Romeo and Juliet Persuasive Essay
Some people believe that projects help the student understand the unit better. Others on the other hand,
believe that the student learns and understands the unit better by writing tests, and creating essays. When taking a test or an essay, the teacher is trying to understand if the students listened and learned during the unit. By looking at their scores and how well they did on their essays, the teacher determines how much the student grasped. With a project on the other hand, the student is given enough freedom to show what they learned and grasped during the unit, by using their creativity to show what they learned. Although tests and essays provide the student to learn their material well, it does not give a better learning experience then creating a project on the material.
Now creating projects is much better than taking test and writing essays, because not only was the project more fun, but it created organization skills. When beginning the project, a student is usually in a group with certain peers, such as directors, costume design and actors. Each person in that project group is titled to certain responsibilities and tasks that they need to fulfill. With these responsibilities, most of the time comes a certain leadership in the group. This is where one person of the group stands out from the rest and keeps tracks with everyone’s tasks to see if they have been completed. What was also good about this project is not only did it improve organization skills, yet the students had individual freedom on what they wanted to do. They were able to pick their jobs and do what they pleased that benefited their job and the project positively. This much freedom is very beneficial because it lets the students show their true creativity, and the organization helps prepare the students for the future. Not only did this project create organization skills, yet it was also a giant collaboration.
During this project, there was a large collaboration of ideas and what not. Students were given certain jobs, and with their jobs they exchanged they exchanged and shared ideas, and by doing so the students were able to understand each other more clearly. This project also involved everyone, and it gave all the students a new type of learning experience. The students were all working together like a big family as they planned, solved problems, and showed group skills. This project also exhibited a new experience because it was much more hands than most projects or tests. Yet the project was also not all fun, because it did require some actually work. Important work such as in-depth reading and analysis of the story, answering questions on themes and characters, and discussing and talking about what is going on in the story. With all of these positive attributes and experiences that this project has brought us, it has also brought one more positive attribute to us, which is the use of technology in the real world.
This project involves two schools coming together to create one play. Now there would be no way to do that unless we had a way of communicating. Yet, since this is the 21st century, we were able to pull that off with the power of technology. With networks such as skype, glogster, wikispaces, twitter and more, communication with the other school was simple and ideas were suggested and problems were solved between the two schools. This method has never been done before in any school history, yet it is possible to accomplish thanks to the great technology we have today. Yet another reason this project benefits the students, is that as the years go by, technology is growing more and more. This project is helping the students learn how to use these advances for the real world since almost everything is used with technology. A Job interview, hospitals, law offices, businesses, almost everything in this world is supported with technology. That is another reason why this project was so important, because it was preparing the students for the technology of tomorrow. What better way to help the students learn how to use these techno tools, than in school. This whole project taught all the students many skills and gave them much knowledge for the future ahead, but the best gain that the students received is memories.
Now when this project was given to the students, they were overwhelmed. They did not know what to think since the task they were given was so big. It was so grand because no one in teaching history has done this, to where to schools come together to perform one play. At first, the students thought it would be a failure, everyone thought it would be. Yet as the weeks progressed, the project seemed to turn out better and better. With very little help from their teachers, the students were able to pull off the impossible. When there was a problem, everyone brainstormed on how to solve it. When there was a task to be done in a clutch situation, it was performed. Yes, taking a test may have been the easy way out and showed if the students had learned or not, yet no one will remember a test they have taken. Yet what they will remember is having been able to be apart of, so it should be called, history in the making, as they were pushing the boundaries of the textbook. Now that, that is something the students will remember for years and years to come.
A parent complained that what the students were doing for their poetry unit was pointless, and had no fundamentals in learning at all. Yet in reality, this project created a learning experience ten times better than could a test or essay could ever teach. This project created friendships, memories, learning skills, problem solving, and gave the students some maturity since this project was so immense. Now judging on all the examples given on what the students obtained, it seems as if this project was an amazing and fun learning experience, and the parent was wrong all along. Thus, as said a while back, tests and essays may provide to see if the student learned well and grasped the idea, yet this project gave a much better learning experience on the material.
