Bill Burgess - East Wake School of Integrated Technology
Entry document asks students to create a weather magazine that includes given topics (ie. 3-day forcast for given town, analysis of meteorological data, article on climate change, article on local severe weather.
Uses template for a group contract to complete the work (he also uses groups of 3). In the contract are guidelines for "firing a group member" with specific ways to solve the problem within the group, with the teacher, and then if you get three strikes, you're fired and have to do the project alone.
National Center for Atmospheric Research WebsiteBill provides the kids with a Publisher template that they edit for their final product.
Bill's email: williamburgess@ewsit.nthls.com He will send the rubric template their school uses. Very nice!
Amy Thomas, Geometry teacher - Challenger Early College
Cool project in which students must design a city based upon a list of requirements by the zoning board.
Half way through the project a "New Restrictions" sheet was passed out so they had to make zoning changes. Project Managers got rubric (using irubric.com) to see how their groups "met code", met the "zoning changes", required elements, neatness, etc.
Students could "file for an extension" if their group felt they could not meet the deadline.
On the last day of the project they get a form requesting a written report "formal letter" (to satisfy the requirement of 'soft writing' be incorporated throughout the curriculum) of their "individual contribution" to the project.
Cool tie in would be to see how a real city planning meeting flows. Her students watched a news clip about a local county cutting their planning board staff down from 8 to 1 member. She incorporated that into the in-class project!
She uses groups of 3 for this particular project. Engineer, Architect, and Project Manager.
Group now talking about working with the art teacher and others to make it more cross-curricular.
Some projects also having their kids design Geometric homes and partnering with Habitat for Humanity as their experts in the classroom.
Matt Sears - Hillside New Tech High (and my Kenan Fellow buddy!)
- going over 21st Century Skills site information:
- Life and Career Skills
- Learning and Innovation Skills
- Information, Media, and Technology Skills
- Core Subjects and 21st Century Themes
- We brainstormed activities and skills that fall under each of these four main categories.
- Promise made by Matt's school to parents, "When your child graduates they will have not only traditional content but the above list to better prepare them for 21st Century living."
- Five evaluation columns on grade card (Learning Outcomes):
- 1. communication (10%), 2. work ethic (being on time, collaboration, turning in hw) (10%), 3. content knowledge (60%), 4. inventive thinking (problem solving, higher order thinking, reasoning, creativity)(10%), 5. technology skills (10%)
- Rubrics have been created for each of the above Learning Outcomes. Include the objective from the SCOS on the rubric.
- Work ethic rubric is really the only one Matt doesn't change throughout the year.
- 9 New Tech schools in NC flowing from the original pilot in Napa, CA
- Good place to infuse Marzano while developing Learning Outcomes!! (my thoughts)
- We are now working on developing a basic project that would include measuring the categories of ethics/work ethic, communication, problem solving/higher order thinking, and technology skills; we developed an "Earthquakes Around the World" scenario where groups would be creating wikis.
Frederica Nash (Science Teacher at Hillside)
- Took goals from NCSCOS
- Entry Doc - Job ad at local news agency seeking "just out of college" team of meterologists to come in and demo their skills. Tweaked it to be news station of the school.
- Posted ad around school prior to conducting it - pique student interest!
- Scaffolding Activities: Atmospheric conditions activity around the world, analyze and evaluate local weather reports, workshop on Earth's seasons, prediction activities after studying week's worth of models, data collection activities
- Final Product: Video taped weather report (would be cool to incorporate Visual Communicator software), her students had to create PowerPoint but it could only include pictures. Had to dress for the weather in their researched city.
- Included intro clips from real weather channels to make is seem authentic.
- Assessment included requiring a collection of different media into their final product.
- The workshops (lectures) the students participate in depend on what they don't understand and see as their "learning needs" for the unit. The workshops might be different every time you conduct the unit depending upon what the students do/don't understand.
- Smart Notebook Version 10 must have the symbols the students could use to create their weather report as well.
- Utilize a "Project Briefcase" that houses support documents and other media for the students to self-learn the concepts as needed. LOVE this idea!!
Posts
