Day 4 Dominica - Projects Nearly Complete

Miriam, Liz and Hihson working project for their school

Today was a good day. There were less teachers today (only 10) but they came ready to work! They have outlined their projects and have found great online tools students can use while creating them. They are sharing ideas and resources and have begun collaborating as an organic part of project planning. It is wonderful to see. Dominican curriculum includes many courses that have practical work as well as theoretical work. Teachers of these types of courses have been able to create their projects more rapidly than those who are building from scratch.

McGrey, Annie and Dean working on an IT project

One group's project has the students designing an eating area at their school. This project includes presentations and fund raising aspects as well as Math and technical drawing outcomes. They are very excited to work on this and have already asked the principal for permission to implement it in the fall. 

Another group is working on a project that brings together many of the CSEC syllabus outcomes as well as some English and possibly other subjects as well. They are using some sample projects as exemplars and have been very diligent about completing the  planning template. This template is not the one I provided, but a different one that was found online that suited their tastes. I am so impressed! They hardly need me at all.

Part of the planning is deciding on assessments. Sample marking guides, rubrics or scoring guides have been provided and these are used along with ones they already have in their courses. Most of the projects will be finished tomorrow. That is a good thing as we begin to look at teaching in Moodle and we should be able to outline their needs in this course work for the last week. This in turn will outline the homework I have for the weekend!

Today I recorded my group as they sang their national anthem for me. It is a beautiful song and they are beautiful singers. Listen to it here: Isle of Beauty