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Student absences always an issue during projects like these so I did want students to have an opportunity to "vent" as part of their reflection. They used private google classroom comments to me to help me understand the role they played in the project, especially if they weren't a strong voice in the actual presentation.

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As a full class, we came up with a dazzling list of stakeholders! Students were surprised at how many people might be affected by what happens to freshmen as they start at a new school.

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Table groups selected a stakeholder to focus on, and then they had time to develop that "character". Students loved naming and sketching and developing back stories for their characters. Next, they did a four corners empathy map with these characters, and shared with the class.

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Driving Question: How can we get AHS freshmen familiar with and excited about the High School's social contract?

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Driving Question: How can we get AHS freshmen familiar with and excited about the High School's social contract?

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Our department adopted a new curriculum for our English department last year, and after teaching through it for the first time, one unit that I thought really needed to be brought to life was the unit about the social contract, an unwritten agreement between the government and its citizens to remain in a mutually beneficial relationship. As our district continues its adoption of PBIS, it seemed like a good way to make the concept authentic to juniors.

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We could have easily sat with this for another week, but 6 snow days interrupting our flow meant we had to streamline!

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We used a new feature on Google Slides, which allowed students and their groups to screen record right on top of the presentation slide deck they had created. Presentation recordings were 3-6 minutes long and easy to send and submit because they were automatically Google Drive files.

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We didn't want to throw out what was already necessary or positive about the freshmen entry process so we did SWOT before brainstorming to focus on the strengths and opportunities that already exist in what AHS does.

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Our school PBIS acronym is PRIDE, and each letter represents a quality that we want our Falcons to have. Our entry event took two class periods, plus some extra reflection time, to go through five stations, one representing each letter of PRIDE.

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We paired up with a freshmen English class so that the juniors could get a fresher take on what orientation looked like this past summer. The interview was 3, pre-planned questions.

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This was one thing I was SO excited for that the snow days ruined- I had assembled a group of adult panelists who plan events for teens as their job. Camp directors, principals, Future Prep'd Staff- they were all so flexible and sent in either videos or typed thorough replies to my questions. Students watched or read as many as they could in one class period.

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We saved need to knows until after we had already interviewed freshmen and watched panelist interviews. This meant the list was short and felt less overwhelming.

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Maybe even more valuable than the actual entry event stations was having students reflect on how each station actually taught them about PRIDE. I made them write for all five how they would like to be taught this concept- since they didn't have the driving question yet, this was brainstorming before they even knew why.

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Template Provided to Help Students Score Well on the Rubric

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Template Provided to Help Students Score Well on the Rubric

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This was used as an accommodation for several students with IEPs or 504s and it was very helpful, so we wound up showing the full class what their presentation could look like.

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I finally tried something different than 100 ideas and LOVED it! For a short project like this where time to narrow and make decisions felt limited, this was perfect, and students loved sharing their 8 ideas to their table groups.

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Our authentic audience this year is the School Leadership Team (SLT). I took the highest scoring project in each class and the SLT is reviewing them this month (April 2026) to consider ways to change freshmen orientation.

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This rubric comes initially from our school-adopted curriculum, but I changed some of the language to reflect our rubrics created through Future Prep'd- I included a lot from the investigation rubric.

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This project rolled right into our first unit of the second semester, which was all about places that teach us something. Our goal was to have students reflect about school as a place after thinking so much about getting freshmen accustomed to our culture at the high school. Students were still ultimately negative about school as a place, but this was a great place to start the semester and get to see some personality.

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Ultimately, this poster became the foundation for students' presentations.