Discipline-Specific Writing and Assessment

I don't know if we're supposed to go in any certain order on these blog posts-I haven't before, but I guess I'll start on this one.

In this post I'm talking about discipline-specific writing and assessment.  This will be a little harder for me because I didn't actually take many courses in my discipline in secondary education, so I can't draw on a lot of personal experience.  I'll start by going over the classes I did take.  In middle school (or jr. high- I don't know what the difference is, if any) I took the shop class that everyone was required to take and I didn't get much out of it.  The curriculum consisted of a bunch of projects that we did at our own pace, each was supposed to teach us a different principle.  We would start by picking a folder and going to the corresponding station.  I remember that most of the stuff was missing for most of the projects and I didn't get much out of it- the best one was one on the expansion of metals where we had different metal rods held in place with a gauge on top then each rod was heated and we could compare how much each metal would expand.  Each project had a couple confusing questions at the end we had to answer (maybe they were confusing because most of the stuff was gone so you couldn't really complete the project).  This kind of ruined shop for me.  another time in middle school I took another shop class and it was mainly woodworking, which isn't my favorite, but what made it worse was that I fractured both of my wrists so I had a cast on each hand/arm and I was pretty well useless and just watched other kids do most of the main project for me.  I don't remember any writing in this class.  In high school I decided not to take any shop classes because of previous experiences, and I was busy with AP classes like chemistry, physics and calculus.  I did take multimedia design and production classes as well as a class called computer commercial art.  I enjoyed these classes and learned many skills and became proficient in quite a few programs, especially Photoshop (as I side note: I do wedding announcements for cheap, so if you or some one you know is getting married let me know).  We didn't really do any writing in these classes that I can remember, just created things on the computer.  That's pretty much it for the classes I took in my content area.

The classes I took didn't include much writing. In the first shop class our grade was based solely on the number of projects we completed, the second was the way the project looked-if the stool was crooked then we got a lower grade.  In the multimedia and commercial art classes we did different projects that had to contain certain elements such as a 3D model that incorporated a hand drawn/painted piece.  These were more enjoyable because unlike the other classes that would be included in my content area there were loose guidelines that we had to follow to show that we understood what we had been going over, but we could do it any way we wanted.  These types of projects also let us learn more by trying new things instead of following a set of written plans and getting the exact same thing as everyone else.

As a teacher I like the idea of letting students choose their own projects.  Letting them choose helps them become more interested so they learn more.  I also am planning on having them include more writing than I did. I think it would be good for them to do research on the topics of their choice and prepare a presentation on it to give to the class.  I also think that follow-up is important; I would include this by having them write about what they did and what they learned and what they would do differently next time.  This helps them reflect and understand better.