Student Reflections"It took a lot of work to create the project (not just the article and video). We worked with our classmates and teachers and asked questions about the world and ourselves. We had to look at those questions, find the most relatable and build off of that. We saw all of these questions about life and death and used them to create a project about the end of the world. We wanted to find out if these different things could actually cause the end. I remember the satisfaction that I felt when I was presenting it at exhibition. They were amazed that a group of 6th graders could do this type of work. When we actually have a say in the project, it makes it more fun for all of us. We had design input which made it more interesting. I would definitely want to try this again."
- Langston Brown "When my parents came to our exhibition they thought that I wouldn't do a great job on such a hard topic. As they saw my classmates work, they were so surprised that I could do such a great job on the flash animation, the article and presenting my work. First we came up with questions about our life, the future and the past. Then we came up with doing the end of the world. We got that idea by tuning our project. After that we got busy researching and did edits after edits – almost too many. The exhibition was great." - Simran Bhakta |
The End of the World UncoveredProject DescriptionStudents and teachers worked together to design this timely project. The project was literally built from scratch, starting with students’ questions about the world and themselves. Together, we categorized the questions and found an overarching theme for a semester project: The end of the world. After brainstorming and selecting doomsday topics, students conducted authentic research. They explored a wide variety of topics (black holes, animal extinction, the history of the apocalypse, global warming and more), stretching across academic disciplines. Each group arranged field trips and interviews with local organizations and experts in order to get answers to their essential questions. Finally, they wrote, illustrated and designed a magazine to reveal their findings. The published piece was accompanied by Flash animations. Our magazine launch party (exhibition) took place the day before the supposed Mayan apocalypse (December 21, 2012). We sold 65 copies in just two hours!
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