Mr. Anderson's room was abuzz with action Friday. Bottle caps became wheels and science theory became tested as students designed and built their own race cars.
Any lesson that involves power tools is a good one in my book, but another thing Mr Anderson's lesson highlights is how a teacher enriches students learning when they bring their own strengths and passions into the classroom and that happens in the 7th grade teamwide on the regular. (Looking at you, George, Hagerman, Milligan, Egnot, Ciambrone, Potter,...) What a beautiful thing to see Mr Anderson's gift with building (and expertise from the Lego Store!) being shared with the students toward mastery of their curriculum. Thanks for setting up these work stations and offering this experience for our students. What a great follow-up to the NASCAR engineering lesson earlier this year. (scroll to the last Twitter link below for video of that 7th grade special event with a Piedmont Alum as teacher)
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Middle School Serves Gifted learners
This is not the video I expected to make. I have been working with gifted students for curriculum compacting, for online enrichment, and for my class for gifted teaching certification. I expected that the video would be more about how we teachers give gifted students a chance to delve deeply and to show off their academic abilities. and, while, the challenge of projects are big part of this video, the students were most grateful for each other and the environment of Piedmont. They kept going back to what they learned socially and how they learned from each other.
This video was made off the cuff since I'd forgotten that I'd promised to make it. I literally asked the first students I saw if they'd been pulled out of classes in elementary and if anyone wanted to say a word about how being gifted at Piedmont is different than that. I just filmed whatever they wanted to say. The eighth graders' enthusiasm for Piedmont was especially heartening. I turned off the camera once and a group said "wait we need to talk about the teachers" and had me start rolling again. Almost at the end of their middle school tenure, they feel a palpable gratitute for all the experiences that grew them in these three years, and were suprisingly other-focused. They talk about how seeing others' skills pushed them to be better and take more risks, they talk about how working with others taught them so much. As you watch, a few things that I noticed were how different each student was yet how similar their takes, how animated and happy all the students were, how aware students are of their own needs and how they yearn to learn while creating. We do an excellent job of letting kids be kids and supporting them while offering appealing challenges that push them forward. but, full disclosure: students reported waiting for the teacher to notice they already knew the material to get their needs met. I edited out a few "bored" lines and maybe I should have kept them in, but the students were so polite and respectful, they didn't want to tell their teacher. This video humbles me. I thank Ms. Gorman and Ms. Thornburg for giving me the opportunity to make it as they prepare to discuss how Talent Development works in middle school at their conference. And I thank the gifted students in this video for their candor and enthusiasm and for teaching me a few things about gifted development I didn't learn in my grad school program. Video transcript - my commentary in pink
sniff. Related links: http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/piedmont-pd/compacting-for-personalized-learning http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/piedmont-pd/gifted-and-ib-conference-notes google drive link https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t3fXpodrOGeaW1W4-9pqpAAUyixBPxW0/view?usp=sharing 6th grade created planets to scale in a lesson yesterday which perfectly illustrates the active learning credo. Instead of doing a worksheet or reading in a book alone, students used an activity from NASA to help them understand planetary size and scale.
Students studied the Moon Earth and Mars and then, using measurement tools and balloons, created models of each to scale. Groups planned and measured, discussed and compared the sizes of their gold moons, blue earths and red mars models. Once they were satisfied that they had achieved proper scale, they took their models to the hallway where they measure distance accurately scaled between earth and moon. Their teachers explained that scaling Mars’ distance wouldn’t fit in the hallway as they used meter sticks to walk out the distance. Anytime you give a 6th grader, balloons you’re going to have some joy but what was wonderful about this NASA lesson was the way the abundant smiles translated into learning and understanding distance and scale and space more completely. We are proud of 6th grade's own Mr. Kollar, whose idea for a podcast has made it to the finals of the Queen City Podcast contest! Although you might assume his podcast would be about math, you may also know he's a huge sports fan. His idea is a weekly re-cap of all local sports, from high-school to the pros. He writes, "If I win, you better believe I will be spotlighting former Pirates who are doing great things out there." To learn more and help him get a chance to make his concept a reality, vote at this link once per day! LINK TO VOTE: https://queencitypodquest.strutta.me/gallery?entry_id=1345667 Best of luck to Mr. Kollar! Related Posts: http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/celebrating-piedmont/alumni-making-a-splash-in-the-sports-world http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/celebrating-piedmont/prismpalooza http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/celebrating-piedmont/scholars-and-athletes
Educational experts nationwide are recognizing that students spend too much time seated in desks. Recently I came across a Twitter thread discussing this common lament, I felt proud to say that this is not the case at Piedmont.
More than any school I've seen, students at Piedmont move as they learn. Students are frequently standing and moving here at Piedmont. Teachers rig standing desks, students gather in groups to film, world language students move between clues posted on walls around school. Not only are our students not confined to the desk, desks are pushed aside as 7th graders build their factories and museum pieces in social studies; their scale models in social studies. 6th graders stand on them to deliver their Greek god and goddess monologues, 8th graders use them as borders for the battle simulation. The above photo shows Mr. Ciambrone's students testing the bridges they built to "Grandma's house" (below Mr. C's elbow). We are also good at leaving school entirely for real world learning. 8th grade is going all over town creating their own service projects, Our 7th grade races through the city. 6th grade builds rectangular prisms on the field. All our grade levels go on experiential learning overnight trips. Today, I walked out of my office to Mr. Milligan's students crowded together planning their mock trial strategy for his novel study. I turned the corner and there were Mr. Miller's students analyzing a poster outside, took another step and ran into Mr. Beckton's students excitedly jumping around, looked up and there were Mr. O'Neill and Ms Swift's students zig zagging in and out the door. At another school, the first reaction might be panic! Some places mistakenly believe that docile silent pencil pushing is the only sign of learning. They couldn't be more wrong. What I saw was great engagement. Turns out the entire 6th grade team was working on an observation and communication lesson that supported those skills as needed in each teacher's discipline. I immediately pulled out my camera to gather proof of the moment. Check out the video and a few of these related posts about active learning and thank you Piedmont teachers and students for being a model of what is right in education! Related posts: There were so many examples of active movement based learning I got overwhelmed trying to list them all. If I have not covered yours, please send me a photo or invite me in. Now I'm off to judge the 7th graders as they hold their practice trial! piedmontpd.weebly.com/celebrating-piedmont/6th-grade-active-learning piedmontpd.weebly.com/lesson-ideas/incorporating-vocabulary piedmontpd.weebly.com/lesson-ideas/scavenger-hunt-test-prep http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/celebrating-piedmont/egg-drop-maker-movement-and-active-learning Two ways to Incorporate Movement into Your Next Class http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/lesson-ideas/test-review-game-ideas piedmontpd.weebly.com/celebrating-piedmont/science-at-piedmont-today-smores-and-student-expert-teachers http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/celebrating-piedmont/slingshot-science http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/celebrating-piedmont/an-hour-in-sixth-grade http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/celebrating-piedmont/celebrating-globalmakerday-today-and-every-day http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/celebrating-piedmont/lol-2017 http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/celebrating-piedmont/test-prep-piedmont-style http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/lesson-ideas/scavenger-hunt-test-prep http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/celebrating-piedmont/photos-of-the-week http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/celebrating-piedmont/back-to-school-at-piedmont http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/celebrating-piedmont/6th-grade-active-learning http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/lesson-ideas/overlooked-test-prep http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/lesson-ideas/incorporating-vocabulary http://piedmontpd.weebly.com/celebrating-piedmont/having-a-ball-in-media-makerspace |
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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! |