These Documentaries Are KILLER!

We are led by example. 

Think about it: Have you ever... Put together a puzzle without first looking at the cover to see what it's supposed to look like once complete? Made a craft or home improvement project without first looking up inspiration or instructions on Google or Pinterest? Saw a movie without watching the trailer or reading the synopsis? The answer is mostly likely no, as we are driven by seeing something that we can connect with.

Because of this need for inspiration to draw from and even deviate from, it is often challenging to ask our students to create - the highest level of Bloom's - without giving them any sort of frame of reference. Couple that with asking students to use a new tech tool, conduct a research project on an unknown individual, and apply taught curricular concepts to a new creation may feel daunting for even our traditionally higher performing students. 

Recognizing all of these factors, Becky Ainsworth - Forensics Science teacher at Byron Nelson High School, created multiple resources to set her students up for success. Students in this upper level class were tasked with creating a mini-documentary that detailed the forensic psychology of an infamous serial killer, and were to present the information in a video format using Adobe Spark to make it view like a true documentary. 

Click to view Mrs. Ainsworth's Spark Project Instructions.

In previous years, students presented this content in a traditional format by standing in front of the class and retelling their information. This type of presentation lacked student engagement, was time consuming, and the success of a exemplar product was confined to that class periods' limited audience. To elevate this experience, Becky then replaced the traditional presentation format with the documentary style project requirement. With any first year project, there aren't a bank of examples to pull from, so it was a genius idea that Mrs. Ainsworth created and delivered the project instructions using the exact tool, Adobe Spark Video, she was asking students to use. Additional relevant information, including required content and the grading rubric, were showcased on a traditional document project outline.

Next, students were empowered with full creative freedom to add content from any reliable source (with a minimum of at least 3) as they conducted their own research. The documentary is a visual, video presentation, so the main premise requires a series of photos and videos that have a voice-over to tell the story using very little, if any, text on screen. Students used sites such as Pixabay to find free stock photo and video clips, as well as truly realistic clips that depicted the actual serial killer in photo or video. Check out these top two mini-documentary creations:

Ian Brady: As told by Lauren

Jeffrey Dahmer: As told by Kai and Tony

Once video creation was complete within Adobe Spark, students downloaded their videos and then uploaded them onto a collaborative YouTube Playlist that would house projects for all Forensic Science students at BNHS. By uploading to this platform, students were able to share their creation beyond the walls of their class period and could in turn view documentaries created by students studying the same content in a completely different class period. Publishing to YouTube allowed students to have a broader audience, made the presentation format more engaging as students got to watch multiple mini-documentaries, and created a wealth of examples to draw from for the following school year. Since Mrs. Ainsworth's classes in all had 57 videos on their Playlist, Mrs. Ainsworth plans to pick the top exemplars, as well as non-examples, from this collaborative playlist to make a new, shortened, and focused playlist to support next year's students as they, too, begin this exciting creative project.

This project meets ISTE Student Standard of being a Knowledge Constructor (3) in which students

• 3a: Students plan and employ effective research strategies to locate information and other resources for their intellectual or creative pursuits.
• 3b: Students evaluate the accuracy, perspective, credibility and relevance of information, media, data or other resources.
• 3c: Students curate information from digital resources using a variety of tools and methods to create collections of artifacts that demonstrate meaningful connections or conclusions.

"Hear" Me Out: Deaf Culture Experience/Experiment

Challenge: You are about to experience simulated deafness for a full 24 hour period to truly experience authentic ASL language usage as a hard of hearing individual. 

What a shock that must have been to the students in Mrs. Enfinger's American Sign Language I and II classes as Byron Nelson High School. While this teacher is able to somewhat mimic this experience in class by having full silent class days by which students must solely sign the language without speaking aloud or listening to said communication, this experiment provided a truly different take on removing sound from the equation. As a result of the experiment, deaf culture awareness was at an all time high at BNHS as students, parents, teachers, and administrators were talking about their opinions, accommodations, concerns, and perceptions which brought to light the need for true empathy and understanding for ALL types of students.

To begin, the following various stakeholders were informed about the experience.

• Students who would be participating learned of their assignment expectations and details
• Parents of those students in part that the experiment was expected to continue in full effort at home throughout the 24 hour time span
• Teachers and all other school staff since they would have these ASL students in their classes as well as other staff members who would be witnessing the experiment in other roles

The most frequently asked question was "How am I supposed to teach?" or "How is my student supposed to learn?" The best part about these questions is that the eye-opening learning experiment would not solely be experienced by the direct participant, but so much learning and understanding would also occur with other responsible parties.

To prepare for the "big day," students were tasked with researching ADA (American Deaf Association) requirements or accommodations available for all of the students' traditional daily activities including in the classroom such as enabling closed captioning on videos, live closed captioning on Google Slides, in addition to what needs may result for electives such as music or sports, and even church or other after school activities. They also gained an awareness of additional accommodations to accomplish other things they would want to do such as technology available including phone apps, interpreter and closed captioning services. Furthermore, research continued as students learned about Mandy Harvey and Nyle Dimarco to study deaf later in life vs. deaf from birth. Going into the experiment, students not only had a base understanding of the language they've so far learned through a traditional classroom setting, but they've also had a heightened interest in cultural aspects and legal accommodations as this research was authentic and immediately applied.

Students didn’t know the exact day they would go deaf in order to simulate adult deafness as it is usually gradual and don’t know it is happening. Instead, they showed up to class on a random day and were then told it would be their day to go deaf. The kids wore inner earplugs and outer ear muffs and on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being profoundly deaf) were a 3-4 to simulate an adult who was hard of hearing. Students had their choice of how they preferred to journal their experience from keeping an ongoing written blog via Google Doc, a vlog (video blog) for extra credit to later by shareable via YouTube, voice notes on a phone, other other digital presentation format.  

Alisa's full YouTube video blog (vlog)

Alisa's thoroughly detailed, insightful blog

Megan & Copelynn's Adobe Spark Page Experience Summary

These examples above show the passion and above-and-beyond-effort these students exhibited through being given an relevant, authentic experience coupled with the ability to share their story with a live, authentic audience. 

Mrs. Enfinger concluded that “The amazing thing about ASL is that I get to watch these kids fall in love with the culture and the people in a different way. They have a deep compassion and admiration for them, but it is difficult to teach them an understanding, empathy if you will. Not sympathy at all because what they learn over everything else is how empowered they felt- truly no fear! This experience was meant to educate them and those around them that the deaf can do anything the hearing can do except hear.”

This experience meets International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)’s standard of a Knowledge Constructor in which “students plan and employ effective research strategies to locate information and other resources for their intellectual or creative pursuits” (3A) and “students build knowledge by actively exploring real-world issues and problems, developing ideas and theories and pursuing answers and solutions” (3D). 

Say “Oui!” to Performance-based Assessments

If you’re anything like I was as a classroom teacher, you’ve spent many nights drowning in papers to grade. You understand the time spent in coffee shops, trying desperately to get caught up. And yet, if you’re anything like me, there have been times that, after all those hours and lattes, you weren’t satisfied that your students’ grades actually reflected their knowledge and ability. Where was I going wrong?

I assigned and graded vocabulary worksheets each week, but students were still scoring low on their diction in writing. I graded reading quizzes that assessed plot and character knowledge, but in the end some students couldn’t talk about the major themes of a novel. Between what felt like wasted class time and weekends spent grading, it never failed that when it turned out an assignment didn't actually tell me whether or not my students truly “got it”, I was left frustrated.

I understood that traditional assignments and tests work to show if students “know” something, but quickly learned that they fall short as an indicator of whether or not students can actually use that knowledge. Of course there is a time and place for each, but it is important for teachers to challenge their students with performance-based assessments if they want to know that students can apply their knowledge in meaningful ways. Northwest High School’s French teacher, Madame Blanc (Mrs. White), made this shift in her classroom this year, away from traditional tests and towards a performance-based method of assessment -- and it seems to be paying off.

Each six weeks, Madame Blanc gives her students both creative tasks and opportunities to apply and demonstrate their learning through student-created products that are ultimately shared through their ePortfolio, a personal and digital collection of their growth and learning. As a basic example, she asked her students to create an article for a French magazine that explains an American holiday and custom as a way to assess their application of many language skills they are working on.

French student Elise Reuman recounted one assignment where she and her classmates were asked to create a video that described their partner’s family as a way to demonstrate their ability to use adjectives in French. Using Adobe Spark video, she described her classmate's family. Elise reflected, “...using the vocabulary in a way that applied it to a likely scenario really helped to ingrain the information. Projects like this usually only require the [written] portion of the vocabulary… [but] Mrs.White, went a step further and required a vocal response as well. This really solidified some of the pronunciation and helped me become more comfortable with actually speaking the French language.”

As Elise shared, performance-based tasks engage students in more authentic opportunities to practice real-world skills. It’s important to note that, in a performance-based classroom “teachers do not have to “give up” units of study or favorite activities” (ASCD). According to ASCD, it’s because these “authentic tasks are rooted in curriculum” that “teachers can develop [assignments] based on what already works for them.” It’s ultimately through small changes in how teachers ask students to learn that “assignments become more authentic and more meaningful to students.”

For example, in another assignment in Madame Blanc's class, students were challenged to learn about multiple perspectives, including the likes and dislikes of French teenagers. They had to go further to compare/contrast these perspectives with those of American Teens. Students interviewed their peers (some opting to collect data through Google Forms), graphed and visualized the data they collected (through Google Sheets), and then wrote of summary of their findings in both French and English, finally sharing their work through their ePortfolio (a website created on Google Sites). Assignments like this require students to be strong in their content knowledge, but more than that, they develop skills outside of French language studies -- skills like the 6 Cs: creativity, communication, collaboration, critical thinking, character education, and citizenship.

Watching performance-based assessments work for Madame Blanc has reiterated what hindsight and experience taught me: It was when I focused on creating rigorous and authentic learning tasks for my students, rather than assigning simple checks-for-understanding for grades, that I best served them. It is through rigorous, performance-based learning tasks that we can empower our students to think critically and create, and that we can most accurately and authentically assess their learning.