Week 18 is the halfway point for the 2015-2016 school year. During this week, I attended a monthly Instructional Coach Network training at Region 13, I observed 8 classes and I worked with Mr. Merced to prepare for next week’s Middle of the Year (MOY) Benchmark Exams. In the eight classes I observed, I was inspired by watching many forms of active, student-centered learning.
Early in the week, an alumni, JD, dropped by to show us possible designs for our team’s standard. The FRC Competition this year has a medieval theme. In addition to building a robot that can play an exciting FIRST game, STRONGHOLD, we also need to bring medieval standards that represent our team. We have half-joked that we are going to weave our standard out of gaffer’s tape. I missed our first mega-Saturday meeting due to a family birthday party in Houston. The team tweeted pics showing evidence of a fun productive day. It looks like progress was made on our chassis, drive train and drive code.
On Monday, I observed the students in Mr. Ray’s Environmental Science class having a discussion on the impacts of different types of production methods. Their graphic organizers compared the impacts of pairs of methods: one that was more focused on sustainability and one more focused on high levels of productivity. In the class discussion, they used several environmental and economic factors to compare the pairs of methods. After their methods, they applied their knowledge to play a game of Civilizations.
On Monday, I observed students in Mr. Foster’s and Mr. Beckett’s Physics / Concepts of Engineering (COPE) class giving Colloquia speeches on science articles. The students had to explain the science in the articles and why the topic was useful. Students in the audience evaluated the speakers based on their ability to summarize the article, to explain its relevance, and to facilitate a discussion on the article. The COPE class periodically dedicates a day to Colloquia talks on science and/or engineering articles. It was cool to hear students discuss a variety of science topics; many of the articles related to cutting edge technology. It was nice to see students connecting the dots between science and its current applications.
On Tuesday, I attended a training session and a district meeting for instructional coaches. The most valuable thing I learned that day was a definition for rigor. Learning activities with Rigor provide opportunities for students to:
- make meaning for themselves
- impose organization on information
- combine individual steps into processes
- apply knowledge to novel situations.
I used this definition to add a rigor section to the Observation form I use to give feedback to teachers.
On Wednesday and Thursday, Mr. Merced and I facilitated PLC meetings during conference periods on T-TESS Goal Setting. The teachers chose a Refinement dimension from the T-TESS rubric. They will research strategies related to their goal and use that research to design a lesson plan that will be formally observed and evaluated by Mr. Garcia. Teachers can also opt to try out the strategies in practice sessions observed by either me or Mr. Merced. I’m excited that teachers are starting to work towards their individual goals and that we are going to start differentiating future professional development sessions to support these goals.
On Wednesday, I observed Ms. Davis teaching a lesson on electromagnetism in the Junior Physics / Engineering class. For warmup, the students played a magnetism simulation game from PhET. Then the class reviewed independent variables, dependent variables, constants, testable questions and hypotheses. They provided examples of these for an electromagnet experiment. They made a hypothesis about how the number of coils would affect the strength of the magnetic field produced by the electromagnet. They measured the strength of the field by the number staples the electromagnet could lift. After performing the experiment, they designed another experiment with another independent variable. They made a new hypothesis, performed the experiment and gathered data to provide or disprove their hypothesis. The students were really engaged in their experiments. I had to stop one student from taking apart her phone in order to test the affect of using different battery voltages on the electromagnet.
On Wednesday, I observed Mr. Chamber’s and Mrs. Fain-Jackson’s Humanities class preparing for presentations on Friday. They gave practice presentations and got written Critical Friends feedback (I Likes, I Wonders, Next Steps) from other students and teachers. The teachers met with each team and gave them specific content-related feedback on their products. The students were using all the feedback (written and verbal) to improve their art pieces and revise their written pieces to prepare for presentations later that week. I loved how the students were using high quality feedback to improve their work. Their focus was impressive.
On Thursday, I observed students in Mr. Fishman’s Electronic class building fairly complicated circuits on breadboards that utilized the 555 timing chip. Teams were able to choose whether the circuit output would activate motors, LED lights, or noisemakers. They used workshop notes, simulation activities and online research to build their circuits. The behavior of the outputs gave the students immediate feedback on the quality of their build. All the circuits were an application of a concept they had learned last week, RC time constants. Mr. Fishman helped students troubleshoot their circuits by asking them many probing questions. It was cool to see him model how to think more effectively about circuits by using questions.
On Thursday, I observed Mr. Adeboyejo’s Biology class doing a neat lesson on taxonomy. The students were dividing up animal characters into groups using similar characteristics. After that, they learned how to make dichotomous keys and created a dichotomous key to classify all their animal crackers. It was a really cute lesson. They students really got into it.
On Friday, I observed Ms. Thompson’s Writing class. They watched a neat video featuring a periodic table of character strengths. They discussed the video and then wrote blog articles on their own character strengths, how they use them, who they admire, who they want to be, and whether or not they live in an Age of Distraction and what that’s like. I like that the students are documenting all their course reflections in student blogs. I bookmarked their blogs so I can follow and comment on them in the future.
On Friday, the school gathered for Family Circle. We celebrated us reaching the Middle of the Year. Ashley Thomas, a junior, also promoted a community service project to the whole school. For this project, the school will gather items for care packages for soldiers in Afghanistan. The items that will be donated include: trail mix, jerky, travel-size toiletries, and hand-written letters. The items will be collected in the Humanities class during the rest of January.
On Friday, I got to watch several seniors in Ms. Young’s and Mr. Santos’ Humanities class present their Senior Legacy proposals. The object of the project was to create traditions / resources that promote Culture to the whole school. Here are large posters from the project launch. During the launch, the senior brainstormed how they could improve the school culture and how they could better promote our core values: perseverance, trust, integrity, responsibility, and respect.
During presentations, the senior presented a nice variety of ideas to improve our school culture. These ideas included: creating a mentorship program connecting upper and lower classmen, organizing a basketball tournament, organizing a staff versus student volleyball game, building a school lounge in the cafeteria, creating a school mascot, and creating / filming a school-wide lip dub that involves a parody of Hotline Bling called New Tech Bling that has lyrics about our school culture. I liked all the ideas. I hope that all of them are realized by the seniors. I believe that if they are able to successfully implement several of their ideas, the seniors will add their unique stamp to our school culture and that will make our culture stronger and richer.
