7th Grade Hatshepsut Project

Alright guys...I have gotten some feedback that some of you think you may have gotten information that we are not using. Please bear in mind that this "museum" will be the work of all three classes. You may have information that helps someone else and vice versa. Plus, we need to be sure that our information is accurate. Additionally, there is information that we ALL need to know. Remember, you are curators, and curators are experts!  Before we actually do the "hands on" work, all of the printouts you have brought will be in the binder that we can all access. All good information is good for all of us!!!!

This product is student driven. I noticed that the information retrieval was going a bit slower than we needed it to go, and that usually calls for breaking down the work into smaller chunks. I let you decide how that should be done. It is part of the problem-solving process. Some things you learn the hard way, too. We'll do another problem later, and you'll say,"Remember when we did that Egypt thing? We should have done this or that." You can use that experience to your advantage later.

So hang in there. We have reached that uncomfortable stage in a PBL where decisions will be made among you that will not necessarily be agreed upon 100%. I am noticing, however, that most of you are mindful of how important being fair to others is. In your suggestions today, you were telling me, "I think more people would think it is fair to ..." This tells me that you are not only focusing on the product, but also on the most effective communication to complete the project successfully. I am proud of you for having that mindset.

The suggestions you are making for how this will ultimately look are starting to come together. Many of your ideas have been quite creative. We may even want some help from parents with some of this. As I said in class, look around your home. See what items are disposable that can be repurposed for this project. I do not believe in being wasteful or spending more than we must to achieve our purpose. That being said, I also mentioned to you that you are expected to be advanced, so the challenge is to make recycled and inexpensive items look like amazing artifacts and displays. This is not a 4th grade  merit project, so we will be much more informative and look much more polished.