Delivering Awesomeness

Our first ever "Fed Ex Project" wrapped up today. What's a Fed Ex Project? It's an assignment where a team is given a short amount of time to accomplish a challenging task. They have just a few hours to deliver a finished product. Get it? Deliver a product? Fed Ex? NOW it makes sense!

This week, student's chose teams and were assigned a theme and a bulletin board or wall. They then were given until today at 2:30 to deliver a well-designed board.

There were a lot of lessons to learn about collaboration. That's one of the reasons I assigned this. Some had more trouble with this than others, but that's okay. Just like learning how to write a story or how to add, I want to help my students learn how to work together--how to collaborate effectively. We talked  A LOT about how to do this. And we'll continue to do so throughout the year.

Another reason I assigned this challenge is that it fit's with our theme, "Leave Your Mark." The students got to leave their mark on their new classroom. These boards will stay up for the next few weeks (come see them at Back to School night!) so we'll get to show them off to all who come to visit.

I think it was a valuable learning experience. Want photos of the finished products? We posted them to our twitter profile!