The Polliwog Journal

It is the fifth year for this project: Living Histories Multigenre Web Projects. I still love “teaching” the project that Pat Schulze and I developed in 2004. Not just a paper, not just hypertext, not just multigenre, this project seems to do it all. I like how layered in skills it is. I have long thought that it serves as an excellent year end assessment for many of the skills we’ve been teaching in 9th grade English, but it includes new skills as well. It may be the perfect springboard project for 10th grade.

The true test of its value is the positive feelings it engenders in students. Most groups go into the the six week adventure with some little excitement but mostly trepidation. In the beginning, the “to do” list seems overwhelming. But at the end of that six week period, there is a great deal of satisfaction in having done a good job.

Students commonly report in their self assessments that once they get going, there is plenty of time for everything. They also report that they loved their interview experience. For some, the interview experience is emotionally meaningful.

“Old” Skills

• writing hypertext (creating links to extend, support, or clarify ideas)
• creating folders, pages, and saving files in FrontPage
• designing readable, user friendly Websites
• writing expository prose in 3rd person, stating claims and supporting them
• writing multigenre to add depth

“New” Skills

• interviewing a primary source
• researching a topic using print, Web, and electronic database sources
• notetaking
• weaving secondary source material from research into text
• citing sources in text
• creating annotated bibliography
• preparing a photo in Photoshop Elements for the Web

And more. . .

• teamwork and collaboration
• time management (meeting deadlines, making and keeping appointments, etc.)
• organization of materials and resources
• email and phone etiquette

In the future

• find more topics for which primary sources are available (WWII veterans are leaving us daily)
• use Web 2.0 tools to help students truly experience collaborative writing process

Please visit students’ sites: Links to students’ projects for 2008