Performance Tasks

I can remember when I asked students at the beginning of the year what they were interested in, and they told me that they were interested in the mill and logging.  With that knowledge in my brain, I found the perfect opportunity to tie together their interest with a Performance Task and Unit!  For the past few weeks, we have been learning about writing stories.  We have been learning about point of view, characters, theme, plot, etc.  We have written our first narrative, learned how to implement dialogue, flash drafted a second narrative, and have actually written a third.  The third and final narrative was part of a Performance Task.  This task was simple.  Pretend that you are a person from back in time relating to Berlin History, logging, etc, and write your story.  Students could blog, write a narrative, write an interview, create props, video tape, tape record, etc.

For the past few days, students have been working on these stories.  They have revised, edited, and created a performance to be carried out on Thursday and Monday.  They were told to use historically correct information and to be creative.  The have done just that.  Their excitement is unbelievable and the hard work they have put in is amazing.  Tomorrow we start the performances, and I cannot wait to see their hard work!