This activity allowed students to talk about something on which they had expertise, but to do so in a logically structured way - to deliver, essentially, a spoken 5 paragraph essay. Teacher explanation and student samples follow.
Meanwhile, the structured student activity for the majority of the block was to talk in an sustained and confident way about aquaponics for a minimum of one minute. I had noticed that the students were having trouble articulating what they knew about aquaponics systems - the way they worked, or the purpose. Perhaps it was a function of the time lag over the course of the year, but I thought it would be valuable to get them talking about the subject prior to their pitches being constructed.
Then, after the videos were posted, they had to critique each other (and themselves) by looking at both persuasive speech AND content.
Meanwhile, the structured student activity for the majority of the block was to talk in an sustained and confident way about aquaponics for a minimum of one minute. I had noticed that the students were having trouble articulating what they knew about aquaponics systems - the way they worked, or the purpose. Perhaps it was a function of the time lag over the course of the year, but I thought it would be valuable to get them talking about the subject prior to their pitches being constructed.
Then, after the videos were posted, they had to critique each other (and themselves) by looking at both persuasive speech AND content.