Project Excerpts & Commentary: Historical Magazines Project

The Story Behind the Historical Magazines Project

Students in an English/History class designed and published a series of magazines organized around historical themes. The students’ purpose was to provide entertaining and informative summer reading materials to middle school students who could not afford to buy magazines of this kind.

The students started by designing a questionnaire to collect information about the interests of the potential audience for their magazines. Then they planned a series of magazines designed around historical themes that matched the interests of their audience.

The students worked as individuals and as members of teams, with each team focusing on a specific theme. The History and English teachers served as consultants and monitors in order to ensure that students accomplished content objectives.

The project lasted approximately three months and happened in conjunction with other class work.

The written work produced as part of Applied Learning projects commonly contains some errors. Documentation of these projects includes notes, journal entries and plans that students produced as working documents for their personal use. These kinds of documents were not prepared with the expectation of eventual publication and they have not been revised for inclusion in this book.

It is expected that finished work produced as part of an Applied Learning project will contain virtually error free writing.

This project illustrates a standard-setting performance for the following parts of the standards:
c	Communication: Publish information using several methods and formats.
a	Information: Gather information.
b	Information: Use information technology.
a	Learning and Self-management: Learn from models.
b	Learning and Self-management: Develop and maintain a schedule of work activities.
c	Learning and Self-management: Set learning goals and review progress.
a	Working With Others: Take responsibility for a component of a team project.

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What the work shows

c Communication Tools and Techniques: The student publishes information using several methods and formats, such as overhead transparencies, handouts, and computer generated graphs and charts; that is, the student:

organizes the information into an appropriate form for use in the publication;
checks the information for accuracy;
formats the published material so that it achieves its purpose.

The work includes several examples of organizing and communicating information for publication using different methods and formats. These include: the cover of one of the magazines which incorporates headlines to attract the reader to look inside; articles for the magazine which are formatted in columns and incorporate graphics; and a chart prepared to show changes in transportation over time.

See page 108 of the New York City Performance Standards for Language Arts for commentary on this article as a report that meets the expectations of the English Language Arts standards at the middle school level.

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a Information Tools and Techniques: The student gathers information to assist in completing project work; that is, the student:

identifies potential sources of information to assist in completing the project;
uses appropriate techniques to collect the information, e.g., considers sampling issues in conducting a survey;
interprets and analyzes the information;
evaluates the information for completeness and relevance;
shows evidence of research in the completed project.

These documents illustrate the development of a single article from research, both into the topic for the article and into the use of interviews to obtain information, to a transcript of the interview and, finally, to the completed article for publication. These documents provide evidence for collection of information from several sources and organization of the information into a form appropriate for a journalistic article. The article reports the interviewee’s words faithfully.

b Information Tools and Techniques: The student uses information technology to assist in gathering, analyzing, organizing, and presenting information; that is, the student:

acquires information for specific purposes from on-line sources, such as the Internet, and other electronic data bases, such as a scientific data base on CD ROM;
uses word-processing, graphics, data base, and spreadsheet programs to produce project reports and related materials.

The magazines were desktop publications that were word-processed. The articles and chart were produced on desktop publishing software.
This student’s log provides evidence of a familiarity with the use of information tools and techniques, e.g., the entry dated 4/4 includes, “I do not have Microsoft Publisher, so I will just type the article on Microsoft Works, bring it to school, and merge it into Publisher, tomorrow at school,” and the log entry dated 4/5 includes, “Today I had disk problems, so my entire article (though format was not changed), was erased. I have to type some papers over during this weekend, to get layouts turned in, in sufficient time.”

b Learning and Self-management Tools and Techniques: The student develops and maintains a schedule of work activities; that is, the student:

establishes a schedule of work activities that reflects priorities and deadlines;
seeks advice on the management of conflicting priorities and deadlines;
updates the schedule regularly.

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This is an example of a work schedule, in this case in the form of a log produced on a daily basis in which each day’s record grows out of the previous day’s work and closes with tasks established for the next day. The log records work activities associated with two concurrent projects. It would provide a valuable memory aid to assist the process of reviewing progress towards achieving learning goals.

a Learning and Self-management Tools and Techniques: The student learns from models; that is, the student:

consults with or observes other students and adults at work, and identifies the main features of what they do and the way they go about their work;
identifies models for the results of project work, such as professionally produced publications, and analyzes their qualities;
uses what he or she learns from models to assist in planning and conducting project activities.

This reflection on the project explains how the students learned from the models provided by professionally published magazines to inform the design of their own product.

c Learning and Self-management Tools and Techniques: The student sets goals for learning and reviews his or her progress; that is, the student:

sets goals for learning;
reviews his or her progress towards meeting the goals;
seeks and responds to advice from others in setting goals and reviewing progress.

In the course of this reflection, the student relates the process of establishing goals for the magazines, linked to the analysis of models. She also reflects on her progress in meeting those goals. The writing also includes evidence of the processes the students adopted in seeking advice from others about the quality of their work and how they responded to the suggestions they received.

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a Tools and Techniques for Working With Others: The student takes responsibility for a component of a team project; that is, the student:

reaches agreement with team members on what work needs to be done to complete the task and how the work will be tackled;
takes specific responsibility for a component of the project;
takes all steps necessary to ensure appropriate completion of the specific component of the project within the agreed upon time frame.

This writing contains reflection on the teamwork aspects of this project. It also provides evidence of the student assuming responsibility for a component of the project and its appropriate completion.

This student’s record provides evidence for students’ reaching agreement among team members on the work to be done and how it would be tackled, and for students’ taking responsibility for specific components of the project. The student produced this record for the purpose of reflection. It was not revised for publication.

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