Winners Never Quit

By Barbara Soblo 

     Well, the honeymoon period is definitely over. The new clothes and supplies aren’t so new, the novelty of high school is becoming routine, and Studio D 9 is ramping up the expectations! Part of what makes our program so innovative and out of the box, is our focus on quality work over quantity. Doing multiple drafts is the norm in our class. But getting students to dig deep to create that quality requires a very different classroom vibe.

     Students know quality when they see it and when they produce it. The scary part for a teacher is that getting to quality can take a lot of time! Our first mini design challenge (what will your one sentence legacy be?) finally got to the Go! stage on Friday. For two weeks, students have designed a single sentence that captures who they are; a sentence that goes deep into their core and really captures their complexities using imagery, metaphor and words that carry multiple meanings. Friday they submitted their final work for grading; our job is now to print & post them before open house Thursday.

     In the Gather stage, students listed adjectives about themselves; don’t select words that describe what you do, but describe who you are. During the Glean stage, students boiled their list down to essentials elements. In the Generate and Gauge stages, students wrote their sentence and through several feedback sessions, the sentences changed into something wall worthy. Both teachers & students focused the critique on three things: word choice, flow, and pizazz. Students presented orally both in small groups & to the entire class. I got goosebumps when a sentence really hit the mark. But them react to the quality created by their peers really blew me away. These kids were mostly strangers some 15 days ago, and they were baring their souls to each other & asking for feedback.  

     The assignment is so simple- write a sentence about you- but in Studio D we don’t do simple. Here we begin embracing the ideals we’ll build on all year. That here we support & push each other in order to create something we can all be proud to put out in the community. That feedback must be given & received in the spirit of striving to make the work better. It’s exciting to be watch their brains switch on as they begin to understand more about Studio D and what we do.

     But the work has only just begun because our first big design challenge starts on Monday.

Studio D goes to Catawba Trail Elementary

Today, students from Studio D9 took a trip to Catwaba Trail Elementary school to work with their Quest 4th graders on a design challenge. I met Mrs. Thompson at a professional development I did on design thinking and she and I made plans for our students to collaborate. We liked the idea of it benefiting both my students as well as hers.

I planned for students to redesign the report card, which is a challenge that I had previously given to D9 early on in the semester. I wanted the material of the challenge to be understandable for the 4th graders, but still challenging enough to require them to work through our design process.

Charles, Kayshon, Emma, and Chelsea all came with me to Catawba Trail and led their own project groups.  I must take a minute and applaud these students for their great work today. They were wonderful leaders and led by example, working with their group and modeling all our techniques while teaching the 4th graders, as well. They were professional and the students in QuEST noticed, and commended them for their work.

When we arrived, the 4th graders had already brainstormed what they thought should be included in a report card. They were very thorough, and the students and I were all really impressed with how well thought out their list was. The students were all inclusive with things like grades, progress, attendance, social behaviors, and communication all included in their list.

Next, our students each joined a group and were then given a student for whom they would design a report card. Each group was given a current report card and interview, complete with picture, from  their student. Each interview contained information such as their likes and dislikes, educational goals, strengths, weaknesses, and what they would like to see on their report cards. The QuEST students read through those interviews and highlighted information they thought might help them create their new designs, and this completed the Gather Stage of their project. 

               

To move on to Glean, each group had to decide which information they highlighted, along with information they had compiled onto class lists before we arrived, was the most important to include in their new design. Everyone wrote down their ideas and after we had some time to read over our entire group's input, we chose a few things to focus on. After each group had some 'non-negotiables', we began a silent prototyping time. Students were quick to identify this as the Generate stage, because they were coming up with their first ideas/drafts of a new report card for their student. 

 

We reminded students that during the Generate stage, wild ideas are good things, not to worry about whether or not they thought they could bring their idea to life, not to criticize other people's ideas, and to be open-minded. After a great production stage, students had some good ideas that incorporated information they had gathered about their user. We talked quickly about how to critique someone else's work, and reminded the students to always be kind, specific, and helpful whenever they are giving their input on someone else's work. 

To make their feedback more honest, we made it anonymous by allowing students to write their comments on post-it notes and place the post-it on the draft. We each took turns writing our feedback about each design on the post-its and took some more time later to make clarifications on feedback, ask questions about comments that had been made, and decide as a group which parts of our individual design would we pull into our first group effort.

              

             

These guys were feedback wizards! Their feedback was to the point, specific, kind, and helpful. I was really impressed by how well they were not only able to give criticism, but also how well they received it. 

Wrapping up the Generate stage, we found we were out of time. Students in Mrs. Thompson's class were going to move on to the Gauge and Go stages without us for now, but we made a point to say that we'd love to see their final designs. I had such a great experience working with those bright 4th graders. They are students I'd be proud to have in Studio D any day! My students also had a great time, and loved getting to share their love for the design process with other, albeit younger, designers. Thanks so much to Catawba Trail Elementary, Mrs. Thompson, and the QuEST students for having us today. You guys are awesome!

11.15.13 Curious George and Human Rights

We started off this morning with a surprise quiz. Happy Friday!

I told students their quiz was to identify the steps of the design process in the video I showed, as well as identify the problem the design process was creating a solution for.

Students had to identify the problem, and then how each stage of the design process was shown in the video clip.

Just as a reminder, our design process goes like this:
GATHER
GLEAN
GENERATE
GAUGE
GO

The responses could be bullet pointed or written out.


Here's the link to the video for anyone who was out, or just wants to watch it again.

Windmill Monkey

After the quiz had been turned in, students split into thirds.
Here's a note on progress with the Educational Tools from Mrs. Soblo:

The educational tools are coming along as the due date (11/26) is quickly approaching.  So this past week students learned a new presentation tool- Voice Thread.  To showcase their educational tools & get feedback from both peers & users, students created a Voice Thread presentation of progress.  Our hope is that through this feedback process, the finished product will be really awesome!
Check out the rubric for the presentations & what they've done so far here.

Mrs. Auspelmyer worked with the students on how to do a quote analysis and close reading in The Book Thief. Here are the notes from class today:

Quote Analysis Notes

In Foundations, students re-wrote the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into more simple terms, and we posted them in the classroom. Next week, students will look more closely into the categories of human rights and how they have been broken internationally and here in the United States.

11.7.13 The fruits of their labor

Today students split into thirds, like yesterday.

Mrs. A had students reading the Prologue in their newest book, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. This marks the beginning of a new humanities design challenge for our students, one that involves researching human rights both globally and locally. The book is just the gateway into the project and students are already into it. They even asked if they could stay during lunch to get a little further into the book. Makes this English teacher proud.

Students working with Mrs. Soblo continued their storyboarding and their use of VoiceThread to critique their storyboards. They should be ready for her tomorrow.

Students with Coach West and myself in the tool room continued their work on different deliverables each group had designed. Today we had our first finished product, and Group 1 (Tavarous, Alicia, Trinity, and Xavier) were so proud of their bench. Rightfully so, too. Check out how beautiful it is!

They were just a little proud of themselves.

And who could blame them?

The entire bench was made from pallet wood, with the exception of one 24 inch piece of 2x4.

This is their first of several, eight I think, but they did a great job and cranked it out in one day! Once they hand the hang of it you couldn't stop them. So proud of that group for working so hard today!

Our other groups are right on their heels and should have more designs completed as the next few class periods unfold. Some students even came back during lunch to work on their projects.

Seriously, what teenager does that?

Ours do. And they're awesome.

So proud of you all today!

And for those of you who think it's cute to blow up Coach K's phone with selfies....there is payback my friends.

                               

                                  







Boom.

11.5.13 Beginnings

Today students began two new chapters of their design challenge. Students are creating a storyboard to showcase their educational tool this week.  The storyboard (due Friday) will be turned into a student created Voice Thread.  This draft needs to include a minimum of 7 panels with an image, the scene (tell me what I'm seeing), the script (write out exactly what you plan to say) & the message you are trying to convey to the user of your educational tool.
At the same time, students are getting familiar with Voice Thread (the tool we'll use to peer evaluate the educational tools) by making at least 3 comments  & 1 drawing of the slides I've shared with them.
Comments & storyboard are due by Friday.

The Voice Thread presentations they'll create from their storyboards next week.  The presentation must include a minimum of 7 slides- 1 that introduce their education tool, & 6 featuring parts of their educational tool they are either really proud of or want feedback on.  These are due at the beginning of the news show Thursday, so we can have a virtual gallery walk.  The plan is to link all the voice thread presentations to my environmental studies page for both teachers, students & parents to look at.  Teachers & students can comment on the slides in order to help create better end products.

With Mrs. A, students took their second vocabulary quiz. Despite the fact that she said it almost every day, some of our students STILL forgot that the quiz was cumulative and could/would include words from their previous quizzes. The jury's still out as to how the class did.

With me (Coach K) students who had passed all of their safety tests started tool demonstrations in the project room today. Students who had not yet passed all of their safety tests had to go in Mrs. A's room and continue those tests until they passed. We had a few last minute additions to the demo as people passed a test or two today, but for the most part the majority of each group had passed as of this morning.

Today we did demonstrations on some of the tools we use most frequently. Students had to make a cut with the miter saw, had to drill a pilot hole for a screw, make a cut with a circular saw while using saw horses, and sand with the grain using one of the handheld sanders. Students were generally excited about working with the tools for the first time, and even some of them who were apprehensive at first were making cuts and holes on their own by the end of the period. Students still need some work with the table saw, Dremel, and a few other tools in the room but they are (mostly) ready to start construction on their designs. We'll spend some time tomorrow making sure the prototypes are as complete as they can be so I can make a Lowe's run to ensure we have all the materials the prototypes call for. Here are a few shots of some of our students with the tools.