My son has a poster due in science this week, all about the units of measure.
I understand, I think, what this is about- to try to get the kids to get a feel for what unit of measure you might use in what case, and to find examples from their own lives. But let’s face it- I probably am never going to measure the volume of my bathtub in kiloliters. I’ve never measured anything in kiloliters ever, but it certainly is possible.
But the lesson that we are really learning from this project is how to work together without killing each other.
James needed some help and guidance as to how to layout the project. We showed him how to use the digital camera, and he took a bunch of pictures of things around the house. We taught him a bit about lighting and backlighting, focus and range. We talked about planning ahead, and estimating time to complete the thing. And then we’ve gone through several versions of how to write and label the pictures, so the layout of the poster looks good and communicates the ideas he has visually as well as through the text.
This is not an easy thing for kids to grasp or understand. It’s taken me years to understand these things myself. And it’s taken me until recently to really understand how to best communicate ideas in a multimedia environment.
Which gets me to the point of this post- How many times do your kids get assignments in school where it is pretty clear that you, the parent, are supposed to be an integral part of the experience? How do you try to keep the project all about the kid learning something through the process, versus trying to save time and heart ache and help them along some? Where is that line and balance?
With at-home projects, I can scaffold my child’s learning, but there’s then no guarantee these lessons will carry over into a similar project at school. I can try to show them and explain why neatness counts and is expected by teachers. I can explain why first impressions are important. But I also know we all learn from our mistakes, and we need to do stuff ourselves so we do learn what’s good and what’s not acceptable.
I never feel comfortable with the balance anymore. I want my child to do his own work, but I know he has fine motor issues and may need help with the mundane, stupid cutting and pasting so the project doesn’t look like a tragic glue factory accident. And I know my child is being graded and judged not only on content, but on display and creativity, even if that’s something that isn’t being explicitly taught in that class or any other.
So why aren’t we teaching kids in school the art of multimedia design and presentation? There’s not much being done with that even by showing kids an example of what to shoot for, or for that matter in art class. We do teach them how to do absolutely dreadful power point presentations, without ever considering what makes the difference between a great and deadly boring one. So frankly, it’s no wonder most people do ghastly presentations that hide meaning and put audiences to sleep.
I want to teach my kids the short cuts to clarity of expression and design. I want to let them wow their teachers by showing them what they know, but be able to express it in a concise and frankly, labor-saving way.
So I put it to you, fellow parents- what is the best way to teach your kids about good design and good communication? How can we help them make their presentations exciting, to keep them and their teachers from turning school into one, endless widget factory of assignments and products? How do we encourage them to be creative, yet teach them about communicating ideas with clarity and short-cuts to meaning?
Looking forward to any guidance or suggestions you can provide!
Photo graciously provided by Norma Desmond, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved
10 responses so far ↓
Cecily T // Oct 16, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Yeah, this is an issue with education, and the trouble is that no teacher can take time off from the lock-step curriculum (at least where I’ve taught) to go through a unit on good and bad presentation. So kids just kind of muddle through and we hope that they improve based on the feedback from each successive project.
We had a technology class (5th and 6th grade school) and that was good for teaching them the nuts and bolts of that, but nothing for just plain old communication, whether verbal presentations or graphic ones.
One specific area that’s a problem is that lots and lots of kids don’t grasp ‘audience’ unless it’s explicitly taught, and they need to be frequently reminded who they are writing/speaking for.
Does your school provide rubrics for projects/presentations like these? At least they provide a bit of expectation-setting, although sometimes it’s not clear to kids what ‘communicates idea effectively’ means, much less whether or not they’ve done it.
STL Mom // Oct 16, 2008 at 5:20 pm
A timely post! My third grader just received her “Imaginary Plant Project and Oral Presentation” assignment. The good news is that the assignment is pretty clear (her plant must be 3-D and have leaves, stem, roots, and flower; she must keep eye contact with the audience and speak loud enough to be heard.) The bad news is that I’m not sure how much I’m supposed to get involved in this assignment. I don’t want her to look bad because all the other parents coached their kids and I didn’t, but on the other hand I don’t want to spend all my evenings forcing her to practice her presentation.
I’ll ask her teacher, and hope I don’t get the vague answer: “help your child but don’t do her work for her.”
I’ve already let her go to school with completely wrong math homework that her dad wanted her to re-do. I said, “the teacher should know that she didn’t learn how to do it.” Then he said, “but she’ll get a bad grade!” It’s so hard to know how much to help your kids and how much they have to do on their own.
Whitney // Oct 16, 2008 at 5:37 pm
This is that conundrum we all face. Even with rubrics for hitting points, I personally think Power points should illustrate talks, not be virtual notecards; rubrics would seem to disagree.
As for the plant project, I see several trips to Michael’s in your future.
I think we have to help them plan out and chunk a project up into bite sized steps to prevent them from being overwhelmed, that’s fair.
Coaching James through taking a good picture was fair. He picked the items and the content, took the pictures-, and we helped him on the mechanics. We talked about good presentations, and organization of the information visually. I helped him lay it all out and organize it before we glued away. And in the end, it was something he could be proud of, and he got a good grade as well, vindicating the presentation stuff I coached him on. Is this fair to all those other kids? I have no idea. Do I hope my child learned some more lessons about presentation which weren’t strictly part of the lesson? Yes- but I wish we did more to teach them about how to present ideas in multiple formats, and how to make their ideas come into reality, without every school project becoming some absurd school-version of Project Runway.
Nan // Oct 17, 2008 at 4:14 am
There are so many things that our kids need to know, that are not taught in school. I think it’s up to us to teach them as much as we can, but NOT to do the homework for them. I am always amused to see projects at school where you can say “Ah, Mom did that one! But look, Britney did hers herself!”
whitney // Oct 17, 2008 at 4:22 am
I agree that at least in the early grades, you can clearly tell the difference between who did what. Finding that balance between whose project it is, it’s not always easy- and then there’s the teacher’s conundrum of giving good grades to the great project, even if it’s pretty clear it’s not the kid’s work.
If teachers aren’t going to call out kids and parents on “overly collaborative” work projects, how do we remove the incentive, in this increasingly competitive world, for parents to guide and potentially end up doing the project??
Stu Mark // Oct 17, 2008 at 7:13 am
I am a devout follower of the school’s handbook. So when the handbook says that parents should not offer assistance, I don’t. Period. I don’t offer ideas, I don’t help write or cut or color or anything. I coach them and support them verbally, but I feel that they are served best by learning that they have to make it on their own. - And bless my kids, they are cool with me about it. Even when it’s hard and they beg for help, I read to them the section of the handbook that forbids my assistance and they accept it.
And to be clear, I often shed tears at the situation, yearning to make their lives easier, to ease their stress and strain. Following the rules can really suck sometimes.
Kimberly // Oct 17, 2008 at 12:18 pm
May a teacher weigh in? My district does not allow take home projects to be graded because of the Mom and Dad do it problem. I love the policy. As far as marking down projects that parents do for children, you have to prove that cheating has occurred. Knowing a child isn’t capable of doing something isn’t considered proof.
Before the current policy was in effect, we had one parent that constantly cheated on science fair. In 5th grade we were finally able to prove the cheating - because his son and the other boys admitted to cheating during the presentation that was video taped. When asked to explain part of the project the boys actually said, “We don’t know Mr. W built it.”
Even with video tape parents protested the failing grade.
Both our art teacher and I (technology teacher) work on layout. The best way to start is have them make the worst most cluttered layout they can think of. Then start stripping off stuff that doesn’t belong until they get a good layout.
Yes that means sitting through a class or two of horrible PowerPoints with wild colors and annoying special effects. It gets it out of their system. Since they have to sit through the awful PowerPoint they get why they aren’t a good idea. Usually the kids that go on the second day have cleaned up their PowerPoints without prompting.
Occasionally I’ll have a make the worst PowerPoint contest so they can play with the sound effects.
Whitney Hoffman // Oct 17, 2008 at 12:30 pm
I wish the teachers in my child’s school had the same approach. I wish the guidelines were clear about teaching them what was expected, and how much parents should or should not help.
I think science fairs sometimes bring out the worst in parents and kids- I’ve seen the same thing at our school.
Nan // Oct 17, 2008 at 12:40 pm
So, teachers. Assuming that the kids won’t be doing a class on “project design” this term, how do we parents teach them what to do. Would reading science magazines, for instance, help kids to see how a science project should look? How about exposure to museum-type exhibits? What can we do, outside of school, to strengthen this area of their education? Is there a website, even?
Stu Mark // Oct 17, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Nan, I’m not a teacher, but I have told my kids that it seemed likely that winning science fair projects probably appeared on the internet. My kids would then google until they found a few kids’ personal websites that showed off their award-winning projects. That was normally enough of a guideline for them. If they then asked me questions, I’d only offer slight opinions, nothing committal or detailed. I made sure to repeat the slogan: It’s your project, it’s your grade.
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