EduCon 2.4

Passion inspires, it connects, and it empowers learners. This session will focus on how building choice, connections, and mentors into inquiry-based writing assignments can foster student reflection and ownership of learning. As elementary students engaged in passion-based inquiry projects, they connected with high school students completing a similar research project, forging a mentorship connection. Students collaborated to share their research and reflections. In addition to the upper level students mentoring their younger partners, the high school students sought mentor relationships with experts in their field of inquiry, passing that knowledge on to their elementary partners. Students learned with and from one another. Mentors matter.

Participants in this session will have an opportunity to see how collaborative 2.0 tools helped both elementary and high school students share their research with real audiences beyond the walls of their classroom. Building in opportunities for students to discover their own mentors and models for writing, connect with experts outside of the classroom, and make choices on how to best share their discoveries empowers students to engage in their written work with a more critical and reflective focus. When students have both purpose and audience for their writing endeavors, magic happens!