Woodside Priory School

Faculty: Enter your comments and include a brief summary of the scope of the exercise or project; include goals, what worked/didn’t work and why. Click on the “How to Post” link on the left hand navigation to learn the simple process of posting on this blog. Or just click here!

Students were given a scale, several different note durations and rests and asked to compose a melody eight measures long.

The hardest part was they had to try to get a decent melody without using any instrument.  Then I had to perform their melodies.

The best part was how good some of the melodies were, the students really surprised each other and themselves.  It was also fun for them to hear me sight-read their songs.

The sixth grade general music class took it a few steps further.  They went into the MIDI lab and using “Finale”  wrote out their melodies, then added instruments with additional melodies.  They then printed out the score and all instrument parts.

I think the next step would be for all the students to try their melody on an instrument and edit it.  Then it would be great if they all had the time to use “Finale” to develop it into a real piece of music.  Last it would be great if the Orchestra could play each students songs.

Earlier in the year I introduced some proto-type furniture for the classroom.  On Fail-Forward-Friday the kids took a survey to give feedback on what had worked, what had failed, and what they thought we should try to improve moving forward.  In a nutshell, the majority of feedback was that the counter-height tables had worked but that the chairs were a fail.  So we all trekked up to the barn to get the “old” chairs back and then we lowered the tables back to regular height and decided to use the old chairs to re-evaluate.   While the actual rearranging of the furniture was a departure from the norm and thus slightly more interesting than actual math, it was not super exciting.  What the kids did report on their surveys though, was an appreciation for being involved in the process and their feedback was thoughtful, sincere and useful.

In Geometry, I had my students make up their own problems. The catch was that these problems needed to be wrong. The problems had to have conflicting information or violate some rule of geometry. I asked students to try to be subtle, to make it not obvious what was wrong. Students had to decide what type of problem they wanted to do and then what information had to be given. To be able to make a problem not work, students had to understand the connection between the different parts of the problem. Students put their problems up on the board and then we looked at them as a class, trying to find the mistake in each problem,

I’ve been trying for weeks to have students use drawing/diagramming or other visual symbols  as a study technique. Most students were reluctant to try it with the usual protests of “I can’t draw” or “it takes too much time”.

On Fail Forward Friday, instead of the usual study check in, I set up easels divided the students into teams and we played a modified version of Pictionary. There were cheers from some and groans from others. Everyone participated and even the most reluctant “can’t draw” crowd had fun.

After playing for awhile, I asked kids to think about how they could use drawing/visual symbols with an assignment. We brainstormed ideas and collaborated.  When it was time to work, some tried it out with vocabulary, math word problems and history time lines.

At the end of each study period, every group asked if we could do this again. I feel like it was successful and do see some students using visual symbols regularly.

This year’s World History II research project will ask kids to construct their own virtual museum exhibit on a topic of their choice. To help the kids formulate and evaluate their own ideas for this project, I asked them to try to distill their project idea into a 20 second pitch which they would then deliver to a team of “museum owners,” who provided feedback and decided on whether they would “buy” the proposed exhibit. All kids got turns playing the role of “pitchers” and “museum owners” and had a chance to pitch their ideas to a variety of people. It was a bit loud and messy, but I think this exercise provided a fun way for kids to get feedback from each other on their projects and identify areas for improvement. I was impressed with the kids’ ability to provide constructive feedback for one another. In the end, I learned that I am not the only one who can provide feedback on student work and that it’s ok to share my role as a teacher and delegate authority in the classroom from time to time.

For Fail Forward Friday I had my math 6 class start working on a Stock Market Game. This is something I tried years ago with little success, so I thought I would give it another try. We are always looking for ways to engage the math students in Real-World applications of math and with areas that interest them. The math that is used in trading stocks and figuring commissions is on par with what we are studying in Math 6.

It took a lot longer than I anticipated to get the students going on the project. I should have had a teaching day about the stock market before I tried the activity. Since this is an on-going activity that I have the students work on once a week in class, we are still in progress on it. Once it is done I think I will have a better feeling about its success. However, at this point, if I am going to do it again next year, I will make it a two-day introduction instead of trying to get the kids up and running with it in one day.

The class had to design as assessment to measure understanding of two chapters of a novel.  Class was divided into random pairs, given a template for a lesson plan and rubric, were encouraged not to design a paper/pencil task.  What worked was that students saw how much time is involved in designing a good assessment.  What didn’t work was that they could not come up with a rubric.  Maybe this wasn’t a negative? The risk for me was that I had agreed to use the “best” assessment (kids all voted) and count it as a grade.

PHRESH PHYSICS: TEACHING EACH OTHER

F^3 = Fail Forward Friday, 3/11                          Trudelle

Target grades: MS Earth Science and freshmen Physics.

Time: 30-40 min.

Purpose:
A pair of students will effectively teach a science concept for 3 minutes to an observing pair using one or more alternative teaching formats (skit, mime, song, art, etc)

Directions:
1.  Teacher divides class into groups of four (or five).  Students further divide themselves into pairs (or threes).

2.  Student pairs pick a different physics concept from several posted, previously studied topics, which include new extension applications questions.

Example: Bernoulli’s Principle
Extensions: Why can I be pushed under a fast train when lying next to the track or why do I hit the side of a tall building when falling?

3. Each group has only seventeen minutes to prepare a creative three-minute lesson teaching their chosen topic to the other pair in their group.  Students may use laptops, texts, and class notes and must include three real life examples.  (I encouraged them to rehearse during the last few minutes).

4. Presentation:
Group A: “For THREE minutes teach your science topic using one or more of these methods
Miming
Pictionary
Skits (no “playing school”)
Song (Highly recommended)
Another of your choosing approved by me.

Group B Assignment: Interpret Group A mime or picture presentation and observe respectfully while writing:
- Teaching methods that helped them learn.
- Suggestions for improvement.

Afterwards, Group A and B switch roles.  Group B must teach the first group a different science concept.

This assignment is NOT GRADED.

After our unit on plants, I teamed up with teacher Hovey Clark and master gardener Janey Wise (a resident on campus), to provide students with a hands-on learning experience in the Priory garden.  Students were able to learn from people passionate about plants and agriculture science.  Students toured the garden, tasted plants,  learned about the school’s composting program, planted seeds, transplanted young plants, learned about the importance of soil and much more!

The outcome:  Excited students outside in the Priory garden talking about plants and getting their hands a bit dirty!  A great way to put our knowledge from the classroom to use and learn much more that was NOT covered in our textbook.  Students learned much and had fun!

Teachers worked collaboratively to bring together science from different classes – specifically biology, environmental science, and the food and natural science classes.  Hovey and Janey were excellent leaders and shared their passion and knowledge. Students also learned more about the elective science course – Food and Natural Science that is offered at the Priory as a year-long class.

The garden experience will become a bigger part of our plant unit in the future as these teachers continue to collaborate and come up with new ideas!

Sincere thanks to Hovey and Janey!!!!!

The AP class writes an in-class essay each week.  The students answer a sample prompt (from a previous year’s exam) that usually connects to a work that we’re reading at the time.  The next week the class de-briefs on their essays.  We spend a fair amount of time just on coaching students how to write, specifically under a time constraint.

For the FFF class, the students were tasked with taking all their training on how to write a good essay, and violate every rule they could: they were to write the worst essays that they could.

At first they were completely confused by the assignment.  They could not get their brains around the idea of trying to write badly.  Once they understood the goal, they worked hard on bad writing.  While they thought this would be easy, it turned out to be hard.  Turns out that writing is such an almost unconscious act — you get into a rhythm when you are writing well — that having to stop and ‘screw up’ their essays required constant…(gotta go to practice)