CLAIM

Two Rivers students continue to produce rigorous expedition products for authentic audiences.

LEARNING EXPEDITIONS

One of the core experiences for students at Two Rivers is our learning expeditions. These multi-week projects provide students with the opportunity to tackle challenging problems and create products for authentic audiences. In our claim that students produce rigorous expedition products, we define rigor by the specific attributes of authenticity as defined by EL Educations attributes of high quality work. Our students are continually given the opportunity to develop and share their original, creative thinking with authentic audiences.

As evidence of the growth in these areas for our students work, we conducted quality work protocols twice a year where we gathered the products that students produced and evaluated it for complexity, craftsmanship, and authenticity. 

Through these protocols we named a relative strength particularly in authenticity concluding: “authenticity is a strength, specifically in how products are aiming to solve a problem rooted in real, local need and give opportunities for original student voice.  In addition, the majority of the work across the school demonstrates opportunities for students to express original voice.” 

Quality Work Protocol Summaries 2015 - 2019

While notes from these protocols, provide general evidence of the emphasis on authenticity within our student work, a sample of the actual student work from across our schools is illustrative of the continued emphasis on original voice and connection to authentic audiences.

PRESCHOOL

Beginning at three years old, preschool students write their own original stories. 

Click the image to see more of our preschoolers' stories!

These stories demonstrate the beginning steps students at Two Rivers take to developing their voice. In addition, while these stories are written primarily for family members to enjoy, they are the first steps our students take to writing for an outside audience.

FIRST GRADE

Then in first grade, students have participated in an expedition to share with others the vital role that spiders play in our environment. After first exploring how spiders are often portrayed negatively in literature, the first graders have created scientifically accurate drawings of spiders that accompany realistic fiction stories to flip the negative narrative around spiders.

Click the image to see our first graders' spider stories!

This work expands the audience for our students beyond their class and families to the larger school community as they have shared their stories with other classes. In addition, students in first grade continue to expand their original voice within the original realistic fiction narratives that portray spiders more accurately than many folk stories and children’s books.

FIFTH GRADE

Our fifth graders expand our audience even further by taking their work out to the public. Looking for ways to make the founding of our country interesting to a broader audience and inspired by the Broadway musical Hamilton, our students created original two-person poems that they performed as raps at a local restaurant, Busboys and Poets. 

Click the image to read more of our 5th graders' raps!

The poems took on the perspective of different people throughout the revolutionary period, and sought to bring a broader set of voices into the narrative of the American Revolution and the founding of the country. Students used literary devices, their knowledge of history, and their own individual voices to create original works of art.

EIGHTH GRADE

Finally our eighth grade students have long participated in a project to consider how our monuments and public spaces could better promote justice and equity within our democracy. Through this work, they have made formal presentations to our city council and the leaders of our local NOMA business improvement district (NOMA bid) to recommend how our public spaces and monuments can be improved.

This example pitch from one of our eighth graders exemplifies the growth in both audience and voice in our students work. First being able to speak directly to those in elected or appointed positions of power represent a high stakes authentic audience. Second by being able to draw upon learning from ancient civilizations and applying those concepts to our modern settings and students lived experience, our students express themselves with clarity and originality.

CONCLUSION

While these pieces are only a small sample, they represent the growth both over the course of our students careers at Two Rivers, but also of our school’s work as a whole to produce high quality work for authentic audiences.