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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
 Mr. Davis' students take a virtual field trip to Florence without the cost of the flight thanks to Google Street View.  Jumping jack Tuesday means Jumping Jacks for Ms. Malone's Brain Break. As part of the peer walk-through initiatives by the the Piedmont Middle Instructional Leadership Team (ILT) Ms. Barone, Ms. Adornato and I walked through sixth grade Tuesday morning. In the space of an hour, just minutes in each class, this is a snippet of what was going on. From quiet rooms with zen like atmosphere, to rooms buzzing with excitement, from test prep tips to virtual field trips to Florence, from an exercises in expanding one's individual perception inspired by Dead Poet's society to EOG fact reviews If I had to choose a word to describe sixth grade, I'd say "amazeballs" is about right.  PL for Ms. Malone's students means neighbors working on various assignments at their own pace.  Student Ownership in Ms. Lyttle's class means she always have a colorful room and student-maintained website!
The gym has transformed into a civil rights museum, with exhibits designed and created entirely by 8th grade history students. Here are a few of the projects   For the second year in a row Piedmont 8th graders have built their own Civil Rights Museum. This year the museum was visited by two distinguished leaders of the civil rights movement, Mr. Harvey Gantt and Rev. Dr. Jesse Douglas. Please read more about their historic visit and advice here, however the students work is the star of this post: The photos speak for themselves as students did not shy away from topics that are hard, nor did they dumb down or sugar coat the era into a simplified story that makes it all seem easy. Hats off to the 8th grade social studies team for their leadership in the value of a true and deep study of the past.                   |
Celebrating Piedmont : a blog of Happy HappeningsCategories
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April 2018
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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