During Week 9 at Manor New Tech, we played host to the UTeach program.  On Wednesday, pre-service teachers taking UTeach’s Project Based Instruction course started teaching 5-day PBL units in our science, math, and engineering classes.  I observed the UTeach teachers guest teaching in Mrs. Schimel’s 11th grade physics class launching an optics unit that challenged the students to design laser security systems for the Harry Ransom Center.  This week, they taught inquiry based lessons on the law of reflection, the law of refraction, and the thin lens equation.  The students were very engaged by the project challenge and they have worked well with the guest teachers to use observations and data to discover key optics relationships.

I observed a project launch in Mr. Rodriguez’s art class early this week.  Prior to the launch the students did a free drawing warm-up; the students were allowed to draw whatever they wanted on paper or using any drawing app.  The image below shows a sketch by a student (left) and by Mr. Rodriguez.  In their new project, the students will be designing an office receptionist space with a cultural theme using Maya.

I observed Mrs. Garner’s Art class.  They were in the middle of project that challenges students to create cover art for a musical artist or group.  As part of the project scaffolding, they learned how to mix different colors with acrylic paints and they created a collage of the artist’s current marketing and cover art.  On the day I observed, they were creating concept sketches for their cover art in their sketchbooks while listening to the music of their chosen musical artist.  I love how their sketchbook covers are all individualized (left).  I also loved how Mrs. Garner’s visuals all looked like cover art.

I substituted for Mr. Humphrey’s Songwriting and Production club.  It was cool to spend time in a room full of students creating music.  Some were working on various musical instruments (flutes, drums, guitars, piano) and some were creating tracks on their iPads.

I observed Mr. Ray’s and Mr. Adeboyejo’s BioTech class on the final day before their presentation day.  They were creating posters about the cell cycle, cell cycle checkpoints, and checkpoint disruptions that lead to cancer.  I missed presentations due to a literacy training, but heard they were very successful.  Some of their posters came out really great:

On Tuesday, I attended  a Robotics meeting and witnessed a rare event.  Dr. Erickson, our lead technical mentor, was beside himself with praise for our students’ accomplishment of creating a robot out of recycled materials.  After watching it drive for awhile, he remarked, “How have we managed to impart so much knowledge into our students!”.  After praising them, he explained all the design improvements needed to make the robot competition-ready.  I also worked with Sarah and Zuleima on the Scout presentation for the First in Texas Conference on November 7.  Although neither of them have ever scouted formally, I’m counting on them to be scout leads this coming season and I’m confident they will do a great job presenting our scouting systems to other Robotics teams at the upcoming conference.

“Hot Koolaid, that’s a good scrapbot!”

“Hot Koolaid, that’s a good pick list summary graph!”

Finally, I finished the puzzle I started with Mrs. Ehler as a way to process the loss of my thought partner in instructional coaching.  I’m hoping this will not be the last puzzle (intellectual or literal) that we solve together.