Wednesday, November 30, 2011

A-Hunting We Will Go...

.... Scavenger Hunting that is!
                                               

Teachers, you'll be playing the part of a detective and completing a Scavenger Hunt of Laurel Mountain's S.E.M. Blog.  More specifically, we will be looking at the different components of E-Time.  I think you'll find that this will be incredibly productive as we build our understanding of what E-Time is and what E-Time is NOT.  Also, you'll see some concrete examples of how Laurel Mountain classes are using their E-Time (with ideas that you can take-away)!

You're with your new E-Team, so let's get started!  First, open the following link that will guide you through our Scavenger Hunt:

E-Team Scavenger Hunt.

Then, use the following link (to the Laurel Mountain SEM blog) to help you discover the answers to the Scavenger Hunt questions:

 
Happy Hunting!
 
 

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Countdown to E-Time...

So we've updated our students' Renzulli Profile, now what?

If our E-Time (which begins January 6th) is truly designed around our students' interests and talents, our next step will be to analyze these profiles and search for commonalities.  Those commonalities will be the launch-pad for designing our E-Time sessions.

Teachers, as you review your class profiles, what commonalities do you see in:
  • students' interests?
  • students' learning styles?
  • students' expression styles?
By December 2nd, please respond to this post, and indicate what similarities/commonalities/themes you see among the students in your class.  When you respond to this post, please sign-in using your Coppell GMAIL account.

We look forward to discovering more about our students' talents and interests!

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Laying The Groundwork...

Yesterday's Professional Development session on SEM focused a lot on laying the foundation for what is 21st Century Learning.  What will be required of teachers to effectively reach 21st Century Learners?  How can we teach and prepare students for careers and fields that don't yet exist?  These are all questions we attempted to tackle.  Check out these two videos we referenced:
    Dan Brown's Open Letter to Educators
    Changing Education Paradigms by Sir Ken Robinson
    The videos above will certainly get you to thinking on the direction we're heading!
    We then spent a large amount of time discussing how S.E.M. can address the needs of 21st Century Learners.  S.E.M. provides students opportunities to explore learning based on their own interests and talents... What could be more compatible with 21st Century Learning?
    While it has taken us a bit of time to get S.E.M. "off the ground," we all agree that now is the time!  This will be an extremely laborious task and process (as we saw at Laurel Mountain Elementary), but we are ready to begin.  Check out our Journey to S.E.M. roadmap below.  It was part of the vision that was shared with the Austin faculty yesterday afternoon.
    Thoughts???

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Sallie Ride In Action...

Students in Mrs. Wettreich's 4th grade class are studying all the different careers in the field of Science.  Today, they did an activity from the Sally Ride training where you match different scientists "in action" with their title and field. 

Overheard while taking these photos... "I didn't know you could be a scientist and work in movies!"

Check out these photos...




Students will also reflect on how we view scientists and answer questions such as:
  • Who can be scientists?
  • What are characteristics of scientists?
  • Where do they work?
Students will then do a Google Image search of "Scientist."  What do you think they will find?  Will it be an accurate portrayal of real world scientists?