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A week before Back-to-School Night, the class creates the presentation together as a group project. Students brainstorm areas they believe would be most helpful to enable their parents to understand the learning environment. These areas include their daily schedule and components of the room such as; the use of portfolios, homework, unit development and organization of classroom materials. Students then break into groups and select a brainstormed area to write scripts for. All scripts are then edited by the class for accuracy and completeness. Students use video and digital cameras to capture the essence of their presentation. These images are then downloaded into the computer. The teacher models how to create a presentation by adding backgrounds, graphics, text and sound using an LTV unit&endash;connection that allows a TV to display the computer screen. As classes are developing the presentation, they assess the effectiveness of each screen and help to make changes. At Back-to-School Night, parents are elated to see what their students have to share about the classroom. Teachers add important verbal detail and description beyond what the students have shared to give parents a complete introduction of the new school year. A direct result of this class cooperative project is that students will now go on to program their own presentations that can be used as a resource by other students. Their presentations will focus on areas such as research projects in Social Studies and Science, book project presentations, documentation of daily learning experiences and writing projects. Other students will evaluate their completed projects by giving compliments and helpful hints for improvement. By Kevin Ward
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