C-SPAN Student Cam

Over the past several months, three groups of 8th grade social studies students have been working tirelessly and fearlessly on C-SPAN's 2012 StudentCam competition video project.  Their task was to create a video reflecting this year's theme:

After spending countless hours--both in and outside of the classroom--researching, interviewing, filming, and editing, the three groups have finally finished their projects and have submitted the to the contest.  They'll all be anxiously awaiting the March 7th announcement of the winners, but until then they can relish in the fact that all three groups created fabulously detailed and creative projects that highlight the contest's theme.

Once again, I'm amazed by what these students can produce!  It is just incredible as to what they can come up with and then create using their brains and a computer.  Check out all three group's videos below, and stay tuned to see if any of them are national winners!

Rubric Makers

A great idea for any classroom is to put the evaluation and assessment task of a project in the students' hands.

Students thrive when they take ownership, especially with how they will be assessed and graded.

For a project we are doing with the Constitution, students got to create their own rubric/scoring guide for how they will be evaluated. They each had 4 squares they cut out and wrote one element they thought was important to include in their project (& be graded upon). Then collectively as a class they came together to "attach" (staple) similar ideas and areas. After a discussion, they came to a consensus on several areas that they felt were essential to include in the project and the assessment. All of a sudden, without anything but guidance from the teacher, the rubric/scoring guide was made...& it was 100% student generated.












- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone