Evans

Presentation (10 min) Introduce the Caesar project (hand out the book) Discuss how it came about from casual conversation Describe what students did


 * Preslian Philosophy: TCB**


 * T**angibility & Flexibility: with other teachers and students. The key to working between several subject areas seems, to me, to be about allowing room for movement in planning, curriculum development and actual student progress. This is often an approach that is even new to many experienced teachers. I have found that the realities on the ground are very different from what was planned. For example, in planning for a collaboration between 10th grade English and 2nd level graphic arts the biggest commonality was “getting students through the dialogue of Shakespeare” It can often be overwhelming and INACCESSABLE. What was done to help in this was the breakdown of a particular scene into basic parts. The death scene was separated in 18 parts by line. The students found the natural points to stop a page and begin. They then began to plan their own piece. I found that they understood the dialogue in a much more holistic manner when they actually had to wrestle with what to place in the page and what to omit. This was something that, while planned, became much more apparent and necessary as the process unfolded. This brings me to another point: PROCESS. Its important that project based learning be about the JOURNEY and not the DESTINATION. What did they learn along the way?


 * C**ollaboration: SDP Visual Arts curriculum is broad. This is purposeful in that it allows for each teacher’s experience to be intertwined. This subjectivity can be cumbersome when working within other more narrow/specific subject areas. Its at this point that the collaborative approach to understanding each subjects BIG IDEAS comes into play.


 * B**ig Ideas: Before anything even begins its important to understand the relationship between subjects. What are the commonalities and where can we highlight these so they are readily apparent to students?

NOTE: What allowed us to jump right in was the students’ prior knowledge. We had already setup several pages and worked in much the same process. The difference here was the collaboration component. This was the first time they created something together where each piece formed a whole. Each student was held accountable by the others.