Because most of the students in the class had studied structures last year as part of an alternating science rotation at the school, I am not spending as much time on this topic as I would typically. To finish up the study and have students show what they know, I decided to have them do some project work and decide how they want to represent their learning.
Last Wednesday afternoon, I put out over 30 books on structures on the carpet and had each child choose one that interested them. I had them read the book, using a Reading Power approach and having them list what information they already "knew" and what information was "new" to them. We used this to inspire inquiry questions that they were interested in finding out more about.
Because this was the first time we had done a project like this, I gave the students two suggestions for how they could present their project - a poster or a model and gave them the option of coming up with an "other" idea if they wanted and orally suggested a book, a slideshow, an imovie, etc. The students were so excited about doing a "project". We had just visited a grade seven class in the school to see their Ancient Greece projects so the students were very inspired.
I couldn't believe it when a few of the students showed up the next morning with models they had made at home for their project! One of the students had even got poster board and had started to glue down some images. They were very motivated!

We had 20 minutes in the computer room last week and the students searched for images for their project and some also created wordles from the texts they had been reading.
We didn't get much time in class this week, so this project will probably carry over to the new year. Today I did a poll about what materials the students needed for their projects. Luckily we had posterboard in the school but I had to make a trip to the dollar store on my way home today for modelling clay and popsicle sticks. We probably won't get to their models this week though because I have a fun last day of school before the holidays (for me) building project for the class for tomorrow!