Her Thinklink and GoAnimate This last school year I had an average middle school class. Sports, friends, cell-phones, and clothing dominated the list of important things to worry about. School, well is just school. They come, do "most" of the work, but the focus is not always about school.
Well, in steps one student. She really liked my class and seemed to work harder in social studies. She had her ups and downs, but always made me smile with her creative work. In fact, she came to class one day and said, "Mr. Holman, I was watching Law and Order last night and it was just like what we are talking about in class." This got me excited. A Student "SAW" class in modern TV. I said, "You should write a blog on that and explain what you mean." Now, for full disclosure no points were given, no rubric, no direction, just "write a blog". Here is what she wrote:
Well, in steps one student. She really liked my class and seemed to work harder in social studies. She had her ups and downs, but always made me smile with her creative work. In fact, she came to class one day and said, "Mr. Holman, I was watching Law and Order last night and it was just like what we are talking about in class." This got me excited. A Student "SAW" class in modern TV. I said, "You should write a blog on that and explain what you mean." Now, for full disclosure no points were given, no rubric, no direction, just "write a blog". Here is what she wrote:
Her blog entry. In this day in age, kids are watching more violent television shows everyday. Yet no one realizes that these television shows are not so different from the things you study in Social Studies. The middle ages were just as violent as these television shows you're watching. As an example, yesterday I was watching one of my favorite shows, Law & Order (special victims unit). As I was watching I realized that the things that were happening seemed oddly familiar. Like a family, sound asleep at home, when suddenly a group of burglars intrude their home, taking there stuff! When the family awoke in the morning there was almost nothing left. To me, that reminds me of the period of time that the vikings would come into villages and intrude their homes, just like it did in the show. Then of course the city in the show being New York, there were more intrusions around the part where the first family was intruded. In the middle ages, the vikings would go around to villages near each other exactly like in the show.
The show I was watching was actually a lot like real life. Things like that happen all the time! When you think about it, this happened when the fall of Rome was happening. If this is reoccurring process continues, then who knows if there will be a 'Fall of Ohio', or 'Fall of New York', maybe even 'Fall of the USA'. It's this kind of outside thinking that makes us think about things in a different way. Next time you're in your social studies class, stop and make connections. If you make connections to your life to the Middle Ages, or anything basically, you'll find that you can discover more then you know.
This is real learning. It's not about a grade, not about what Mr. Holman told her to do, but about seeing what you are learning in the world around you, student directed learning. She said it best: "...stop and make connections....you'll find that you can discover more then you know." Thanks for that:)
As an added bonus, check out this final project she did on What is a Legacy?
RSS Feed
