Middle School College Project
Prepare your 8th graders for a successful and productive high school career by allowing your students to set
the long-term goal of attending the college of their dreams!
Completing this two-to-three month project will allow 8th grade students to
mimic all of the things they will do and experience their senior year of high school as they prepare for the next step in their academic careers.
Below are all of the documents I use for this project. I encourage you to use these as a place to start.
Adjust, adapt, revise and edit these documents to make this the perfect project for YOUR students.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions, comments, and/or suggestions.
I've been using this project for eight years and am still making adjustments, changes and edits every year based on feedback from students. parents, authentic audience members, colleagues and anyone else who has a great idea to make this PBLU even better, more authentic, and more fun for my students.
the long-term goal of attending the college of their dreams!
Completing this two-to-three month project will allow 8th grade students to
mimic all of the things they will do and experience their senior year of high school as they prepare for the next step in their academic careers.
Below are all of the documents I use for this project. I encourage you to use these as a place to start.
Adjust, adapt, revise and edit these documents to make this the perfect project for YOUR students.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions, comments, and/or suggestions.
I've been using this project for eight years and am still making adjustments, changes and edits every year based on feedback from students. parents, authentic audience members, colleagues and anyone else who has a great idea to make this PBLU even better, more authentic, and more fun for my students.
Project Outline and Student Project Overview Handouts,
Student Guidelines and Rubrics
UNIVERSITY FIELD TRIP
LINKS TO COLLEGE SEARCH ENGINES
PROJECT APPLICATION AND RUBRIC
ACCEPTANCE LETTERS!!
I've attached a file to give you an example of how I create the acceptance letters. There's no easy and fast way to create these. You have to go through student by student and find each university's mascot and appropriate image to use. For my 70-80 students, I find that it takes approximately two-to-three hours to create, print and stuff envelopes.
I have found it fun to have students open their envelopes one at a time so that everyone can learn what school each student will be researching and it builds suspense. After opening the envelopes, students then use post-it flags to put their name on a map of universities and colleges across the nation (I bought a super cool University Map at Barnes and Noble, laminated it and have it posted in the classroom throughout the project.) |
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AUTHENTIC AUDIENCE
The best possible authentic audience for this project includes the administrators, counselors, teachers and student leaders for each of the high schools your students will be attending. I have found that getting the principal's endorsement for this project is the best way to recruit audience members for your presentation event. I have found that for each room, it is best to have one adult and one student leader. Once you've been doing this project for a few years, you'll find that former students start filling up your in-box with requests to come help out at this event because they are excited to be the expert in the room. I typically my first email to every single administrator, counselor, and teacher to all the schools my students are headed to about ten weeks ahead of my event. Here's a sample email to send prospective authentic audience members.
INSPIRATION AS THE EVENT NEARS
During the week leading up to the presentation event, I post videos of famous graduation speeches (one per day) as students count down to their presentations. The idea is to get students excited for the presentation, but ultimately remind them that the long term goal is graduating high school and college...and beyond!
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DAY OF EVENT DOCUMENTS
I give students a short memo the day of the event to remind them of the many logistics required to keep the event running smoothly
Students will not only receive feedback (and a grade) from the teacher observing their presentation, but also from the authentic audience members. This is also helpful for your authentic audience to take notes during the presentation that they can refer back to during their verbal feedback.
With so many people helping out, it is easy to forget to say 'thank you' to everyone. Several days before the event, I have student aides handwrite a simple thank you note to each of the authentic audience members to give then the night of the event. I also create small gift bags with mini chocolate bars, a pen (for the constructive feedback) and a bottled water. When each person checks in, they are given the gift bag and personalized thank you note. I've created this draft for students to use in order to keep the messages consistent.
This event is a special night for both student and families. Creating a program creates a fun keepsake for families, while also highlighting all the students presenting and a place for a public thank you to the many people required to make this event a success.
With many presentations, there is no way all the presentations can be in one room, so my team really steps up on this night and each teacher hosts a group of 8-10 students and their families. I provide each teacher a suggested script to keep things as consistent between the rooms as possible.
Each teacher is given a file with the following items (in order of student presentations):
Each teacher is given a file with the following items (in order of student presentations):
- A copy of the script
- Presentation Rubric for the teacher to fill out
- Awards to give students
- Wordles--a *gift* from the student's classmates (earlier in the project, students are given an *adjective test* that is a list of all classmates names and they are to add three positive adjectives they associate with the student. I have students complete this in Google Forms and then, after carefully reviewing the responses, I create a word cloud for each student, print it on decorative paper, and laminate it. Here' the link for creating this:
Then at the end of the evening, the teacher returns the file to me, with the completed rubrics, authentic audience feedback forms, and any materials for any student who did not attend the event.