  Piedmont students arrive in character to play two of the many roles in the trial. Each year characters are different according to the students' trial notes and decisions made while reading the novel. Some teachers say " Don't bring your drama into my classroom" Mr. Milligan requires it. His Pigman reenactment is a Piedmont tradition. Over the years Mr. Milligan has honed the Pigman Trial project into a complete interdisciplinary lesson that encapsulates the best of IB, reading comprehension, creative thinking, multiple intelligences, and real-world skills development. That's a pretty impressive list from just one unit but it is an all-encompassing one that is true PBL, project based learning. Even if you don't want to copy Mr. Milligan's full unit (and honestly who else could?) you can easily adapt pieces of dramatic-based learning to help your students master your content. It could be as simple as having students perform skits to explain units of a text, vocabulary charades or as complex as putting an aspect of your own content "on trial" or having students create a character from your content area and remain "in character" through a full class of interaction. See Ms. Gurthie for more ideas or to plan together.
 A student videographer prepared this full-length documentary video of this year's Pigman trial. Sure it's three hours long, but anywhere you click will show students thinking and arguing their point, and helping each other develop understanding in the process.
Thanks, Mr. Milligan, for using your own gifts in designing this active learning experience for Piedmont's seventh grade! For more information you can view some of Mr. Milligan's unit from his presentation on the Pigman Trial PBL year's North Carolina gifted conference here . Related Posts:
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Many teachers here at Piedmont have used student-created movies to teach their content. Above are just two examples - a stop motion film of an scene from Seedfolks for Language arts and a video of a student created Minecraft Pyramid from Mrs. Kay's social studies Ancient Egypt unit. Try these lesson plans to get started
Our School Resources:
Recommended BYOT apps for movie making :
If using a shared ipad, you can upload and download the video as needed from Google Drive: (Sorry I ironically broke the cardinal rule of movie making - NEVER HOLD YOUR DEVICE LONGWAYS Learn from my mistake!) This video shows how to upload and share from your device This video shows how to turn in a video link for an assigment on Google Classroom  In my crystal ball I see the future of education will be makerspaces. Maybe that prediction my own wishful thinking, but I sure hope it's true. A move from content-driven fact regurgitation to studio, and lab-driven workshops can only be a good thing for our students' futures. At the rate of change in todays world, a skills-based, passion-driven, and failure-tolerant exploratory environment is the way to go! Makerspace FAQ What is a makerspace? Jake Standish defines a makerspace as any place or process that provides students the opportunity for creative expression and the pride of feeling "I made something cool!" I see it as a way in school to experience what visionary STEAM educator Seymour Pappert terms "hard fun." Makerspaces are a place to both instill and nurture students' interests organically. If you are ONLY looking for quickest test score increases, maker ed will not be for you (and I feel sad for your students.) However, done well the maker method results are INCOMPARABLY more long lasting and far reaching than traditional instruction. How did the maker movement in education start? Makerspaces in school grew out of the hackerspace movement as a way of integrating STEM or STEAM back into schools and a response to the oversanitization of education. If you are curious how they look outside of a school stetting, there is a hackerspace near our school. google "Charlotte Hackerspace" to find where and maybe do a field trip. There are also maker faires in many areas. Do I need to be an engineer, a tech expert or a scientist to run a makerspace with my students? Not at all. Students can teach each other, learn from videos or instructions, or get help from adult or high school volunteers. Just provide the supplies and let students decide what to do with them. Makerspaces do not have to include electronics but there are many creative electronic kits out there that are affordable even for a beginning school. Check the resources question below for a few. " if you know the right end of a soldering iron , adafruot will get you the rest of the way." - Jake Standish of CMS I can't abide chaos, should I even try this? Yes, frustration and false starts will be common, valuable, and instructive, but you can minimize the chaos with rubrics and directed projects and minimize the mess with 3D printed and computer based projects. Ideas are on the Pirate STEAMShip page. I also recommend partnering with a chaos-tolerant co-teacher! Put your classes together! How can I get started? Rather than worry about who would use it or how, we got started by gathering anything that could be used into one spot and cataloging it:
When Ms. Newburger came back as our media specialist, she created a permanent makerspace home and improved the vision and -while waiting for the funding for her larger vision, immediately re-created the media center. She
Where can my students and I find ideas?
What equipment?
Makerspaces as an Extention of PBL Creating should be the driver for learning! PBL - project based learning, also called Passion based learning can be student-driven and creation driven. This kind of PBL - known as Love of learning, 20% time and Genius hour is creating some great results is based on the idea of flipping blooms (see image) while also giving students a voice in what is created. It rewards intelligences often ignored in traditonal education and is more motivating that a teacher-driven class. It can also be the bait that drives students to grow their skills as they see the need. At Piedmont we are one of the first CMS schools to create a makerspace. Our MakerSpace supplies are the perfect compliment to make-ify your lessons and/or nurture the variety of genius in your classroom! In addition to our extensive collection of multiple intelligences apps, Green Screen, Collaboration Board area, MakerSpace workbench and Makerbot Replicator 2 3Dprinter housed in the media center, we have mobile carts of supplies available for checkout to your room. Check this link for the full list of offerings http://piratesteamship.cmswiki.wikispaces.net/STEAMshipCarts See Lisa Gurthie or Lisa Newburger for ideas of how to use these in projects or curriculum. The full information about STEAM integration at Piedmont via the PirateSTEAMship is here http://piratesteamship.cmswiki.wikispaces.net Photo Gallery Piedmont's Middle School Makers in Action               
 Ok, I don't really get it myself, but I think some of you will take this and run with it, so I am sharing:
Have you heard of design thinking? there is this whole movement in education to teach by using design thinking to solve real problems. the dschool at Stanford is way out in front of how to use design thinking in education. So you can Google to find out more, but if you think you might want to try teaching by issuing your students a challenge, you can click the image to choose one of dschool's 3 "mixtapes" lesson strategies to:
I really want someone at Piedmont to try with their students to create this milk jug igloo Canadian teacher Ray Hoppins posted on Twitter last night. . Besides the obvious social skills such as perseverance grit and teamwork- I'll help you brainstorm how this can fit into your content objectives as well - because I selfishly really want to see one in person! And just imagine, when the lesson is over, you've got an awesome chill spot or reading nook!  If second graders can do it, we can!  Let your student decide:
The Piedmont Tau-rates doesn't have the same ring to it as Piedmont Pi-rates, and I don't know if we do it on June 2 or February 6 but : here's Vi Hart's explanation why Pi is wrong and Here's Numberphile's Pi/Tau Smackdown in case you want to share with students and get their opinion If they side with team Tau, Click the Tau image to go to the Tau Day website  Read this article with your students.
http://www.livescience.com/43455-lego-braille-printer.html Curriculum connections:
 Olympics lesson resources to go with your OLYMPICS DOOR DECOR for our door decorating contest!
--Great PBL - Project based learning Olympics lesson PLan- ready to use! http://www.pblproject.com/page.aspx?pageid=PBL-ww-Winter-Olympics Good common Core non-fiction article-great discussion starter http://mentalfloss.com/article/54769/18-athletes-going-sochi-alone UPDATE: SCIENCE VIDEOS http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2014/02/26-videos-about-science-of-winter.html#.Uvpwiyf-0ig |
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Author I am Lisa Gurthie the PD facilitator at Piedmont IB Middle School. She specializes in tech and arts integration, interdisciplinary, holistic education, and unschooling school to make it more real and relevant. One day I will modernize my "about" page. Check out the other blogs on this site for Lesson Ideas, Celebration of Good Teaching, and Piedmont PD Archives
February 2021
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