The Student who made this Comic Book for our 7th grade Language Arts class project showed an immense amount of humanity, kindness and empathy in this story line. She also fulfilled her requirements for figurative language and dialogue, as well as a conflict, resolution, and a strong moral. This work shows critical thinking, and high level taxonomy application.
The two Kindness Quilts displayed below were made in an 8th grade health class which utilized the Positive Action platform, and have since inspired a few other students to make their own kindness squares as a personal keepsake. It is amazing how far a small act of kindness can go. The students who made these kindness squares took a moment afterwards to reflect on the class experience, and found that they had treated one another with a heightened awareness and respect.
THE CLAY MARBLE JOURNAL
The journal pages below are from a student journal produced during my 7th grade unit study on the Clay Marble novel, which allowed me to incorporate not only many Language Arts standards, but also aspects of Social Studies, Geography, Health, and Art. Due to the personalized effort of each student in writing these narratives and incorporating their knowledge the assignment was very easy to differentiate for various learner levels. For example, the first assignment was to write a letter from the point of view of a refugee, and to incorporate the main idea of the refugee conflicts. The assignment could have varied levels of difficulty including requiring a logical introduction, followed by a main body and conclusion; it could also ask for an organizational pattern in the text; the assignment could ask to include 15 words with Greek or Latin roots to challenge the more advanced students; finally, the requirements for grammar, spelling and syntax can vary with each learner.