Tuttle, Dan
Hi again from Minneapolis, Minnesota! For those of you that have been asking about the weather (I'm sure you are anticipating how frigid it is and are laughing at me), I have to tell you that it has been pretty mild by Minnesota standards. It's mostly been in the 40s and 50s (even got into the 60's last weekend). I've actually been out on my bicycle on some really nice rides and not been too cold. Everyone here is anticipating that it'll get real cold soon enough. I'm looking forward to a little snow.
On my last blog entry I described the events of the first two days of the NSTA (National Science Teachers Association) convention and promised to include the events of the third day on this entry. The third day (Sat. Oct 31st) of the convention was pretty uneventful. The convention only went until noon, so there were very few sessions available that morning. I guess the last day was only a half-day so that local teachers would have a least part of the weekend with family and that those who traveled would have a chance to get home. I attended two sessions:
1. Project Based Life Science as an Anchor in Developing Integrated Units – I was excited to attend this session as it seemed to be in line with part of my sabbatical goals … integrated curriculum. I was very disappointed as it was a 'talk at you' session with very little substance. I tried to pick out a few things from the session that I could share with others about integration: (1) If a school is struggling with getting teachers to integrate their curriculum, pull a teacher out of a classroom for a year to coach other teams to develop integrated units of study. The team I'm on tried this with the idea of integrating the concept of Global Warming. Although I remember it being interesting and fun, we had mixed success with the process and didn't fully follow through on the idea … mainly because of time; (2) Devote an extra team meeting each week (or perhaps devote one of the existing faculty meetings a month) to the topic of integration. As an 8th grade faculty, I remember us doing that a few times over the last couple of years; (3) When sharing curriculum in a team meeting, always look for commonalities. This is something, I think, that most, if not all the teams at Punahou do already. Seems to me there could have been a lot more to this session to help teams integrate … too bad☹.
2. Fun Experiments using Polymers– This session was a fun, hands-on session with a retired teacher with tons of experience that actually had very little to do with polymers. It seemed to center on fun things to do in the elementary science classroom. It demostrated fairly common activities like the Cartesian Diver, fun with sodium polyacrylate (a polymer) and it's ability to absorb water (200-300 times it's weight), and Dancing Raisins (she called it 'sewer lice'), etc.. This was fun, but I didn't really learn anything that I didn’t already know.
All-in-all, the NSTA convention was very worthwhile for me. I would encourage my middle school science colleagues to attend sometime in the near future.
Last Friday (11/6), Carolynn and I went to visit Breck School here in Minneapolis. Breck is a K-12 school with 1200 students (360 in their 5th – 8th middle school). They were founded by the Episcopal Church and have chapel once a week. They joke a bit about their Episcopalian roots saying that their student body is about 10% Episcopalian. Part of their mission is to emphasize to their students, "Who do you want to be?" rather than "Who are you?" Like most of the schools we are visiting, each grade level is equivalent to one of our teams (about 90 students). The core subjects at Breck include Math, Science, English, Social Studies, AND Foreign language (I'm sure our FL teachers will be glad to hear about that!). The languages offered include: Chinese, Spanish, and French, with hopes of offering Arabic in the future (sorry Monaco sensei … no Japanese☹). Their average class size is 17 students with the teachers teaching 5 out of the 6 periods in a typical day. The teams (grade level) meet weekly for an hour to identify 'red flag students' (those that need immediate help), celebrate the good things happening, and to develop their integrated units. Breck practices what one of the sessions at the NSTA convention suggested … devote regular team meeting time to curricular integration development. In addition, one of the faculty meetings each month is devoted to integrating the curriculum. What seemed most integrated at Breck is their advisory program. They have advisory four times a week for 30-minutes, two in the morning and two in the afternoon. It seems to be a fairly set advisory program so that students all have a common experience. Character education and community service are the main threads in the advisory. The community service component takes all students off-campus six times a year. They have a desire to link their advisory to their weekly chapels a bit more, so I recommended that they take a look at John Heidel and Marion Lyman-Mesereau's books on character education. I also shared with them the 'value of the month' (with a Hawaiian perspective) that helps to link our chapel program to other aspects of the curriculum at Punahou.
For my science colleagues, Breck's middle school science curriculum is as follows:
5th grade – Space and Earth as a system (not Earth Science) w/ Robotics
6th grade – Physical Science / Energy alternatives
7th grade – Life Science
8th grade – Earth Science (emphasis on mapping, tectonics, orienteering, and geocaching)
The science gateway course in their high school is physics (as opposed to Biology or Chemistry that most school have). Part of their 8th grade experience is to choose a professional paper (topic is their choice), translate it (into jargon that 8th graders can understand), create a podcast reporting on it, and present to a larger community of students and parents. The goal is to give them some "real science" and be able to read and understand a professional paper. This project seems to be one of their culminating science experiences in the 8th grade.
Breck has a course that all middle school students take every other day called 'Life Skills.' This course is a combination of Health, Physical Education, Religion and Project Adventure. Some of you may know that Project Adventure is a mostly outdoor curriculum that is base on challenge by choice that includes a ropes course.
Breck seems to support the students with learning differences very well. Among other things, they will assign a student (w/ a LD) to their learning specialist by pulling them out of a non-core subject.
As part of the 'Teaching Tolerance'' curriculum, Breck joins about 8000 schools across the country where students create a 'Mix it up Day.' Students from across the K-12 grade levels share a meal (typically lunch) with small group of students from all grade levels. They mix students up that don’t normally eat or hang out with each other. I noticed at Breck that the kindergarten classrooms are right next to the high school area … the elementary school rooms are in between the high school and middle school areas … very interesting!!
Last Monday (11/9), Carolynn and I visited Blake School, also here in Minneapolis. Blake has a very unique situation in that they have three campuses. One that houses the high school (downtown Minneapolis), one that houses half of their PreK - 5th grade (in a suburb), and the other houses the other half of the PreK – 5th grades and the 6-8 middle school (in a different suburb). It seems like a challenge for their head of school and their elementary administrators, but they seem to make it work well. They say they can draw students from a wider area than most schools. Their retention rate is very high with a good size portion of their student body staying at Blake for 14 years. Blake's middle school has a student body of 335 (102 in 6th, 107 in 7th, and 126 in 8th) and an average class size of 16 students. As with most schools that we are visiting, their grade level equates with one of our teams. Like Breck, Blake includes foreign language as a core class along with Math, Science, English, and Social Studies. Foreign language is taught as early as kindergarten, ascribing to research that suggests that an early acquisition of a second language enhances learning (in other areas) throughout their lives.
Blake's advisory program seems to be very centered on service learning (as opposed to community service). There are 11 students in each advisory that meets once a week for an hour. There doesn't seem to be a set advisory curriculum that everyone follows throughout the year but rather based on meeting the needs of their current students. They use the handbook: "Need a Hand with Advising? … Here's a Handbook" (created by Garrison Forest School in Owings Mill, Maryland) as resource for some of their activities. All of their advisory groups raise money and some distribute the money as a micro loan through KIVA. Along with that, each advisory group during the first semester creates a mini business that raises money for their advisory. This culminates in what they call 'Business Day' where each advisory creates a product that they advertise through an iMovie (Technology commercial) and print work advertisement (that gets placed on the wall of the hallways of the school). The 'Business Day' is when they sell their product to the rest of the student body. Products range from the simple bake sale to selling graphics to stuffed animals that they've created themselves.
Blake has what they call a 'Tutorial' for 30-minutes four times a week built into their schedule. This period is the second to last period of the day where students can get extra help with a teacher, free read, students with a learning difference check in with a learning specialist, study hall, work on group projects, etc.
Blake's science curriculum is a bit different than most schools that we've visited:
6th Grade - Astronomy / Human Body and Health (I thought an interesting combination)
7th grade - Physical Science and Earth Science
8th Grade – Chemistry and Environmental Science
They seem to use a lot of Vernier probes in their lab investigations. They seem to use the heart rate, pH, temp, air pressure probes the most in their activities. The data collection, analysis, and graphing are pretty amazing! I think that is something that we should look into a bit more at Punahou.
Now that I have the 'school' business out of the way for this blog entry, I can tell you that I went to the Minnesota High School State Cross Country Championships last Saturday at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota (45 minutes south of Minneapolis). It was a beautiful day (clear and in the 60s) for the meet that was expertly administered. The course for the runners was well set up with a huge starting line area, a figure eight course that was entirely roped off on both sides of the course, and some challenging hills (a short steep uphill 100 meters from the finish line). Nothing like hitting them with a hill when they are exhausted! There were four races, two boys and two girls (1A and 2A divisions), each with about 200 runners. Girls run 4000 meters and the boys 5000 meters. In Minnesota, surprisingly, they allow runners as early as 7th grade to run in the varsity division including in the state meet. All races were hotly contested with a 9th grader winning the girls 2A division race … very impressive runners!
I hope that this blog entry finds everyone in good spirits! Please keep the comments coming. I love the comments from everyone, but especially from my former students! Aloha!
On my last blog entry I described the events of the first two days of the NSTA (National Science Teachers Association) convention and promised to include the events of the third day on this entry. The third day (Sat. Oct 31st) of the convention was pretty uneventful. The convention only went until noon, so there were very few sessions available that morning. I guess the last day was only a half-day so that local teachers would have a least part of the weekend with family and that those who traveled would have a chance to get home. I attended two sessions:
1. Project Based Life Science as an Anchor in Developing Integrated Units – I was excited to attend this session as it seemed to be in line with part of my sabbatical goals … integrated curriculum. I was very disappointed as it was a 'talk at you' session with very little substance. I tried to pick out a few things from the session that I could share with others about integration: (1) If a school is struggling with getting teachers to integrate their curriculum, pull a teacher out of a classroom for a year to coach other teams to develop integrated units of study. The team I'm on tried this with the idea of integrating the concept of Global Warming. Although I remember it being interesting and fun, we had mixed success with the process and didn't fully follow through on the idea … mainly because of time; (2) Devote an extra team meeting each week (or perhaps devote one of the existing faculty meetings a month) to the topic of integration. As an 8th grade faculty, I remember us doing that a few times over the last couple of years; (3) When sharing curriculum in a team meeting, always look for commonalities. This is something, I think, that most, if not all the teams at Punahou do already. Seems to me there could have been a lot more to this session to help teams integrate … too bad☹.
2. Fun Experiments using Polymers– This session was a fun, hands-on session with a retired teacher with tons of experience that actually had very little to do with polymers. It seemed to center on fun things to do in the elementary science classroom. It demostrated fairly common activities like the Cartesian Diver, fun with sodium polyacrylate (a polymer) and it's ability to absorb water (200-300 times it's weight), and Dancing Raisins (she called it 'sewer lice'), etc.. This was fun, but I didn't really learn anything that I didn’t already know.
All-in-all, the NSTA convention was very worthwhile for me. I would encourage my middle school science colleagues to attend sometime in the near future.
Last Friday (11/6), Carolynn and I went to visit Breck School here in Minneapolis. Breck is a K-12 school with 1200 students (360 in their 5th – 8th middle school). They were founded by the Episcopal Church and have chapel once a week. They joke a bit about their Episcopalian roots saying that their student body is about 10% Episcopalian. Part of their mission is to emphasize to their students, "Who do you want to be?" rather than "Who are you?" Like most of the schools we are visiting, each grade level is equivalent to one of our teams (about 90 students). The core subjects at Breck include Math, Science, English, Social Studies, AND Foreign language (I'm sure our FL teachers will be glad to hear about that!). The languages offered include: Chinese, Spanish, and French, with hopes of offering Arabic in the future (sorry Monaco sensei … no Japanese☹). Their average class size is 17 students with the teachers teaching 5 out of the 6 periods in a typical day. The teams (grade level) meet weekly for an hour to identify 'red flag students' (those that need immediate help), celebrate the good things happening, and to develop their integrated units. Breck practices what one of the sessions at the NSTA convention suggested … devote regular team meeting time to curricular integration development. In addition, one of the faculty meetings each month is devoted to integrating the curriculum. What seemed most integrated at Breck is their advisory program. They have advisory four times a week for 30-minutes, two in the morning and two in the afternoon. It seems to be a fairly set advisory program so that students all have a common experience. Character education and community service are the main threads in the advisory. The community service component takes all students off-campus six times a year. They have a desire to link their advisory to their weekly chapels a bit more, so I recommended that they take a look at John Heidel and Marion Lyman-Mesereau's books on character education. I also shared with them the 'value of the month' (with a Hawaiian perspective) that helps to link our chapel program to other aspects of the curriculum at Punahou.
For my science colleagues, Breck's middle school science curriculum is as follows:
5th grade – Space and Earth as a system (not Earth Science) w/ Robotics
6th grade – Physical Science / Energy alternatives
7th grade – Life Science
8th grade – Earth Science (emphasis on mapping, tectonics, orienteering, and geocaching)
The science gateway course in their high school is physics (as opposed to Biology or Chemistry that most school have). Part of their 8th grade experience is to choose a professional paper (topic is their choice), translate it (into jargon that 8th graders can understand), create a podcast reporting on it, and present to a larger community of students and parents. The goal is to give them some "real science" and be able to read and understand a professional paper. This project seems to be one of their culminating science experiences in the 8th grade.
Breck has a course that all middle school students take every other day called 'Life Skills.' This course is a combination of Health, Physical Education, Religion and Project Adventure. Some of you may know that Project Adventure is a mostly outdoor curriculum that is base on challenge by choice that includes a ropes course.
Breck seems to support the students with learning differences very well. Among other things, they will assign a student (w/ a LD) to their learning specialist by pulling them out of a non-core subject.
As part of the 'Teaching Tolerance'' curriculum, Breck joins about 8000 schools across the country where students create a 'Mix it up Day.' Students from across the K-12 grade levels share a meal (typically lunch) with small group of students from all grade levels. They mix students up that don’t normally eat or hang out with each other. I noticed at Breck that the kindergarten classrooms are right next to the high school area … the elementary school rooms are in between the high school and middle school areas … very interesting!!
Last Monday (11/9), Carolynn and I visited Blake School, also here in Minneapolis. Blake has a very unique situation in that they have three campuses. One that houses the high school (downtown Minneapolis), one that houses half of their PreK - 5th grade (in a suburb), and the other houses the other half of the PreK – 5th grades and the 6-8 middle school (in a different suburb). It seems like a challenge for their head of school and their elementary administrators, but they seem to make it work well. They say they can draw students from a wider area than most schools. Their retention rate is very high with a good size portion of their student body staying at Blake for 14 years. Blake's middle school has a student body of 335 (102 in 6th, 107 in 7th, and 126 in 8th) and an average class size of 16 students. As with most schools that we are visiting, their grade level equates with one of our teams. Like Breck, Blake includes foreign language as a core class along with Math, Science, English, and Social Studies. Foreign language is taught as early as kindergarten, ascribing to research that suggests that an early acquisition of a second language enhances learning (in other areas) throughout their lives.
Blake's advisory program seems to be very centered on service learning (as opposed to community service). There are 11 students in each advisory that meets once a week for an hour. There doesn't seem to be a set advisory curriculum that everyone follows throughout the year but rather based on meeting the needs of their current students. They use the handbook: "Need a Hand with Advising? … Here's a Handbook" (created by Garrison Forest School in Owings Mill, Maryland) as resource for some of their activities. All of their advisory groups raise money and some distribute the money as a micro loan through KIVA. Along with that, each advisory group during the first semester creates a mini business that raises money for their advisory. This culminates in what they call 'Business Day' where each advisory creates a product that they advertise through an iMovie (Technology commercial) and print work advertisement (that gets placed on the wall of the hallways of the school). The 'Business Day' is when they sell their product to the rest of the student body. Products range from the simple bake sale to selling graphics to stuffed animals that they've created themselves.
Blake has what they call a 'Tutorial' for 30-minutes four times a week built into their schedule. This period is the second to last period of the day where students can get extra help with a teacher, free read, students with a learning difference check in with a learning specialist, study hall, work on group projects, etc.
Blake's science curriculum is a bit different than most schools that we've visited:
6th Grade - Astronomy / Human Body and Health (I thought an interesting combination)
7th grade - Physical Science and Earth Science
8th Grade – Chemistry and Environmental Science
They seem to use a lot of Vernier probes in their lab investigations. They seem to use the heart rate, pH, temp, air pressure probes the most in their activities. The data collection, analysis, and graphing are pretty amazing! I think that is something that we should look into a bit more at Punahou.
Now that I have the 'school' business out of the way for this blog entry, I can tell you that I went to the Minnesota High School State Cross Country Championships last Saturday at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota (45 minutes south of Minneapolis). It was a beautiful day (clear and in the 60s) for the meet that was expertly administered. The course for the runners was well set up with a huge starting line area, a figure eight course that was entirely roped off on both sides of the course, and some challenging hills (a short steep uphill 100 meters from the finish line). Nothing like hitting them with a hill when they are exhausted! There were four races, two boys and two girls (1A and 2A divisions), each with about 200 runners. Girls run 4000 meters and the boys 5000 meters. In Minnesota, surprisingly, they allow runners as early as 7th grade to run in the varsity division including in the state meet. All races were hotly contested with a 9th grader winning the girls 2A division race … very impressive runners!
I hope that this blog entry finds everyone in good spirits! Please keep the comments coming. I love the comments from everyone, but especially from my former students! Aloha!
Comments
Emily Jampel (unauthenticated)
Nov 18, 2009
Hi Again!
Did you see a lot of people dressed up on Halloween there? (Not at the convention, but just around the area?)
The NSTA convention, although you said it was very worthwhile, didn't sound so appealing...especially with the "no substance/talking at you" speech and the experiment that you didn't learn much from...you should have hosted it!
What did you mean by trying to integrate Global Warming in the curriculum? I thought we kind of did that in 7th grade, with Project Green...and we talked about it in class a few times in 8th grade, but more would be better. If we went into Global Warming as much we had for that Social Studies Project (The one where our group did Crystal Meth) I think we would have learned and actually remembered a lot more.
For Global Warming and Environmental stuff, it seems like the small activities we do in school (like this other one we did, where we calculate our impact/ waste footprint or something...) are not really impacting. Even though we write papers on it, it's maybe interesting or slightly impacting at the time, but not really moving enough to convince or motivate kids to actually try and be more sustainable (for more than a few days).
I think having some sort of project that teaches us to be more sustainable in our everyday lives would be so useful! (I guess it could be for like Social Studies or something) My family is trying to be a little sustainable...ish. (But not REALLY) It's the kind of thing where we drive 3 minutes to Safeway and then use our SUSTAINABLE grocery bags. I guess you could say it's a start....
In Bio, we're doing a Lab with fruit flies! Right now, we were given a male and a female fruit fly that we are going to try breed. I BELIEVE the lab is supposed to be about how different genes (ahem, alleles) are like passed down to the next generations...something like that. (I could be totally wrong...) This lab sounds fun, but handling live insects (especially such SMALL ones) is a little difficult to do...a few flies have already escaped.
Just out of curiosity...
Have you guys been to any movies on the trip yet? There is a new animated one out that I actually thought was really good: A Christmas Carol. It was unexpectedly scary though, (especially for a KID'S movie) since I was not familiar with the storyline.
Anyways, have fun! And Lynn says Hi.
Aloha!!
Jamps
Joanna Osorio (unauthenticated)
Nov 20, 2009
Enjoying the blog! I am interested in the NSTA workshop called Chemistry in the Atom. Any new way to teach the atom? I just finished my atom unit and I am starting the periodic table (I could prepare, if only I could just finish report cards). Wahoo! I am ahead in my curriculum compared to last year.
On a separate (baseball) note. The Minn. Twins will open up Target Field in 2010. What are your thoughts of outdoor baseball in Minnesota? Should I buy my tickets in April or wait until summer?