People who have dared to make a difference

This week in school we launched our 1st assessment task for the term for our Year 7 students who are following our Learning to Learn course which is an hour a week for the next three years. It is taught as a discreet subject and in this first term students are completing the module called I learner which explores how students learn best, what motivates them to learn, how to use thinking maps, thinking hats and lots of other things. This first assessment task is called People who dare to make a difference, what students have to do is pick someone who has dared to make a difference and explore what is it that makes someone successful, a sort of hero to them.

Why are the students doing this?

We want the students to be able to identify the characteristics or personality traits which help a person to be successful because if they can learn what helps other people to be successful then they will know how to be equally successful. Students will create a biography (factual story about a person) to tell everybody about a person who you think has made a difference. They can produce this in whatever format they prefer such as anything from a song, poem, story, cartoon, video, podcast, poster, scrapbook or any other way they can think of as long as it meets all of the success criteria then it is fine.

We launched this assessment task in assembly with their learning to learn teachers, we had a very funny assembly where the teachers shared their person who dared to make a difference and what attributes they admired in them and have tried to have themselves. It was really interesting as each teacher had a different ‘hero’ and presented these in many different ways showing the students that they could also do it any way they wanted. We had a very creative story about Luke Sykwalker, Video clips of George Best and a PowerPoint of a famous French expolorer! Finally I have really had my arm twisted to put this on here but I created a photostory with my own music, beat and song created by myself in Audacity about Nelson Mandela. I have to say it is one of the worst things you will ever see or hear but if you really want cheering up it is worth watching for the 1 minute it lasts for. At least it shows the students how creative they can be:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPI7D664Ubw

Who is your personal hero? Who do you admire? Do you think this is a worthwhile learning experience for our students today?