Submitted by: Emily N. Roberts
Collaborators: Patricia L. Hassan
School: Brookland Middle School
Summary
Martin Luther King, Jr, once said, “Life’s most urgent and persistent question is “What are you doing for others?” In the wake of the tsunami that struck Japan in the spring of 2011, that was the exact question my students asked as the horrible images flooded the media. As a response to those images, my students created poems and constructed a hope wall as a reminder of the tragedy the Japanese people endured. What started as an extension to a poetry unit developed into a full blown service project. My dedicated, thoughtful, and hardworking students created Japanese poetry resources to send to damaged schools, wrote poems to raise public awareness, and raised five hundred and eighty five dollars to send to the devastated region. In one student’s words, “Poetry is a way for students to express themselves.” Project H.O.P.E. started as thoughts and words and turned into a mission- Helping Other People Endure.
TIPC Ratings
Students used a variety of resources to complete this project. Information about Japanese poetry was hard for them locate, but they assembled information as they found it using Advanced Google Search. They were given free choice as to the digital tools to use for this project. Their collaborative rubric provided a guide for the accuracy of the information and they synthesized information to complete the project.
Students choose their own teams to complete the project. Each team chose the artifacts they would create, who would create them, and how it would get completed. After each workshop session, they completed a self-evaluation in which they described their role in the group and discussed goals for the next workshop. In addition to the group work, they worked with the entire school and community to raise money for disaster relief.
This service project required higher order thinking skills during the entire process. Whether they questioned about what digital tools to use due to the technology difference or wondered how to translate everything into Japanese, they were constantly thinking and discovering new ways to complete the project. Their daily, workshop reflection guided their thinking after each class period.
The variety of items they created to send to the Japanese students was incredible. One student wrote tiny haikus and attached them to pencils. They created CD’s that included movies and biographies. There were posters that had Japanese poems attached, and some students created Power Points with vocabulary. One group created a few sets of flashcards with Japanese poets and famous poems. If I had given them an infinite amount of time, I know they would have kept creating.
