We Matter
Mrs. Maslowski's Students at Joliet West High School
Creating PDFs to Celebrate Each Student's Genius
Students created a Poster about themselves to showcase in the classroom that I call a PDF because it stands for Proud Moment, Dream Goals, and Favorites. Students wrote down their Proudest Moments to show off how amazing they are, their Dream Goals to ensure that they kept their eyes on the prize, and their Favorites to show their individual personalities that will enhance our classroom. They also added a favorite picture of themselves that was semi-current so that we could match their face with their name. This activity was a way to allow them to truly Think about who they were and What made them who they are today. They were creating this for an authentic audience because their classmates would see these everyday, and Parents would see them on Open House. It was their creation where they were able to make many personal decisions about how it looked and were given a few days to think about it before we had class time to finalize the masterpieces that would be referred to as their PDFs.
Easy Steps to Create PDFs
- Students were given a blank sheet that had all the four boxes that needed to be filled out. --Proud Moments --Dream Goals--Favorites--Own Picture
- Then, Students were able to pick various colored cardstock for their final copy and they were given encouragement to be creative. You can see some examples throughout this Smore.
- Daily, a few PDFs were posted, so that students could take some time examining their classmates' Dream Goals, Proud Moments, and Favorites.
Mrs. Maslowski's English class at Joliet West High School
Email: mmaslowski@jths.org
Location: Joliet, IL
Twitter: @jthsmaslowski
Students' comments in response to this survey question via Socrative: Has taking the time to work on the PDFs impacted the way you will behave, succeed, work, etc in Mrs. Maslowski's English class? Please explain.
· “Working on the PDFs made me realize my goals and gave me motive to work towards my goals.” (Allison)
· “It has made me want to work harder in English class.” (Angela)
· “Taking the time to work on the PDFs have impacted the way I work in English class because one of my goals is to go to college and in English class I am trying to work to harder than I can.” (Kylee)
· “Yes because I’m showing her the type of person I am and the type of person I will be this year.” (Steve)
· “Yes because I feel more motivated to get work done.” (Brian)
· “Yes, because the PDFs really help you think better of yourself and show that you really matter.” (Alicia)
· “Yes because it reminds me of the goals I set for myself to become successful.” (Waleed)