  The gym was abuzz with 8th graders touring each other's handmade exhibits. Students discussed what was happening in each tableau and decided together what was the message to take away. Ms. Hon, Ms. Styles, and Mr. Reddig facilitated the showcase and quizzed students while visiting teachers were amazed. Take a look at some of the work below.
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We’re winding down with curriculum compacting for the year. I have helped some students personalize their curriculum and many others have done so within their usual classroom this year. The slideshow above shows just a few of the things we've done in the last month here at Piedmont: curricular and extracurricular. From music to art to electronics. In the compacting room some students learned elecronics basics and fixed a 3D printer, some students created non-photoshopped trick photography, some wrote presentations on astronomy, the mind, and more. We even created a bubble and glitter trombone, explored plastics and hydrophobic sand. Earlier students wrote and created an orchestra skit, a black hole independent study and a musical chess score.
A sixth grade ELA compacting student who is 27 pages into her first novel just left my office. I left her feedback on the first 17 pages and she’s returning to discuss it tomorrow and continue working. Two other students just left the makerspace after fixing the schools 3D printer. It had been defunct for years. These students sought out the opportunity to fix it as a “passion project” and have been coming in during recess to see if they could find the problem. They worked together via trial and error, trying one thing, looking for a result, going back to the drawing board, trying something else. After weeks of research and tinkering, they just completed a perfect print of a tiny toy boat. They started a second print, and, as tech will do, this print isn’t adhering. I wish I could take credit for the thinking process happening as they methodically attack this new problem, but it’s all them. I am taking notes while watching them, and planning a way to have them take on apprentices next year who can learn from them. These two compacting situations today illustrate the commonalities and differences of the compacting room this year and help elucidate why I am so proud and happy of our inaugural year of having a dedicated space for compacting. In both situations, students have brought a personal passion into their school day and in both situations they are creating a tangible product. In the case of the novel-writer, she is working on this for class credit. In the case of the printers, they are doing this as an extracurricular extension. Both situations are valid and scalable to future work. If your student is interested in compacting their classwork, have them ask their classroom teacher and if they’d like some guidance on a passion project they can bring to school, have them speak with Ms. Gurthie. We are always looking to learn and improve. Related Posts http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/celebrating-piedmont/piedmont-challenges-us http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/piedmont-pd/piedmont-study-help-a-model-of-self-paced-personalized-learning-or-eog-review http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/piedmont-pd/meeting-the-needs-of-all-gifted-students http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/studentspace/welcome-to-curriculum-compacting We are so proud to have our students featured in a Charlotte Shout community art exhibit. You can see some of these photos on the giant mural wrapping the main library! Thanks to Dana Endsley and photographer Scott Gardner for these great portraits and for involving our students.    |
Celebrating Piedmont : a blog of Happy HappeningsCategories
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December 2019
Author"Celebrating Piedmont" logs only a small fraction of the learning magic the teachers of CMS' Piedmont Middle School, an IB World School. create daily. In that sense, it is authored by all the staff and students of Piedmont. It is curated by Ms. Gurthie who can be reached at the icons above. She'll be happy to brag about Piedmont's teachers and students any chance she gets! Please note this blog has only just begun and we have so much to show off! Come back again soon! |
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Photos used under Creative Commons from Yellow Sky Photography, Nicholas_T, Wendy Longo photography, Gidzy, Mara ~earth light~, seyed mostafa zamani, Y'amal, slopjop, Kevin Shorter, davecito, Nina Matthews Photography, Rob Stemple
