Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Do You See What I See?

Look at these pictures of students on 6 Gold.  What do you notice????







Do you notice student ownership? YES! 
Do you notice student collaboration?  YES!
Do you notice student engagement?  YES!
Do you notice authentic learning?  YES!
Do you notice interdisciplinary learning?  YES!  But, you may not see it in these pics, so go easy on yourself if you didn't get this one right away!

We do amazing things at TMS!  In this one period of learning, I saw students in...

Social Studies becoming sharecroppers by agreeing to a contract, growing crops (okay, so they drew them instead), earning payment from the overseer (it was a piddly payment if I must say), and being attacked by a live boll weevil.  The students had a blast as they role-played these events with live bodies.

Science growing plants and investigating which methods result in successful "crop" growth.

English Language Arts comparing and contrasting tenant farmers and sharecroppers.  Then, they used post-it notes and Wallwisher to discuss the main idea of their related readings.

Mathematics subdividing sharecropper plots, estimating percentages of land for each sharecropper and evaluating their accuracy.

In each of the above examples, students were applying knowledge from all of their core classes and engaging with the content and their peers.  Students used their knowledge of plant growth from science to help them become good sharecroppers in social studies.  The subdivision of land in math directly correlated to their understanding of the sharecropper's contract learned in social studies, and in English, students compared what they'd learned about sharecroppers to other types of farmers from the historical time studied.  And, don't even get me started on the student ownership....determining the complexity of their crops and plots of land.  I feel like I could go on and on and on......

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