|
Here are a few highlights of our Very Piedmont Thanksgiving: "The Science and Language Arts of Thanksgiving" Lesson: Ms. Burick and Lyttle combined their classes today. First Ms. Burick taught the sixth graders the science of Thanksgiving including dispelling the myth that turkey makes you tired & teaching the physics of football and Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade balloons. Then she handed over to Ms. Lyttle, who raised student awareness of things, people and places they may be thankful for. Her attitude of gratitude lesson culminated in students writing thank you cards to someone at Piedmont they appreciate.  Students give a thumbs-up to the lesson, as Ms. Lyttle circulates between tables helping students plan and write their gratitude cards. Piedmont's Student Principals for A Day: Piedmont students became Principals for The Day. The day before Thanksgiving break, the four winners took over for Ms. Barone and the APs running the school. In the below photos they can be seen helping Ms. Barone with her rounds, advising Mr. Milligan how to get a reluctant student back to work, giving Officer Rorie a stern warning and hand-delivering thank-you notes to staff.  Our Makerspace is Cookin' Turkey's not the only thing cooking this week! Our makerspace is really getting cooking even despite a breakdown. Students practiced their focus, business skills, enginnering as they made the necessary repairs.  "It's harder to put back together than it was to take apart!" These amazing engineer girls just cleared our 3dprinting clog all by themselves! after studying online tutorials and talking to live customer support at makerbot. Talk about real life and hands on - instruction, here it is!  The celebration once they got the printer (almost) fixed!  Speaking of girls in STEM, these ladies were trying out some of our makerspace STEM tools during their lunch. Snap Circuits is my favorite all time engineering toy! Just follow the instructions and create working circuits in a snap!  Minecraft + Lego in the media center, ballroom dancing in the math room: It must be club day at Piedmont ! Clubs are so important to our students. Thanks for running them. New Student Council Gets Down to Business Immediately after the swearing-in ceremony, the new student council was hard at work planning events and brainstorming ideas for the year including lock-ins, movie nights, candy grams and more. Mr. Egnot and Ms. Thornburg have their work cut out for them with this ambitious crew.  Spelling Bee - Top 10 and final Winners! Ms. Whiting ran the school spelling bee. It was a tough match full of worthy competitors in a tight competition judged by Mrs. Curtis, Mrs. Self and Mrs. Johnston. Below is a shot of our top 10 finalists and the winners who will represent Piedmont against other schools at the zone bee in December.   New Chromebooks are here! 1:1 is coming after the holidays! Piedmont won the 1:1 grant! If you've been in the media center this week, you've seen the new carts as Mrs. Newburger help us get them ready for the student rollout. Below one parent helps set up a sixth grade cart as another parent volunteer rolls out the next one of the lot. 1:1 is like a dream come true! No more signing up for tech and hoping it's not all taken! Now students will have access to tech learning throughout their schoolday everyday regardless!  Thank you to our parent helpers!  Just a few of the brand spankin' new Chromebooks awaiting their Piedmont students. Piedmont Gives Thanks for Mrs. Marshall Last but not least, the day before Thanksgiving marked Mrs. Marshall's last day at Piedmont. After 24 years of teaching Health to our students, it is the end of an era. Mrs. Marshall is remarkable not just for her years of service, but also for her level of passion for her subject and dedication to her students. The love she shows for Piedmont, for her students, for her fellow staff members and for her career is remarkable. Her enthusiastic "Piedmont, You Know!!!" was the highlight of more than one of our events and will ring in our hearts everytime we think of her. Her optimism was infectious and I think many of us have been inspired by her, even if we weren't directly her students. 
0 Comments
I had to clean out my old email and I didn't want to get rid of this without reminding you I still think you are amazing. Happy Thanksgiving! Subject: I love you, Piedmont.
Have I told you lately how great you are? I know people get used to each other and so greatness seems normal, or perhaps even becomes invisible as little irritants fill our days, but you are in NO WAY the norm. You are all gifted and you have found a way to show it. I hear a lot of dysfunction voiced about other schools, NONE of which Piedmont has (and trust me whatever little quirks we have are downright charming after the stories I heard yesterday). What is noticible to me is how we have each others backs when there seems to be a lot of others who just spend all day protecting theirs. I realized how lucky I am to be here, how great it is to be surrounded by brilliant capable people who take their jobs seriously and also have fun, and how rare we are. I also spoke at a conference recently and had them all wishing to be us and all I did was show them some of your websites and talk about what happens in your rooms as a norm, a norm you are probably all so used to now that you don't realize how many kids and coworkers out there have nothing like this. At one point a participant spoke and said "Well, this is all good but all your students are motivated and above average and eager" I assured them that test scores are not a measure of eagernes or motivation , that we have the same kids as everywhere. I think it is you who are gifted- Thank you for bringing your gifts everyday. Nearpod brings students face to face with Aboriginal Art
It's getting harder and harder to know which class students are in these days here at Piedmont- and that's a good thing for our students' brains. Just take a look at these two examples as teachers use tech to integrate arts and arts to integrate sciences and using Nearpod in and iMovie in Language Arts class . 
Ms. Czerwinski used Nearpod so students could get a close up view of the details of Aborignal art. Ms. C got instant feedback from the quiz and students could collaborate with each other.
Students Use Language Arts and Visual Storytelling Skills to Make a Science iMovie:
After viewing the art and a video of an Aboriginal artist making it, students used the internet to find an animal for their own art and self expression project.
In Ms. Burick's class students were learning about molecules, which was all Ms. Lyttle needed to know to pull out the beanie babies and have students make their own stop motion about molecules. Students collaborated on a science storyboard and then worked out the action. Wonder if Ms. McLeod will "discover" any hidden beanie talent for the school play? 
If you think a middle school musical is not a fun way to spend your Saturday you've obviously never seen the artistic stylings of Mrs. Macleod, Winegardner, and Czerwinski et al! Everything from the singing, the costumes, the set design musical score props for the cast of thousands was perfectly rendered middle school treasure. Here are a few highlights:  As parents, kids, and fans file in for the Saturday matinee, the first thing you notice is the theater itself is a gorgeous space - they don't make em like this anymore!  Set crew makes last minute preparations before the audience arrives.  Dancing Sailors on the Sea!  King Triton on his throne overlooking his colorful mermaid daughters...And one crab!     Undersea Rescue!   Flounder in his overalls -- there aren't enough words!           |
Celebrating Piedmont : a blog of Happy HappeningsCategories
All
Archives
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! |
RSS Feed
