At the end of a project-based learning (PBL) experience, students typically share what they have learned or discovered with an audience. Depending on the project, students might publish their work online, make presentations at a public event, or pitch their ideas to a panel of judges.

I'm thinking a lot about student choice and where it is and isn't present in our writing curriculum. I know we have room for growth with regard to student choice in writing workshop, but I also know that we are already incorporating choice. I've seen many examples of this. We teach a mini lesson focused on a particular writer's technique and Fourth graders choose whether or not to experiment with that technique. First graders choose the kind of paper they will use to publish their "how to' books. They choose which pages to illustrate and where to have only text. While there may be some non negotiables, they choose whether to include other elements of an "all about book,' like glossaries and dedications. Second graders choose how to lay out an iBook, knowing that their page breaks will be meaningful. Students in a particular class may all be focusing on the same genre but they choose their topic. We don't use writing prompts and we don't tell our writers how long their piece needs to be. They choose their ideas and they determine what and how much they need to write about a given idea.

I would like to begin my Who AM I project with my third grade RLA with a "driving question." I'm not quite sure how to form it though. I'd like to see it lead the kids towards defining the characteristics of a person who has made an impact or a difference (postive) on the world. I'm wondeirng about using the words "admirable" and "famous" in the question. Maybe this would help them to establish criteria by which they could make good choices for their WAI person. Thoughts? Ideas?

I was also thinking about how we teach students to analyze and assess the quality of information. I'm wondering abut 4th grade current events. Wondering if they could consider why Fox New and CNN (for example) tell such different versions of news events- or even cover completely different stories. Or why The Wall Street Jornal and The Washington Post have different readers....What is bias? Why does it exist in the telling of factual events?

I know some of us installed AudioBoo for recording, but Beth Curran showed my QuickVoice. I much prefer it because there is no time limit. Have been using it to record as I do assessments. Very helpful.