Awesome Idea: Flipping a Book Study and PBL

As you know, I am currently at TCEA in Austin and I attended several amazing sessions the last two days where I got a lot of great ideas to use with the students I work with and with classroom teachers at our campus.  I will be sharing a lot of these ideas in the days and weeks to come but my most favorite idea today revolves around the idea that we can flip a book study for our gifted and talented students and also incorporate a project based learning experience! I'm not quite sure where this idea came from, I had it while I was in a session talking about something else, but I absolutely love it, so let's go with it!
I chose our GT kids for this particular project because we are a PK-2nd campus and I don't know that all of our students would be able to easily access the technology I am planning to incorporate or if they would be able to handle some of the higher level content I am hoping to incorporate into the lesson plan. I am working with our GT teacher to solidify our plans but this is the basic premise:
We would select a short novel that is appropriate for our 1st and 2nd grade GT students.  All our lessons would be broken down by chapter or two chapters and we would incorporate the flip by teaching the lesson ahead of time and recording it.  These lessons will most likely be posted on this blog for the students to watch or possibly on edmodo--or both.  The students would need to read the assigned portion of the text, watch the video, and then answer a few higher-level thinking, opened ended response questions. We would also do a lesson about appropriate responses, the kinds of questions to ask yourself while reading, note taking, and questions to ask during conversations with others.  The students would meet to discuss their responses in class and share the notes and questions they jotted down while reading.

BrainPop Jr. exhibit in the Exhibition Hall at TCEA

Bats in our belfry! Can you see the little black speck ?  We had an unregistered guest at TCEA today!   

 They would also be working on an Inquiry Circle Project as evidence of their learning. If you are not familiar with ICP's, I highly recommend you read Comprehension and Collaboration by Stephanie Harvey and Harvey Daniels.  It's basically an idea that stems from PBL (project based learning)  but the most important difference is that the project doesn't have to be directly related to the text--it just has to circle back to it.  For example, I read Pictures of Hollis Woods by Patricia Reilly Giff with a group of 5th graders last year. I explained ICP's to them and helped them brainstorm ideas.  One of the students decided he wanted to research Hershey's chocolate.  He created a Glogster all about the history of Hershey's. How is this related to the novel?  Hollis is eating a Hershey bar in a scene from the book. Hence, the circle!
ICP also involve some circling by the teacher.  It's incredibly important for the instructor to circle everything back to the Student Expectations you are trying to address through the text.  You have to be very mindful of where your students are headed with their topics and make sure it always ties back in to a pertinent skill or piece of knowledge students are expected to acquire.  Daniels and Harvey are very good at explaining strategies to ensure this happens in their book, which became a Bible of sorts for me for a couple of years as I learned to utilize ICP's with my higher level thinkers. Since that time, I've also tried it with my struggling students and it can be incredibly powerful for them as well.
For our GT students, I am hoping to give them lots of different options for their final presentations.  I have used Animoto, Xtranormal, Voki, Blabberize, Weebly, Wikispaces, Glogster, and several other sites before with great success. It seems like most of my students want to choose a PowerPoint and I do not think I will let this be an option this time. Prezi, maybe, ppt. no thank you!  One of the best parts of TCEA for me has been learning about a lot more really amazing websites and apps that work a lot like the ones I listed above and I'm hoping to be able to use some of these!  If anyone would like more information about how I've used these presentation tools before, please let me know and I'll be happy to discuss and link up some examples.
I've had three or four "Ah-ha" moments today and I can't wait to try out some of the other amazing ideas we've had during our sessions and from the conversation that's been generated from them.  If you're at TCEA and you've had an amazing moment of inspiration, please share it in the comments!  We'd love to hear it! Even if you aren't here and you've been inspired by something recently that's made you say, "Oh!  Wow, I can do this!" please let us know!
Tomorrow, I'm planning to post about another super idea we got from a presentation at TCEA.  It involves Xtranormal, Rachel's Challenge, and Classroom Management--three of my favorite topics!