What's working, and what needs to change?

After four weeks of project time, we now have a much better idea of student capabilities and are beginning to see some exciting work. As expected, some students have taken to this idea like a duck to water, and are working on very meaningful projects. A couple are a little too excited, and trying to run before they can walk. They require careful handling - we do want them to slow down to ensure a quality product but we also need to be careful not to dampen the enthusiasm too much.

One example of this is the lad who's dead keen to create a movie and arrived at school with camera and tripod in hand, and was determined to start filming. He had begun a plan of his project, but did not have any planning for the film. We have directed him to some resources about preparing for a film and hope he will now come up with a script, shotlist, and storyboard.

For many students, the one-on-one conversations we are having with them are adequate and we are able to guide them in the appropriate direction. We have also been able to begin sharing projects with the whole group (completed and in progress) - we do this once a week and it is clear that not only are they genuinely interested in seeing each others work, but it also helps them to visualise the many ways a project could develop. Prior to this, teachers modelled possible projects to the group.

We are beginning to see a natural collaboration between students with similar interests, and we are encouraging partnerships between some others that may have been less obvious. For instance the girls interested in photography are helping Jack to photograph his parkour project, and we have suggested that Billy (with an interest in art) might be able to help the girls with their Maori Language project, by creating original borders for signage.

We can now see more clearly who will be needing more structure and guidance, and next term we will be introducing a small number of projects which will be much more teacher-directed.  We had a lot of discussion about whether or not we should have started the year like this, but as we did not know any of the students we decided to give them all an opportunity to show their worth first. This has generally worked well - it is apparent that academic ability is not the most important factor in self-directed learning, but rather motivation and self-management skills.

Thinking ahead to next year, with the same group, we will have a lot more personal knowledge of these students and will likely organise things differently, at least at the start of the year.