Judges Needed for Classical Student Presentations
All Classical High School students take a class called Junior Research Seminar. The class, in existence for approximately seven years, was created in response to Rhode Island Department of Education regulations, known as Proficiency Based Graduation Requirements. In view of the unique status of Classical as a high-performing school, it was decided to pursue a research-based option as opposed to a portfolio-based option in order to meet this part of the PBGR regime. The primary skills we try to teach students in the Research Seminar class are: conducting authentic research, evaluating and using authoritative and reliable research sources, writing a research paper that adheres to Modern Language Association and teacher defined guidelines, contacting and utilizing help from one or more experts in the subject area the student has chosen, applying their topic to the outside world (models, teaching a class, fund raising, to name just a few applied learning strategies) and, at the end of the semester, presenting their findings to a panel of judges composed of teachers, alumni, parents, district personnel, and other interested adults.
Students are allowed to conduct presentations only if they pass the classroom portion of the Research Seminar. The presentations must also receive a passing grade (seventeen out of twenty-four possible points) in order to successfully complete the entire Junior Research Seminar requirement.
On Monday, February 6th, the Autumn 2011 Semester students will conduct their presentations. This culminating activity is highly anticipated by the entire school community and gives the students an opportunity to showcase the knowledge they have learned and the confidence they have gained as a result of having successfully completed the Junior Research Seminar course. Presentation days are full-release days due to the logistics involved in staging the presentations and the importance attached to them. Therefore, only presenting students go to school on presentation days.
Classical is recruiting interested adults to serve as volunteer judges as a complement to the teachers who will be judges. Although presentations will be conducted all day long, outside judges may choose to serve only during the morning session or afternoon session. However, anyone who has not previously judged will be asked to attend a morning training session, lasting approximately one half hour. If there are a number of people who wish to judge only the afternoon session, we may be able to add another training session somewhere near the noon hour.
If you are interested in serving as a judge, please contact Richard Larkin, Library Media Specialist and PBGR Coordinator at richard.larkin@ppsd.org by January 30th.