Frenship Middle School seventh grade AP and GT students are participating in a twelve week self-guided project called “20Time.” The students are spending 20 percent of their class time working on an independent project of their choice, and once a week they are able to devote an entire period developing their projects, collaborating with other students and honing skills not otherwise learned in school.
Each project must have an English/Language Arts connection. When starting this project, the hope was that the students would find something they were interested in and simply work to achieve a goal. But many of the students surpassed all expectations and took it upon themselves to create a project that will make the world a better place.
Below is just a sample size of the great projects in development:
“World Desserts”: one student is baking desserts from countries around the world and selling them to her peers and teachers at school. She is then donating all proceeds to Kingdom Come, a charity that specializes in food production for the homeless in Lubbock and Wolfforth.
“Dance 4 A Purpose”: one student is choreographing a dance that she and three of her friends can teach to four special needs students attending FMS and other Lubbock ISD middle schools. The girls are practicing at Anna’s Jazzercize and are planning a performance at the end of the semester.
Other projects have some students blogging while others are creating Instagram accounts, YouTube channels or just writing stories. Students are creating original music compositions, learning different languages, attempting to break world records, sewing, creating art from recycled toiled paper tubes, and crocheting plastic bags to create blankets for the homeless.
“Hopefully though these projects, the FMS students will rediscover the joy of learning and strive to continue to set high expectations even after they have left their seventh grade teachers,” said Morgan Dixon, seventh grade ELAR teacher at FMS.
All three seventh grade ELAR teachers – Mrs. Cisneros, Mrs. Massey and Dixon – along with FMS student teacher Mr. Jackson are completing 20Time projects as well. Each student and teacher will showcase their final project in May and share the process they went through during the semester.
