On Friday, the 8th grade class went to the Buckwheat Festival. This was my second time on this fieldtrip as part of the staff. However, this trip felt different because I knew the staff and students more and thus felt more involved.
During the fieldtrip, we gave each group of students two disposable cameras to document Kingwood's culture through pictures. They will then create a digital story in groups using these pictures, personal narratives that they write and record as narration, and music in the background. Many students also used their own digital cameras and were very willing to share their photos with their classes for this project.
Earlier in the week, I had to divide each period into seven groups (Kingwood history, arts and crafts, geography, architecture, food, festival events, and industry), each of which documents a unique aspect of Kingwood's culture. After introducing the digital story project and explaining each topic, I had the students rank their preferences on an exit pass. The exit passes were a good idea to help me organize the groups, but it was a far more difficult and time consuming task than I had expected. First of all, I had to make sure that each group only had one or two band members because they didn't get a chance to take the guided fieldtrip tour. Second, I had to consider students with SATs and IEPs. I also had to consider students who wouldn't work well together.
Until this week, I never realized how difficult it is for teachers to create groups and leave students satisfied with their group topic and groupmates. Needless to say, I had a lot of students give me nasty looks or sigh with disgust when I called out the groups on Thursday. I think group work is an excellent way for students to learn and I'd love to use group projects when I have my own classroom, but I may need to come up with a less stressful strategy first. I hope this project will be successful!
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