December 2nd:

Students finished up their study of spiders as artists this week! They practiced synthesizing their understanding of spiders and artists by learning about and creating concrete poems about the two subjects. They practiced brainstorming, planning, and executing their plans and really stretched the conventional way of thinking about spiders, artists, and poetry. They finished the day with some more deep thinking when they learned about the Claim-Evidence-Reasoning format for making an argument. This method is used by high school, college, and professional scientists to ensure claims they make are substantiated by evidence and reasoning. They used the CER format to substantiate their claims to answer the questions "Are spiders artists?" and "Are spider webs art?" Both their concrete poems and CERs can be found on their Book Creator Portfolios. Especially because it is the end of a quarter, I highly recommend having your student walk you through their GATE work in their portfolios that they have done so far this year. The portfolio is meant to work in lieu of a report card, and with a heavy emphasis on self-reflection.

December 9:

Today was one of my favorite sorts of days in the classroom! It was an engineering day where the students worked through the engineering design process to create marble roller coasters. They worked in groups of two, though a few ambitious groups teamed up to make a super coaster!!! The students got really well acquainted with the process and the best part was how much they got to practice failing and trying again. At the end of the day, one student came up to me and said, "Even though our roller coaster never really fully worked how we planned for it to, I'm still really proud of the hard work we did and that we didn't give up." That's what I'm talking about!

If you'd like to check out any photos from my Thanksgiving trip to Panama, you can find them on the site home page.