Presentation Rubric for Campfire Presentations on 2/4

This is the rubric you will be scored with on Tuesday, Feb. 4th, for your campfire presentation. Don't forget your are receving two grades: an individual grade on your presentation, and a group grade on the content you present. Please make sure that you are rehearsing accordingly. The presentation must be a minimum of 3 minutes long and a maximum of 5. No reading from materials is allowed. 

Teacher Interest Challenge

Today, students were introduced to our next design challenge. We wanted to give students an opportunity to work with the 10th graders in Studio D to promote collaboration and foster a sense of unity  throughout the program. These design challenges were based on teacher interests and are being led by teachers from both D9 and D10.

Students were given some quick information on each of these challenges and asked to choose their first, second, and third choices. Here are the three HMW's for these challenges:

Trailblazers: How might we showcase the wild beauty of Westwood in a way that promotes fitness?
FunD It: What can we do or create that will show off our Studio D skills to make money for our program?
SDPR: How might we market our program by using and promoting students’ individual strengths?

Next Friday, January 31, both D9 and D10 will be participating in an In-School Field Study to begin the Gather stage of this design challenge. Students will meet with the teacher leaders of their groups and start to brainstorm what they'll need to know in order to complete this challenge. This will be something that students will work on over the next few months, so make sure you check with your student to see what project they are working on.

Priorities for Today (1/24/13)
-Africa Map Quiz (20 countries only; no capitals)
-Vocabulary Unit 5 Review (Quiz Tuesday 1/28)
-Introduce Teacher Interest Design Challenge
-Continue Human Rights Violation Research (See guidelines here)


STUDENTS:
Make sure you fill out the form to let us know what your first, second, and third place choices are for the Teacher Interest Challenge

Click Here!

Moving to Glean with Human Rights

Questions for today's FOD assignment:

For Thursday, January 23rd:

1) Review the UDHR and identify which specific articles deal with your human right group.

2) Research your problems or violations that you identified broke the UDHR where you HR group is concerned. Cross reference the articles you JUST identified to make sure that a violation is present.

IF a violation is present, research the article where you originally found the violation and collect the following facts:

1) Where did this violation occur?

2) Who did this violation effect?

3) How does it violate an article of the UDHR?

4) What are the greater implications of this violation for the entire HR group?

5) Citation of the article in MLA format

Create an annotated bibliography of your sources. Only one per group is needed.

Use this website for the UDHR: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/

Hiring Fair

Hey guys!

It's been a while but with the craziness of exams things have been out of whack around these parts. Tomorrow we are having a hiring fair for all the students who were either fired from their groups or who decided to walk away.

Either way, there's an opportunity for you to get rehired! Tomorrow from 9-10:15 we'll be having group interviews. If you're a free agent who didn't get an interview scheduled let me know, but if you did best of luck in your interviews tomorrow!

We watched the awesome short documentary from PBS entitled "Extreme by Design". The film covered Stanford's d.school and one of their classes that focuses on extreme design to create affordable, realistic solutions to problems in the world. There have been some amazing start-ups (get more on that term here!) that have come from this class and our students are doing work very similar to that done at Stanford. It was great to hear a common language between us and know that our students are capable of doing work that can make a change!

After watching the video, students began their Idea Wave brainstorm to look at two different things. The first was what are some possible things we can create to alleviate some of the problems people have that struggle with that group's human right. The second was what are some possible educational tools we can create to better inform our peers about what those human rights issues are. Students presented and got feedback on their first draft of the idea wave and will continue those revisions tomorrow. We're hoping to finish feedback, too.

All in all it's been a good week gang. Glad to see you all back together.

P.S. Go follow @WHS_StudioD on Twitter. I'm feeling lonely.

Studio D Midterms

Hey gang!

Welcome back.....to your midterm exam! Yayyyyyy.

We will be taking our Studio D Midterm on 

Friday, January 10th 

during the 2nd and 3rd period exam slots. 

Content from the midterm will be split amongst the four classes that make up Studio D9. One quarter of the exam will be English content, one quarter will be Environmental Science content, one quarter will be World Geography content, and one quarter will be Foundations of Design content. Each teacher will grade their respective content from the exam to use for the midterm grade for their individual class. A student's performance in one content area of the exam will NOT affect his or her performance in any other content area of the exam; they will be graded independently. 

Students spent today reviewing all of their content from first semester in groups and were tasked to create the questions to their midterm. Students are responsible for drafting 20 questions (and the answers!) individually, 5 per subject area. From there, students will choose the 10 best questions from each group for each subject to submit to the teacher for the exam. The teacher will choose appropriate student questions to include on the midterm. 

In each of the four courses that make up Studio D9, the exam will count as 10% of the students' Semester One grade for each class. Quarter One will count 45%, Quarter Two will count 45%, 

and the midterm will count 10% 

to make up students' final Semester One grade. 

Students will take their exam during two consecutive 100 minute periods; therefore, each of the four content portions of the exam will be approximately 50 minutes long. Please note that the number of questions will vary for each subject depending on the length of the response. 

Students will take the English content portion of the midterm and the Design content portion of the midterm during the 2nd period exam block, Friday, January 10, 8:35 am -10:15 am. 

Students will take the Environmental Studies content portion of the midterm and the World Geography content portion of the midterm during the 3rd period exam block, Friday, January 10,  10:30 am -12:10 pm. 

Students will spend the rest of the week preparing and reviewing for this test. A complete list of subjects that could be on the exam can be found below.

ELA

Annotated Bibliographies

Citations

Research skills

Using direct quotes and paraphrase

Quote Analysis

MLA Format

Professional Email

Text Analysis

Writing Summaries

Reflecting

Vocabulary

Presentation Skills

Study Skills

Reading Skills/Note-taking skills

Literary Terms/Figurative Language

World Geography

Central America (Countries and Capitals)

South America (Countries and Capitals)

Culture and its components

History of Music

Government Types

Capitalism

Communism

Fidel Castro

Joseph Stalin

Nelson Mandela

Major World Religions (The Big 3)

Protestant vs. Catholic

Industrial Revolution

Great Depression

Dust Bowl

WWII

Hitler

2013 Government Shutdown

Global Warming

Deforestation

Erosion

Fertilizers

Soil Nutrients

Environmental Studies

Using a Dichotomous Key

Scientific Method

-identifying variables

-how to measure

-making a hypothesis

-drawing conclusions

-graphing data

Food Webs/Chains & Trophic Levels

Habitats/ Organisms in the Environment

SC Regions

Unit Conversion

Design

Design Process

The 5 G’s (Be able to explain and given synonyms for each stage)

Critique and Revision

-‘Keep it About the Brownies’

-‘Don’t Yuck My Yum’

Interview Process

Tool Safety (General-Don’t get tool specific)

Brainstorming Techniques

Prototyping

Collaborative Skills

Human Rights History

UDHR