8th Grade Jewelry Unit Survey

I did my jewelry unit a little different this quarter.  I gave my 8th grade their cornell notes (click here for link).  Then I told them they had to do two of any of the options.  The change is, I was not going to help them.  The 'big idea' for this unit is to teach the kids that they can use online resources to learn how to create.  I loved doing it this way.  I wasn't surprised how hard it was initially for my students who often have their lessons broke down so much that there is little 'thinking' or creativity involved.  The first day there was a LOT of questions towards me and I simply encouraged them to 'use their resources'.




At the end of the project I gave a survey.  My two 8th grade classes took the survey for a total of 68 participants. These were the results.

I gave four possibilities this quarter.  I was a little surprised that the Loop Bracelets (aka., rainbow bands) was so popular still.  I thought this was old hat now because it was so hot at the beginning of the year in the middle school.  We all know that 'cool' only last a half of a day in the middle school.  Pop tab bracelets are AWESOME and was sure it would be one of the top choices. Friendship bracelets required a 'practice' before I gave them the 'good' string, so I didn't think many would choose that one.

I was blown away with this one.  I asked the kids WHY they made their choices.  There was a lot of them that did the bracelet because they thought it looked cool.  I kind of thought that the kids would do what their friends did.  I was glad to see the top reasons were because they liked the look of the jewelry and because they wanted to learn something new.

Video and friends were the most popular ways that the student choose to learn.  I allowed students to use their devices and I had 5 iPad's available most days.  It made it easy to use technology.  The last question I asked was open ended and allowed for comments.  ALL were positive.  The survey was anonymous so they could have said anything.  One of the comments read like this...

"I like using the iPads as a resource because there is so many websites to help with the jewelry instructions."

This was great to see as well.  We talked about how there were many people who liked using tutorials for instruction but still a large portion prefer friends and teachers.  We talked a bit about differentiation and how it is important in education to teach in many ways to reach all of the learners.