IEP Project

My IEP project is a reading assignment that interconnects the themes of the reading to the lives of my students. The students go through distinctive phases. Phase I: pre-reading activities and assessment of prior knowledge through writing. Phase II: Reading the novel Big Fish by Daniel Wallace. Phase III: Watching Big Fish the movie directed by Tim Burton. Phase IV: post-reading essay writing assessment. Phase V: Digital Story Project about the history of a grandparent.

I feel that this project will provide students with a relevant project that is directly related to the themes of the novel. The novel will become more powerful to them because they must learn about their own family. Student progress can be easily measured by looking at the outcomes of the two essay assignments. Students will have to interview their own family members and form a better understanding of their own family history and the history of a grandparent.

The presentation aspect of this project is also very important. After students complete their final project they will have to present it to the class. Right now I am teaching 11th grade and presenting information is crucial to the standards and benchmarks of that grade level.

For a detailed plan of this assignment and the lessons involved please click on this link.

As far as the development of my own technical expertise, please watch my Digital Story Final Draft that is posted in an entry below. This is my teacher example that I will use to show my students how to use I-movie to create a story about their grandparents. For variety I will also allow them to use powerpoint if they already know how, or if they have access to a video camera to do a video interview if their grandparent is still alive, or even to possibly interview a parent about their grandparent. I want to make this project flexible in order to achieve best practice student work. A lot of class time will be devoted to working individually with students on their projects. I would use students who finished early as aides to work with those who had not completed one yet. I would also have a scanner in the classroom in order to scan pictures for the students for their projects.

I think this project is one that can potentially incorporate every aspect of Language Arts standards and benchmarks. It also is personally relevant to the students so that is what makes it great.