I wish I had taken my camera to the expo so that I could show you some of the projects that could not possibly have been done soley by a 3rd grader with minimal help from an adult. It was like walking into an exhibition of work done by adults, I kid you not. I mean, there were some like Maddie's that were for sure the work of a 3rd grader.
It was not required (or even mentioned in the specs) that the project be mounted on a cardboard display. Mad agonized the night b4 whether or not she should have one for her project..."what if I'm the only one with a cardboard display?" "what if I'm the only one without a cardboard display". She decided to go ahead & mount hers. When we arrived at school she saw a few kids walking in with 3D visual displays & no cardboard displays. I could see in her face & hear in her voice that she was concerned that her project would be "judged" as inferior. I told her that she did the best that she could & that she chose to do her project how she felt was best for her & that she needed to walk in there & be proud of all her hard work.
I'm really glad she did have the cardboard display b/c more kids than not had them & the ones without really were deemed "inferior". I've been told that one child was told in not so many words by a teacher. And thankfully I happened to pick up a "pretty" purple folder for Mad to hand in her report to her teacher. Another child was chided for merely stapling his report to his visual display. God forbid. Well, no one could leaf through the report while viewing his visual display. Oh, & one of the comments on Mad's grading sheet actually said "pretty cover". ?!?!?!?!? What if she had just handed it in stapled? I suppose it would have been sub-par work? In 3rd grade! I only bought it b/c she had been pretending that she was in college while she worked on the project & she could be "like Nikki" & hand in her report like a college kid would do; how the report was to be presented to the teacher was not mentioned in the specs either, just that it had to be handed in separately from the visual display.
Then there's the issue that it was supposed take place in the classrooms, you know, each child @ his desk with his city? Apparantly this was changed a couple nights b4 to the cafeteria. Three 3rd grades -say, 75 kids or so- in this little caf space AND all of their parents & small sibs AND students from other grades all milling around. I had a heck of a time moving around (round tables, 4 projects to a table). My little ones were stressed out b/c it was so crowded; right, they only stand as tall as everyone's legs & there was no actual room to move. I honestly wondered if it exceeded the maximum capacity for the space. I did momentarily wonder what would happen if some disaster struck. It was another school event dominated by chaos. Kids running around -well, not running, b/c there was no room, but definitely limited adult supervision. Grrrr. It was nigh impossible to actually see all of the projects, which was a bummer b/c it could have actually been an informative, pleasant experience.
At least we learned alot about Orlando!
(btw, it was my idea to include a bibliography; it wasn't required. I don't think it's too early for a 3rd grader to learn how to give credit to the original information for her report -which is far more important, don't you think, than the outward appearance of the report?)
(the US map fell off the top right corner of the display. She had maps from distant -where in the US is Orlando- to up close -downtown Orlando.)
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