The object was for the students to design and implement a project that would demonstrate their understanding of this essential question-

1. What are the lessons from the Roman Empire and have we learned from them?

While also illustrating mastery or at least proficiency in the following benchmarks:

1. Use cause and effect to identify patterns of change.
2. Demonstrate how knowledge of the past can help explain current events.
3. Examine how different types of government gain, use, and justify power.
4. Use appropriate sources and tools to create, change, and understand information.
5. Describe ways that human events have influenced, and been influenced by, physical and human geographic conditions.
6. Can identify and clarify a problem or issue
7. Can construct, support and begins to evaluate arguments

After spending time in class discussing and defining the list of skills above and translating them into “student friendly” language, the students where asked to use Bloom’s Taxonomy to lay out a list of seven steps they would have to complete in order to prove understanding of each benchmark.

Example of final product: One of the final products the students came up with was to organize and plan a debate discussing the positive and negative impacts slavery had on the Roman Empire and connect some of those arguments to the use of slavery today.

Example of instructions:

1. Use cause and effect to identify patterns of change. Argue and Defend whether the slave trade had a negative or positive impact on Rome
2. Demonstrate how knowledge of the past can help explain current events. Compare and Contrast slavery form the past and slavery today.
3. Examine how different types of government gain, use, and justify power. Restate four ways the slaves affected government authority and power.
4. Use appropriate sources and tools to create, change, and understand information. Identify sources and list them in a bibliography
5. Describe ways that human events have influenced, and been influenced by, physical and human geographic conditions. Indicate how the expanding geography of Rome increased the need for slavery.
6. Can identify and clarify a problem or issue. Discuss five ways the growth of slavery was a problem for the Plebeians and Patricians.
7. Can construct, support and begins to evaluate arguments. Argue negative and positive factors of the statement above.

After each group had designed a project complete with instructions and rubrics, they exchanged the project with another group and completed the new project. The group who had originally designed the project would than grade it based on the rubric they created. Overall, I think the students learned more by designing the projects than actually doing them.

Here is a list of all the projects:

1. Plan and organize a debate that argues about the positive and negative impacts slavery had on Rome and the lessons you have learned from them.
2. Compose a song that shows what lessons were learned from the spread of the Roman Empire and what we learned from them.
3. Create a Rap song about the lessons you have learned from Roman Laws.
4. Create a puppet show that explains the lessons about Roman daily life and whether or not we have learned anything from them.
5. Perform a skit which dramatizes how religion was used in Rome to consolidate power and whether that is being done today.

All of these projects were conceived and implement by students. I simply guided them on their journeys.

After doing research on global and local labor laws, human rights and working conditions the students will write a song or poem addressing the information they discovered. They will present these works live to the class and hopefully record a podcast for presentation on the wiki page. Although this project appears to be a writing assignment, the students are actually being assessed on their ability to use resources, sort information, and determine appropriateness of both sources and information.

The Benchmarks being assessed during the research phase are as follows:

• Use a variety of resource materials to gather information for a research topic
• Organize information and ideas from multiple sources in systematic ways
• Determine appropriateness of an information source for a research topic

1. We wanted the students themselves to prove that they have understood or completed each benchmark, so we asked them to use the levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy below to explain how they could show evidence that they could:

• Use a variety of resource materials to gather information for a research topic
• Organize information and ideas from multiple sources in systematic ways
• Determine appropriateness of an information source for a research topic

Knowledge: arrange, define, duplicate, label, list, memorize, name, order, recognize, relate, recall, repeat, reproduce, state.

Comprehension: classify, describe, discuss, explain, express, identify, indicate, locate, recognize, report, restate, review, select, translate,

Application: apply, choose, demonstrate, dramatize, employ, illustrate, interpret, operate, practice, schedule, sketch, solve, use, write.

Analysis: analyze, appraise, calculate, categorize, compare, contrast, criticize, differentiate, discriminate, distinguish, examine, experiment, question, test.

Synthesis: arrange, assemble, collect, compose, construct, create, design, develop, formulate, manage, organize, plan, prepare, propose, set up, write.

Evaluation: appraise, argue, assess, attach, choose compare, defend estimate, judge, predict, rate, core, select, support, value, evaluate.

They were to make a series of instructions that they would carry out using the verbs form above. See student examples here at our wiki. We will also assess one writing and one presentation benchmark to be mentioned later.

The students were also asked to brainstorm essential questions they wanted to answer through their research. We again used Bloom’s Taxonomy to make sure they were critically looking at this entire process.

1. How effective are the questions you are trying to answer? Take a look at the list of questions you have brainstormed.

• Put them in order of most important to you to least.
• Label the questions using labels like political, class, personal etc…
• Review your list and identify five questions you would like to answer
• Explain why you think the answers to these questions will make for good material for a poem.

We are now starting our research and thinking about our poems. I have also been sharing a song or two which deals with social issues with them everyday. We have listened to Bob Dyaln, Bob Marley, and Rage Against the Machine so far.

Please comment on this blog post if you or your students have any insight or information about class and labor in your community that they can share with us. Perhaps we can invite them to edit our wiki with first hand accounts, pictures, or helpful websites . Maybe we can arrange a skype forum to discuss some of these issues.

I will be out of town for a week starting Thursday, but I am keen to involve some kind of collaboration when we get back.