning postings), into email messages and send them to the professional(s)/ expert(s) in the community whose contacts they have.
- Before receiving the responses, a database is set up on Google.docs. Upon receiving responses, students enter the data. Categories of data include: name, title, organization, how to contact, type of advice/ help offered, etc. This would be a dynamic environment and one which might actually be used by the students who may be looking for help for themselves or for friends.
Product:
- For presentation of their findings, in groups, students present a 'How to Manage Issues/Problems,' or other student-generated topics, given the type of data that we have to work with.
- Set up presentations on VoiceThread where students can first rehearse, prior to a more formal presentation to the class. (VoiceThreads can also be published on the Ning.)
- Present findings using VoiceThread.
- Follow-up is to invite Laurie Anderson, Speak author, to the Ning, with the hope of further recognition for their efforts, if she were to 'publish' any of their presentations on her website.
- Post final blog reflection of project.
Standards for Success (addressing Bloom's Digital Taxonomy):
This Project involves the following:
- Remembering - Listing, describing, identifying, retrieving, naming, locating, finding
- Understanding - Interpreting, classifying, comparing, explaining, exemplifying
- Applying - Carrying out, using
- Analyzing - Comparing, organizing, integrating
- Evaluating - Checking, experimenting, judging, monitoring
- Creating - Planning, producing, devising, making
Formative Assessment during Project
- blog or Ning posts
- writing draft process
Summative Assessment for overall Project
Rubrics for:
- email composition
- database completion
- Voicethread presentation
- Final reflection blog post
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Six Facets of Understanding:
Explain: Share understandings about how teens can best go about solving issues/ problems using friends and community resources. They will draw upon their repertoire of vocabulary and language structures to compose meaningful dialogues.
Interpret: Tell meaningful stories resulting from their experiences. These might include anecdotes (real or hypothetical), translations from own-language resources, as well as choose appropriate images to convey knowledge and understandings to others.
Apply: This takes place throughout the project as students use the information to apply to unknown situations, including emailing experts and setting up presentation of data. They are also learning to apply language constructions needed for appropriate communications.
Empathize: Students imagine how others feel when experiences loss, sadness, loneliness, etc. and can help solve others' problems by getting inside the heads of those in need and anticipating these needs.
Self-knowledge: Periodic conferences with students whereby they communicate their understandings. Students tie up Project by completing reflective blog post—acknowledging their limitations and celebrating their strengths, both in content and language.
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