I thought I would share with you one of the activities I did today with the grade 11s during our EE Inspiration session. Before we introduce the ins and outs of the extended essay in late January, I wanted to try and inspire students to think about topics which excite them for their essays. In the past, students have decided on a teacher they want to work with or a subject they want to do their essay in and then presented themselves to their supervisor with no real idea of what they wanted to do. We usually ask students to come up with three subject areas they might like to do their essay in because we can't guarantee that they will get their first choice. On occasion they will flesh out their first choice but rarely ever their second or third. This year they will be asked to make 3 proposals and we will read through the proposals and decide which one they should proceed with.
I was inspired by the visit we made to a monastery in Crete during an EE Coordinator's workshop with Philpot Education in June. Our homework coming out of the visit was to develop a research question. To test out what I planned I came up with a 'big idea' (the equivalent of the monastery), and tried it out on our teachers. They were given the Big Idea: Brexit / US 2016 US Presidential Election. They were also given a number of subject areas and asked to develop topics through the lenses of those subject areas. Below is an amalgamation of their work.
When I presented this activity to the grade 11s I removed the subjects and only put in 4 empty boxes, with their big idea at the centre.
Their big ideas were money, change, ballet, space exploration and shipping. They were encouraged to come up with their own subject areas. I was somewhat concerned about how well the activity would work after the session with the teachers, who struggled a bit with it. I shouldn't have worried. The students were fantastic! In some cases, they just put down simple ideas on the sheets. However, when they spoke to the rest of the groups about their big idea they detailed their ideas for research and they were so impressive!
I have scanned the sheets and turned them in to A-2 posters. I am going to put together an inspiration wall in our IB Centre to encourage them to keep thinking and exploring ideas for their essays. I suppose the proof will be in the pudding, but at the moment I am hopeful that they will generate some thoughtful research questions.
Example of one of the Big Idea sheets:
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