Vietnam Photo Essay

Since taking this course, I’ve made some changes in assignments. The first main change I made was with my English 12 Vietnam Photo Essay final project.

I originally borrowed the idea for this photo essay assignment from a teacher website on-line. I tailored it to fit the requirements for the Vietnam war books my students were reading. However, I had never really gone on-line to look at photo essays in general.

Well, last month my group of Jan, Jenn and myself spent time teaching photo essays. I spent more time perusing them on-line and seeing much better examples. Because of that experience, I reformatted my assignment sheet and have made more clearly outlined criteria.

The last two class days my students have been working on their Vietnam War Photo Essays in the computer lab. This sounds silly, but it’s been a joy in the lab watching them work. This group of students has taken this assignment much more seriously and has worked incredibly hard on it compared to the last two years’ of students. This is part due to my clearer guidelines.

This is the first assignment in which I’ve required students to cite images on their PowerPoint slides. The students didn’t complain once, and they seem to know what they are doing. It’s been a perfect example of raising the bar- when the bar is high, students will reach it. I just needed to set it higher, and make it clearer where the bar was!

The assignment is due Wed, and I’m really looking forward to seeing the results. I’ve also taken this assignment one step further with regards to meeting more of my “discussion” goals established in my Q-Comp and PLC groups. This semester, when my students present their Photo Essays, their classmates will be required to evaluate and make comments upon the PowerPoints that they view- and make connections between characters in their books.