My group of seven seventh graders had a gap in our meetings because of their trip to Williamsburg, VA to do research on Colonial America for their humanities class. Some of their advisory time had to be used to prep for and discuss the trip, and then they missed a week while they were away.

However, here is where we are so far:

Students began by filling up a chart with post-its on what they are interested in, what they are good at, and what they are curious about:

When we came back together after a few weeks, the students reviewed this chart and then zeroed in on a topic and wrote down questions and ways they could find answers to their questions. Some of them were nervous about committing to a topic, and I made it clear that they might change their minds later, but should see what kinds of questions they come up with first.

The range of topics was interesting: Books, filmmaking, time travel, acting, lacrosse, dreams, and acting. The three students who chose acting and filmmaking saw that they had a shared interest which might lead to creating a project together. Some of the questions were:

What was the first book?  How do production companies decide on a script or idea?  Is it possible to time travel via black hole? How did acting techniques evolve? Were women allowed to play lacrosse when it first began? How long do dreams last? Who invented the concept of movies and why?

Some ideas for how to answer these questions were:

Using the internet, filming and editing a short film, using databases, interviewing professionals, look up topic in books.

When we come together again, hopefully students will be ready to start expanding their thinking about how they could pursue their topic further in a way that is exciting to them.