Project Presentation

Global Symposium

English: persuasive argument

Biology: ecology

Algebra: statistical analysis

Geography: global perspective

All subjects: researching skills

This project will meet several state goals in all four subject areas. The main goal of our program and of this culmulating project is to improve the problem solving and communication skills of our students by allowing them opportunities to tackle openended unstructured, authentic problems in as realistic a context as possible.

Illinois State Goals:

English

• Goal 1. Read,comprend, interpret, evaluate and use written material

• Goal 2. Listen critically and analytically

• Goal 3. Write standard English in a grammatical, well-organized and coherent manner for a variety of purposes

• Goal 4. Use spoken language effectively in formal and informal situations to communicate ideas and information and to ask and answer questions.

• Goal 1. Students will have a working knowledge of the concepts and basic vocabulary of biological, physical and environmental science and their application to life and work in a contemporary technological society.

• Goal 3. Students will have a working knowledge of scientific research and their application in simple research projects.

• Goal 4. Demonstrate a knowledge of world geography with emphasis of the United States.

• Goal 5. Apply the skills and knowledge gained in the social sciences to decision making in life situations.

• Goal 5. Collect, organize, and analyze data using tables, charts, graphs, and other statistical tools to model processes and to predict outcomes, and interpret uncertainty and chance in situations drawn from the world.

This project will become part of the Cross Curricular Connections program at West Chicago High School. Cross Curricular Connections is an interdisciplinary, team taught, block scheduled program involving 115 ninth graders. Four teachers; an English teacher, a biology teacher, an algebra teacher, and a geography teacher share the same students. We meet with our students between 10 am. and 2:30 pm. each day. That block of time can be broken up any way we decide. Each day we publish the schedule for that day by 7:30 am. This allows for a great deal of flexiblity in scheduling time for projects and the like. Using that flexibility the staff has developed numerous projects and activities that connect the content and skills of the four disciplines. This project is the first project that includes the use of the internet as one of the means to research topics of study. There is one computer in the classroom with a connection to the internet and a multimedia lab with 7 connections available to our students.

This a culmulation activity stressing the skills and knowledge developed throughout the year. The project will begin early in April so that suffieient time can be alloted for the students to communicate with the countries chosen. The remainder of the project will take place in May. The research phase of the project will require approximately two weeks. The presentation of the resolution and the persuasive phase will require an additional two weeks. Due to the flexible nature of our block scheduled program, we can designate a special period in which students will work on this project. The length of that period can vary to meet the needs of the students and the project. The final presentation of the students' work will require an entire day, which will be scheduled for the entire block.

The students in Cross Curricular Connections are ninth grade students that are heterogeneously grouped with a range of students from "regular" to honors. This year there are 115 students in our program of which several are classified as special education students.

Student outcomes include four basic goals:

• Gathering

• Analysis

• Synthesis

• communication