Dashing Demo

Have you ever felt that your head was a sort of fish bowl with ideas swimming around constantly? Perhaps it's just that it's the end of the year, but that's how I felt after Saturday. My demo ideas feel a little like that too. My original idea is having the students write historical fiction by choosing time periods or people, researching them and creating stories using their research. It's a little too close to Kim's demo. I have another idea where students interview a family member or family friend who has been out of high school for at least 30 years. They also interview other people who know the interviewee creating a sort of "oral" history of the person. This particular project develops nicely into various extensions because the students can research an event or time period that impacted their person and write about that either creatively or as a research paper. You can use the idea of episodic fiction, and students could also create their own "oral" histories. All of these assignments have had varying degrees of success for me in the past. The best one was a student researching the White Revolution in Iran and finding her uncle's picture among a group photo of student revolutionaries. That was a great story. Talk to you soon.