We liked the idea and outcome so much from last year, that we decided to do it again this year with the English 12 classes. We have had so many things that have hit our staff unexpectedly this year, that we decided to focus on staff as our recipients. We wanted to have a little pick-me-up for our staff when they came back from Thanksgiving break. We had students draw names of staff members (the red and green slips of paper in the black bin above), and then they created Christmas/holiday cards that were personal to that staff member. Some of their awesome work is below!
As part of our monthly Quickfires last year, our English 12 students made Christmas/holiday paper circuit cards for our local Senior Center. The students really enjoyed creating them and it was a great creative outlet. Due to the rigor of their classes as students get older, sometimes the content is deep and there isn't always a chance for the creative outlet, so I love working on creative projects for our older students. We liked the idea and outcome so much from last year, that we decided to do it again this year with the English 12 classes. We have had so many things that have hit our staff unexpectedly this year, that we decided to focus on staff as our recipients. We wanted to have a little pick-me-up for our staff when they came back from Thanksgiving break. We had students draw names of staff members (the red and green slips of paper in the black bin above), and then they created Christmas/holiday cards that were personal to that staff member. Some of their awesome work is below! I made sure to get to work early on the first day back from break (plus a snow day added at the end!) so I could stick the cards in the staff mailboxes. We included a little note explaining how the cards work (so they can test student work), who made them, and a little holiday note. The students were so curious to hear about what teachers thought! It made the whole experience personal for them knowing the card was going to someone they knew.
0 Comments
As the end of the first trimester came to a close, I had a chance to work with my 6th grade buddies in doing a Thanksgiving-themed STEAM activity. This is a little twist on the Pumpkin Elevators activity - with a little Thanksgiving flair. Students were asked to design the tallest tower possible that could lift a turkey in a little pot using a pulley system. The materials they could use are straw builders, connectors, 2 pieces of string, and 2 pipe cleaners. One thing I told the students though was although they had 2 pieces of string, they could only pull on 1 piece of string to move their pulley. Also, once they were able to work their pulley system, we started adding marbles (5 at a time) to add additional weight. I think the most we were able to add was 35 - pretty impressive! What I really enjoyed about doing this activity with 6th graders (compared to the 4th graders with Pumpkin Elevators), was that the Science concepts were understood on a deeper level. The students made connections quicker was that the tallest tower isn't necessarily the most structurally sound. Their designs at first greatly different from their end designs! Just to point out how much I love students who not only think like me, but take it one step further. Below, the picture on the left with the blue bin shows how I gave the materials to students. The picture on the left shows 2 bins after they had been reset for the next hour. Clearly, the purple bin makes me swoon! The red on the other hand...well..at least they got everything back in the bin. :) One of the 4th grade classes that I work with has been talking a lot about pollution and how recycling is important to keeping the Earth clean and sustainable. As we are nearing Thanksgiving, I was looking for a Thanksgiving activity and ended up stumbling upon this Chihuly Glass Art for Kids post and thought it was a perfect tie-in for both Thanksgiving and recycling! For this activity, the directions were pretty straight forward - color a plastic water bottle with Sharpie markers, cut the water bottle into a spiral, and then add to a wire hanger. Before the students began coloring their water bottles, they shared some of the recycling facts they had learned with me and then we talked about using 4th grade coloring and design skills to fill in the space of their water bottle. There was to be no scribbling and it should take longer than 60 seconds to color! They did an awesome job of thinking about the colors they were selecting, adding special designs or notes, and overall caring about the aesthetics of how their water bottle was decorated (I always tell students that the "A" in STEAM is not just for ART, but also AESTHETICS). The fun tie-in that we had for this activity is that the class will have it as decorations for their Thanksgiving celebration next week and then they will be giving it as a gratitude gift to the local Senior Center so they can enjoy the students hard work (and recycling facts!).
Back towards the end of September, one of our 6th grade teachers and I started talking about a book that she was going to be reading to her class. I am not even really sure how our conversation turned into a conversation about thematic learning, but it eventually started moving in that direction and we started brainstorming some ideas for different teaching approaches for the book she was going to be reading, Trash by Andy Mulligan with the theme of child labor. We were able to talk to some other teachers to be part of the unit and they were on board to try something new with us!
The involvement in the unit we did ended up including the following teachers:
At the beginning of the unit, we pre-assessed students on how they preferred to learn. We wanted to pre-assess more than just the content, but also the life skills that our students need to be successful in beyond the content (collaboration, communication, critical thinking, creative innovation, and confidence). We know the self-assessment was not the most accurate way of gauging growth, but we wanted to start somewhere (as the 6Cs are new to us as well as students!), and we felt seeing what the students preferred for learning would give us some good insight that might help us develop theme activities.
Below is a highlight video of our work within our thematic learning experience. Keep in mind, even doing video interviews was out of our comfort zones as staff, but was a great way to reflect on the experience. I have also outlined the elements of the theme that I was involved with in some way.
Sewing Wallets & Keychains
Without giving too much away, in the book, one of the characters finds a wallet. The contents of the wallet are critical to the remainder of the book and students understood the connections the wallet had to the bigger part of the story. So, as a STEAM component, we had the students create faux leather wallets and keychains. The idea stemmed from the ELA teacher's children's wallets and keychains they made at summer camp one year. We used those as a guide and created templates for the students to use in cutting out their leather.
For most students, this was their first time sewing anything. It was a great lesson in following a pattern/directions, measuring, and troubleshooting problems with their peers. So many truly enjoyed the experience! What was particularly surprising to me was that many of the boys were the first to comment on how fun it was to sew and how relaxing it was creating the wallets and keychains.
Guest Speaker
To tie in a real-world experience into the thematic learning, we were able to find out that one of our School Community Coordinators (Miss Marie from Kent School Services Network) had visited a dump site in Guatemala when she was in college. She share pictures of her experience and how Safe Passages/ Camina Seguro (that is close in proximity to the dump) helps children receive an education and other social services while their parents and families are working at the dump site. At that time, Guatemala was coming off a 36-year civil war, so the country was in the process of starting to regroup and rebuild. The students were totally captivated by information and pictures she shared (some of the images she shared are below). It really helped them connect the story of Trash to a real-world situation.
Some facts she shared that surprised the students:
Spanish Market
Each year our High School Spanish Club puts on a Spanish Market where students cook, create, and sell items to raise money for scholarships sponsored by the Spanish Club. These scholarships are in memory of Spanish teachers from the MS/HS who have passed away (Fred Solis - Solis Scholarship - and Elayna Durso -Elayna Durso Scholarship). Students take a lot of pride in this day and it is a culturally responsive teaching opportunity in our district.
During the Spanish Market, our 6th graders had a table set up where they were selling their wallets and keychains. They decided they wanted to set out a donation jar as well to raise money for Safe Passages/Camina Seguro. The students donated half of their proceeds to the Spanish Market for their scholarship fundraising and then the other half to Safe Passages. The remainder of the wallets and keychains were donated to our school fundraiser for Operation Christmas Child.
When the students came up to the Media Center for the Spanish Market, they beelined for their table and had to look and see if someone had purchased their creation. If they were still there, many purchased their own to give as gifts. When their wallet or keychain was not there, there was an initial look of disappointment, but that quickly faded to pride as they realized that someone had wanted to buy what they had personally made. One student even claimed she was "Gucci" after finding out her wallet sold (complete with a little celebratory dance). Breakout EDU
At the end of the unit, students participated in a Breakout EDU game. I designed the game so that it not only covered key elements of the book, but also incorporated the vocabulary they used as part of their article exploration. Students were so excited when they walked in and saw the boxes! I love doing Breakout games when I get to see a different side of the students and how they work under a bit of pressure as well their innate competitive nature that comes out in wanting to be the first to solve all of the clues. We definitely learned that the students knew the content with no problem, but struggled with some of the critical thinking, collaboration, and communication skills that were necessary to solve the puzzles. And let's not forget about logic puzzles...oh the logic puzzles! One of the clues incorporated a logic puzzle and the ELA teacher and I quickly realized this was a skill that was not one of their strongest and we could definitely do more with logic puzzles in the future!
Overall
To my knowledge, this was the first time this group of students had participated in a thematic learning experience. We used the same scale for measurement, and my opinion for the decline in the averages was that students might not have known on the pre-assessment what a "Level 4" truly meant until they had an experience to connect it to (compared to the other levels). Interestingly, the "Content" area scored the lowest overall, with the other 5Cs being significantly higher - our students seemed to want and enjoy learning experiences that are beyond individual learning!
We also asked students in the post-assessment to rate how they felt about the activities that they completed as part of the unit. The thought was that this would give us insight not only to the activities that they enjoyed, but the skills that were incorporated into those activities.
Without a doubt, I would definitely encourage a thematic learning experience for teachers and students! It helped the students make deeper connections (have a conversation with any of them - they will tell you the entire book and how it related back to their learning experiences!) and provided them with different opportunities for learning. Yes, it definitely requires some additional time on the teacher's end to front-load work and activities, but the payoff is huge! Conversations from teachers that participated in this unit have already begun for things we want to build upon for next year - definitely a sign of a good experience on the teacher's end!
|
Like What You See? Show Me Some Love!Follow MeWould you like e-mail notifications? Enter your e-mail address below to subscribe.
Categories
All
Archives
December 2022
|