Rationale: Students must be able to take what they have learned, both informational and intrinsic in nature, and create something original as a means to make what they have learned more personal and meaningful. Students must use choice in determining which performance task they will use to express what they have learned throughout this interdisciplinary unit.
Learning Goal: Today we are choosing from a variety of performance tasks in order to find the most effective way to express how we can be the change that we want to see in the world.
Procedure:
1) Provide students with the essential question: How can I be the change that I want to see in the world?
2) Assist students in exploring this deep question by way of other questions like: What changes do you want to see in the world? What changes can you make a difference in right now? What changes would you like to be a part of for the future? Why does this need to change?
3) After brainstorming, require the students to choose the one change they will focus their project on.
4) Provide the students with some options for how they might present their 'Being the Change" to an audience:
a) Create a billboard which heralds your message of change and demonstrates how you personally can be that change.
b) Write a song or poem, which expresses your message of change using figurative language, metaphor, visualization, or narrative language.
c) Write a skit wherein you enact how you can be the change in a situation or variety of situations.
d) Write a persuasive speech, which hooks the audience and keeps them engaged in your message of change wherein you explain how you intend to be the change that you want to see in the world.
e) Write and illustrate a short narrative, fictional or non-fictional, which teaches the reader about your message of being the change.
f) Come up with your own performance task and run it by the teacher.
5) Once students have chosen their performance task, encourage them to use any and all of their accumulated work they have created throughout the unit as resource material for their final project.
6) After conferring with each student, hold a publishing party in which family members and other members of the school community are invited to join in the celebration of "Being the Change that YOU Want to See in the World", wherein all students present their message of change.
Evaluation/ Assessment:
We will know we got it when we have used our portfolio of work throughout this unit to create and present a performance task, which spreads our individual messages of change.