Embracing the Talents of Every Student
The cross-curricular nature of the Barrow Peace Prize gives students opportunities to shine in different areas.
Some students design amazing pieces of art to represent their nominee. Other students are detail-oriented, so they shine by sharing the many facts they have found. Some students have a gift for persuasive writing, so their talents come through as they write convincing reasons for people to vote. Other students are great speakers, so they show their personality through their videos.
Every single student is engaged in the project in some way.
I think students surprise themselves during this project. For example, I’ve seen students who have said, “I’m not a great artist,” and then they suddenly create a beautiful watercolor image that they had no idea was hiding inside them. Other students are more introverted and don’t like sharing in front of the whole class, but by using a tool like Flipgrid, students are able to speak to just the iPad. This allows their voice to be heard in a way that it might not be heard in the classroom. I also think students surprise themselves by the amount of work that they put into the project across several weeks. Many times, students finish an assignment within a class or a few days.
The Barrow Peace Prize pushes them to persevere through a long project.
Speaking to a Global Audience
Alan November says, “An audience of one, the teacher, is no longer sufficient in preparing students for success in a global economy.”
From day one of the project, we talk about audience. We look at past projects and show students how their work would be viewed by people all over the world. This year, I showed them pictures of classes in Weatherford, Texas; and Seattle, Washington, viewing student work from last year.
In the library, students used Flipgrid to record a video where they read their persuasive essay and displayed their watercolor image. As each student recorded, their video uploaded to a grid with all of the other 2nd-grade students researching that same person. After recording, I made a Smore page with links to all six Flipgrids featuring student voices. I embedded a Google form so that anyone could vote on who they thought should win the Barrow Peace Prize. I shared the link on multiple forms of social media, with our families via email and newsletters, and with the students and teachers in our school. The 2nd grade also presented the project at our schoolwide assembly and asked other students to vote.
This year’s project Smore was viewed in more than 150 locations around the world. The students accumulated more than 3,000 views of their videos, hundreds of likes, and hundreds of votes. Every student had a voice in the project, no matter if they were in general education, special education, gifted, English as a second language, or early-intervention programs.
One of the biggest benefits that I’ve seen through this project is student motivation. I think back to other traditional assignments where students repeatedly said, “I’m done,” or “How long does this have to be?” or “Do I have to do this?” With this project, those comments pretty much disappeared. Students are motivated when they know their work has a genuine audience. They see the maps of visitors to the projects, the number of views, and the number of likes that previous 2nd-grade classes have received, and they know that their work must be their absolute best. They suddenly feel a sense of pride and fame before they’ve even started the project.
We saw students who would normally write minimal amounts during writing time suddenly writing full persuasive pieces—because they knew people would listen. Students respond to knowing that their voice matters in the world.
As the project comes to a close, we connect with the developers of PebbleGo and Flipgrid to celebrate our work. Both companies talk to students via Skype about how their voices make an impact in the work. They also stress how much they learn from students about the effectiveness of their products and how they support student voice in schools.
Strengthening the School Community
When we announce the winner of the peace prize, students know that their collective voices from across the whole 2nd grade came together to make that person win. It wasn’t one student’s voice alone.
At the end of the project, we celebrate various students with awards for their speaking, writing, research, and art. Every time we award one of these individual prizes, the entire grade cheers. It’s at that moment that I can tangibly see how this project strengthens the student community.
Families are also connected to this project, because they get to see their child’s work and share it with extended family around the world. Parents who can’t come to the school for the awards ceremony due to work can still see the project and participate. So often, extended family members miss out on the great work happening in a child’s classroom, but this project allows them to view the work from anywhere in the world and interact with the project through voting and sharing.
The Barrow Peace Prize is one of the projects that I showcase not only when I speak around the country, but also when planning new projects with the teams in my school. It weaves together digital literacy, information literacy, public speaking, reading, writing, art, social studies, character development, student voice, global collaboration, and more. It has a balanced mix of print and digital content, and it brings an entire grade level together to work toward a common goal, rather than being in individual competition.
Because we’ve been so public with this project, other libraries and schools have already started similar projects, so our students are able to see that something they create can have an impact on people around the world. Through projects like this, we can teach our students that their voice matters.
