 If you've ever wonder what's going on up there on the the top floor of Piedmont, today was a good day to check it out. They weren't throwing things off the roof today-- but there was flight, and food! All you had to do is follow the wafting odor of roasted marshmallows and melted chocolate into Mr. Clark's room to find a delicious way to learn about molecules - making s'mores! Best use of a blowtorch in science class yet! On your way back downstairs you'd walk by Ms. Burick's students with airplanes in the hallways. She and Mr. Fatzinger arranged for our State and National Champion Science Olympiad Team to teach the sixth grade. They shared their expertise on physics, aeronautics, engineering, robotics, pneumatics and other principals through active challenges. Here are a few photos of the day:     
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Piedmont's eighth graders were treated to a show this week. Thanks to funding by the Mecklenburg county ABC board students learned about substance abuse through an emotional connection to the characters in the play. Students were forced to confront the damaging effects substance abuse has on teens, adults and entire families through the play.     Update-Now with Data! Study finds cultural enrichment provided "significant benefits in the form of knowledge, future cultural consumption, tolerance, historical empathy, and critical thinking for students" http://educationnext.org/learning-live-theater/
"As schools narrow their focus on improving performance on math and reading standardized tests, they have greater difficulty justifying taking students out of the classroom for experiences that are not related to improving those test scores. Schools are either attending fewer field trips or shifting toward field trips to places they know students already enjoy. When testing is over, schools are often inclined to take students on “reward” field trips to places like amusement parks, bowling alleys, and movie theaters. The nature of culturally enriching field trips is that they are often to places that students don’t yet know they might enjoy. " From these 7th grade culture clusters to 6th 7th and 8th combined classroom science olympiads, our gym has become a hub of active learning as these photos show:  From the descriptive writing to the dripping polish (creatively reproduced with homemade slime!) this culture cluster was a real crowdpleaser. Mr. Milligan stops to take a photo and not even Ms. Barone could resist touching the dripping paint!  Skulls team students got to know one another's cultures better by reading and enjoying the homemade displays.  Family is Everything reads one while 3D fish pop out of another. Thanksgiving turkeys and footballs sat next to African, European, and Asian cultural artifacts on this day of sharing.     This young man depicted himself as one-man basketball team at Piedmont! Students began imagining and 3D printing their own designs this week. If you've been searching for a use for our 3D printer in your class, take a hint from the 7th grade math students: students can design and print their own small items on our Makerbot Replicator 2. Ms. Gorman, Palgut's and Davis assigned their students the task of designing and building a game that uses math. The students themselves realized they could 3D print game pieces that would match their game's theme. Several groups of students came to our media center makerspace to design and print their pieces. Here are some useful resources to get started: Tinkercad is a free website students can join to easily CAD (computer assisted design) without any prior experience. They just drag and drop shapes they want then customize their designs and adjust the specs according to their needs. for class projects contact Ms. Gurthie For student projects go here to fill out a request for 3Dprinting http://msgurthie.cmswiki.wikispaces.net/STEAM Basic steps
It's that simple! Kiron says using Tinkecad is "like building in Minecraft: it's that fun!" Donald says "This is the most fun I've ever had in school" Here are Kiron and Donald demonstrating the process of printing their Tinkercad-designed game pieces:     |
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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