Student UnConference

Grades: 9-12
Student Senate Members
Project Name: Student UnConference

Resources: Unconference Sessions

On Thursday, April 17, the Student Senate at Yarmouth High School sponsored an UnConference.

The idea came from thinking about wanting to do TED Talks, but not wanting to limit audience size. They wanted the entire high school to be able to participate. And it had to be completely student run.

Guidelines:

• Students would sign up for sessions (since this was the first time they tried it, they thought it might be helpful to get an idea of what students were interested in)
• Each advisory group had to have a minimum of one pitch for a session. 
• The person or persons who pitched the session are the facilitators.
• The facilitator comes up with 2 guiding questions and one other source for the discussion and submits them ahead of time.
• A teacher should be present in the room that the session was taking place.
• Teachers can participate in the discussion if they want to.
• Every student has to participate, even if they have open campus.
• At the beginning of the UnConference period, all students go to advisor period. Advisors hand out the schedules (students do not know what session they are in until they get there). 

Here are the sessions that were proposed. Because there were so many good ones, the Senate decided to run 2 sessions. It was probably a lot more work, but they were happy they did it.

Global Awareness Project in 2nd Grade

Grade: 2
Teachers: Laura Wetmore and Cathy Wolinsky
Subjects: Reading, Writing, Social Studies
Project Name: FlatConnections - Building Bridges to Tomorrow in Grades K-2
Resources: FlatConnections Project

Once again we have a classroom participating in a global project communicating and collaborating with students across the U.S. and in some international settings. This year Laura Wetmore is participating with her class and they are posting to the project wiki. All classrooms are posting a multimedia greeting (called a "handshake") and a View from Our Window project. The project schools are divided into three working groups to collaborate on a topic, this year the topics will be Sharing Stories and Celebrations. Teachers are communicating via. email as well as a project "ning" and students are using Google Earth to "travel" to the various locations. This is an example of a project that meets the new Global Awareness theme of the updated Social Studies Framework.

This is a map of the schools in the project.