Grade 8 Presents Museum of Citizen Action

By: Kate Lukaszewicz and Deborah Golden, Middle School Teachers

Grade 8 students have been engaging their hearts, minds, and hands in the service of a greater good during their year-long humanities work. On Monday, May 21, they presented their culminating capstone project – The Museum of Citizen Action – to the entire Sewickley Academy community.

Students opted into topics of their choice, such as Asian-American equality, environmental preservation, or workers’ rights. When the students traveled to Washington, D.C., on their class trip, they began seeking out and recording information relevant to their chosen topic. Subsequently, in their civics course, students researched a related historical movement and Supreme Court case before writing memos to President Trump suggesting how he might use his executive powers to address a related contemporary problem. In their English course, students selected and read relevant works of literature, which they evaluated in an essay that required independent research and the application of literary criticism.
 
These assignments complemented the students' collaborative project, which was to curate a museum gallery about a relevant contemporary issue and propose tactics to solve a related problem. Students considered issues such as representation of women in media, global warming, and access to health care. The museum galleries included students’ political art, interactive games and simulations, timelines, and annotated image collections, much of which was produced in our Makerspace. In addition to their group components, each student individually created and presented an “artifact” drawn from a moment in the literature or history they studied.
 
To view photos from the project, visit our Facebook page.

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