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.