After attending a couple of sessions with John Zola at the EARCOS Teachers conference in Kota Kinabalu in March 2011, I decided to try as many of his teaching and assessment strategies as possible in the last quarter of the year. I'm starting here with the last one and I'll work my way back through the others.
John Zola's Website - You can download instructions and rubrics for a ton of lesson and assessment ideas.
On John's website I found a instructions for an end-of-term poster task that I decided to use to end my 20th Century History class this year instead of giving a final exam. The students were called upon to work in a group and create a poster with a single unifying theme that showed examples of what they had learned over the course of the year in my class. Elements from at least ten of the dozen units we covered this year had to be represented on the poster. Students spent a class period reviewing the years lessons and notes, settling on a theme and creating a blueprint for their poster. Several classes were then devoted to creating the posters. Students were required to do almost all the work in class so that the participation of all group members would be encouraged and monitored by me.
For the most part, students used the class time well and I was happy with the level of participation and engagement. There were exceptions, of course. A couple of groups ended up having only one member do most of the work and some students wasted most of the class time given them.
I used a simple rubric to grade the posters based on the theme, the units covered, the appropriateness of the images used and the level of group participation. Overall I was impressed with the creativity students demonstrated in coming up with a theme and finding symbols and images to show what they had learned.
The following are some of the best.
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| This was one of my favourites. I really like the choice of symbols and images to show conflict |
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| Using gears to represent the interrelation of the events and themes of the century was a creative and effective approach |
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| The use of a famous WWI painting of gas attack survivors as a framework for this poster was very powerful |
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| Geography was an important element of understanding the events of the century and a couple of groups used maps to organize their information. |
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| Vignettes representing the disasters that characterized each of the units for these students tell their story of the 20th century |
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| Using the format of a crossword puzzle allowed this group to include vocabulary and details in their poster along with appropriate images |
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Oppression symbolized by the Berlin wall was used as a frame to show the darker side of the 20th Century |
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| A creative way to organize the images and I really like the hand turning the page to the 21st century |
Many thanks to John Zola for the idea and to my students for trying something new with relatively few complaints. :)
