We're supposed to be teaching rigorous material and making it relevant to our students' lives. So I designed my Palio project, based on the big race and parade and cultural event that takes place in many small Italian towns. My students know Carnival - I explained that the Palio is kind of like our Carnival (not related to Lent), just a big parade and party and music - and that the Palio ends in a race.
We learned some Italian. We looked at medieval and Renaissance art. We learned the vocabulary of heraldry. The students got into groups (contrade) and picked an emblem, a blazon, colors - and then they each designed their own banners, T shirts, flags, and shields. The Advanced Art class used these "props" in our Shakespeare performance (a condensed "Romeo and Juliet") so they had some reading. The Basic Art classes each made a contrada book, where they created a myth about why the contrada had that emblem, how the contrada got started, a description of the emblem, and who are they in their contrada - so they had a lot of writing. One group designed the poster, and worked with the Graphics teacher to put everything into the computer and print the posters, which were displayed all over the school.
We had the Lions Rampant, the Eagles Volant, the Eagles Perched, the Phoenix Rising, the Dragons Guardant - and the students started talking about themselves in these heraldic terms.
Today we had our Palio - the parade and race. Advanced Art set up the banners around the bus circle, and the school monitors patrolled to keep people from parking in the circle. Deputy Superintendent and Principals were up front. Music sent a group of drummers to lead our march around the school. My Phys Ed teacher friend was my official start/end the race person. We marched around the entire campus, and classes/teachers came out to watch and cheer. (And somehow, we picked up about 100 students, I don't know who they were or where they were supposed to be - they just followed along! So about 25% of the school was out there - plus a few teachers brought classes to watch from the upper balconies.) We marched around the bus circle. Then everyone stood by their banners, and the runners (track team plus some of my students) ran three times around the circle. The Phoenix (with the Heartthrob Kid as their runner) were the winners, so I will bring a pan of brownies for them tomorrow. (And another pan for the rest of the class.) 
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