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Making is at the core of Piedmont's culture WE MAKE SO MUCH, IT'S HARD TO HYPERLINK IT ALL!  Every day is #GlobalMakerDay at Piedmont! Well, maybe not EVERY day, but it IS extremely rare to walk the halls of Piedmont and not see students planning or building something across the curriculum and at all grade levels. Students are even making and creating during standardized test times, the time usually known as the least creative of the year. Making is a given in our interdisciplinary passion projects, in Ms. Newburger's excellent Library Makerspace, in clubs, and in encore classes like Art, Band, Drama and Orchestra, but what makes me love Piedmont so much is how common it is in our core classes as well! Consider Mr. O'Neill this week alone, from spears to swans his students were making. Props to him and all to the Individuals and Societies teachers whose students recently built their own tools when studying the stone age. They then created marketing campaigns for the tools and sold them to classmates. The Social Studies classroom making tradition continues in the upper grades as students design build earthquake resistant structures and make period costumes living history exhibits, industrial revolution inventions (yet more industrial revolution), civil rights museums, (another Civil Rights museum) etc. Teachers model making at Piedmont. Mr. Egnot models this by transforming his classroom into a war zone of WW1 trenches and the media center yearly through his maker skills and Ms. Frilot transforms her classroom to a poetry cafe with soft lighting, colors, and seating. In World Language and Language Arts classes, students write songs for the Harlem Renaissance, compile playists and record their own podcasts, design and build whirligigs (both with wood, and with minecraft redstone)and recreate setting layouts and film their own movies based on their novel studies. They make culture clusters that make manifest their own poems. In Math, students make large and small designs for the famous Scale Model Project. They also create their own board games and of course there's the yearly giant Prism-palooza! In Science, they design their best protective egg case then test it out by catapulting the egg using a homemade catapult. What does this culture of making lead to? It leads to kids who think creatively and make for special occasions and for no reason at all! They spend their free time building and making everything from towers to ASMR videos. Stay tuned for more as we celebrate active learning and creating today and every day at #PiedmontIB. Send me your photos and videos if I don't happen by!     
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Mr Egnot in Action:
Read about his Mock Presidential Electionhttp://piedmontpd.weebly.com/celebrating-piedmont/a-new-president-of-the-usa Mr Egnot wins another award at: piedmontpd.weebly.com/celebrating-piedmont/a-surprise-for-mr-egnot See the Living History Museum: piedmontpd.weebly.com/celebrating-piedmont/7th-grade-brings-history-to-life Watch the "Trench Warfare" http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/celebrating-piedmont/7th-grade-video-stars See the Industrial Revolution Prep http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/celebrating-piedmont/piedmont-teachers-gamify-social-studies See the Indutrial Revolution http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/celebrating-piedmont/you-say-you-want-an-industrial-revolution
Active Learning in Language and Humanities
Check out the awesome 7th grade team in these 2 new videos:
First is a video of Mrs. Alexander-Brown's classes Whirligig novel projects. After reading the novel as a class, students used their own interests to create something to consolidate what they learned. They had a choice of creating an annotated soundtrack, movie trailer, story re-write or symbolic whirligig. They ended up learning about the novel and about themselves as the participated in this literary maker movement. Pair it with Mr. Milligan's Pigman live court reenactment videos for examples of active student engagement!
Speaking of active student engagement, next is a video of 7th grade social studies World War I reenactment. Students answered review questions for a chance to charge the enemy, but had to watch out for the barbed wire and gas attacks if they wanted to win. As Mr. Egnot and students note in the video, the real lesson is there were no winners!
Related Posts:
Seventh Grade Social Studies Industrial revolution simulation success. The knowing looks of pride on these students faces say it all. Congratulation to Mr. Egnot, Mr. George and Ms. Thornburg. For more on the annual event , check out this post: http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/celebrating-piedmont/piedmont-teachers-gamify-social-studies  Students excitedly ready themselves for the competition between their two factory towns.  A student smiles as Ms. Barone heads to judge his invention, led by the mc whose job it was to explain each invention to the judging team.
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Celebrating Piedmont : a blog of Happy HappeningsCategories
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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
