High School Educators Focus (9-12)
One Day Sessions
Session S.1.2: Making Thinking Visible in the Secondary Classroom
Tuesday, June 19
Location: South Fayette Intermediate School
Grades: 9-12 with opportunities 6-8
Facilitator: Tara Surloff, South Fayette High School Spanish Teacher
Description: Description: Visible thinking is a research-based approach to cultivate students’ thinking skills and dispositions, and deepen content learning across subject matters. As an example, we will explore the impact that visible thinking has made in a World Language classroom and help you find ways to transfer these routines to your curriculum area. By the end of our course, you will understand how thinking routines can be infused in the current curriculum to deepen student thinking, understanding, reflection, and engagement. Additionally, you will be able to describe how to use thinking routines, paired with slow/close looking, to engage students in the learning process. Join us to hear the perspective of a teacher who has transformed her teaching style by making thinking visible in the classroom.
Session S.1.3: Getting to Know Project Based Learning
Wednesday, June 27
Location: Consortium for Public Education
1100 Industry Rd.
McKeesport, PA 15132
Grades 6-12 (with opportunities for grades K-5)
Facilitators: Candice Murrell, Sarah Brooks, Aaron Altemus, The Consortium for Public Education
Description: The Consortium for Public Education is pleased to offer this interactive training session. The session is informed by the Buck Institute for Education’s Gold Standard PBL model. It is designed for both veterans and newcomers to PBL and allows participants to engage in a strong learning community of teachers from across the region. Training includes an overview of the Fundamentals of PBL including the Essential Elements of Project Design and PBL Teaching Practice. Participants will also have the opportunity to begin developing a plan for PBL implementation in the classroom.
Two Day Sessions
Session S.2.6 : Project Based Experiences through the lens of Sustainability
Monday, June 18- Tuesday, June 19
Location: Chatham University's Eden Hall Campus
6035 Ridge Rd
Gibsonia, PA 15044
Grades: 6-12 with opportunities K-5
Facilitator: Kelly Henderson, Chatham University
Pete Mathis, Environmental Charter School
Stephanie DeLuca, South Fayette School District
Description:
Topics in sustainability have great potential to help integrate across the disciplines while providing fodder for meaningful, student-driven projects in schools and communities. This workshop will introduce participants to mindsets and topics in sustainability, including: food systems and access, biodiversity, green buildings and schools, air quality, renewable energy, aquaponics, vertical gardening, community development, systems thinking and ecoliteracy. This two-day workshop will be spent at Chatham's Eden Hall Campus, where topics will be explored on-site through hands on design challenges. Participants will use a Project Based Learning framework to begin planning units that encourage students to take action in their schools and communities.
Session S.2.9: Building Student Voice Through Storytelling with Saturday Light Brigade
Monday, June 18- Tuesday, June 19
Location: South Fayette Intermediate School
Grades: 6-12
Facilitator: Larry Berger, The Saturday Light Brigade
Description: In this highly-immersive, hands-on multi-day session, teachers will use portable radio and audio equipment to learn about oral history collection and robust models for creation of high-quality radio documentaries using real-world techniques. Teachers can implement these radio projects into their classrooms or after school programs for a dynamic classroom approach that will sharpen students' 21st century workforce skills and support and strengthen the existing curriculum.
S.2.10 Using Video Games to Develop Career Readiness
Monday, June 25th
Location: Consortium for Public Education
Grades: 4-12
Description: Simcoach has created a "Skill Arcade" of free micro-games that combine game design techniques with proven learning principles which can be used to help youth learn about careers and develop skills. The Consortium for Public Education has partnered with Simcoach to develop game concepts as well as to provide training and support to educators interested in learning more about how best to integrate video games into their classroom instruction. Together, Simcoach and the Consortium will lead session participants through an exploration of the Skill Arcade as well as ways to incorporate these games across the curriculum to enhance teaching and learning for all students.
Four Day Sessions
Session S.4.1 Python
Monday, June 18- Thursday, June 21
Location: South Fayette Intermediate School
Grades 7-8 with opportunities 9-12
Facilitator: Dawn McCullough, SFSD Programming Teacher; Lynette Lortz, SFSD Technology Literacy Coordinator; Aileen Owens, SFSD Director of Technology and Innovation; and SFSD Student Team
Description: Experience learning a computer programming language in a new way. All eighth grade students at South Fayette are immersed in a simulation we created, with the help of the CMU Teknowledge team, based on the book The Martian. Students must learn Python programming language and then program robotic devices to complete challenges to be rescued from Mars. Along the way they must use their computational thinking skills to solve mathematical puzzles, engage in science questions, and use their writing skills to save their teammates from life-threatening circumstances. Who will survive? Will it be you?
Session S.4.2: Creative Entrepreneurship: Introduction to Lasers and 3D Prototyping
Monday, June 18- Thursday, June 21
Location: South Fayette Intermediate School
Grades: 9-12 with opportunities 6-8
Facilitator: Brian Garlick, SFSD High School Technology Education Teacher and AJ Mannarino, SFSD Middle School Technology Education Teacher
Description: Come see what the wonderful world of lasers and 3D printing can do to help enhance and expand design and prototyping capabilities. Explore and experience laser engraving, raster and vector files, and images, onto a wide variety of media and palettes. Design your own unique glassware and create an edge lit acrylic company sign and logo. Also, you will have the opportunity to learn several different drawing software programs, i.e. AutoCad, CorelDraw, Inventor and GrabCad Print.
Session S.4.3 CMU CS Academy Presents: Introduction to Programming in Python
Monday, June 18 – Thursday, June 21
Location: South Fayette Intermediate School
Grades: 9 – 12 (Used as 9th grade introduction to computer science)
Facilitators: Mark Stehlik, Assistant Dean for Outreach, Computer Science Department, Carnegie Mellon University
David Kosbie, Teaching Professor School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University
Description: We are thrilled to announce that we are hosting the CMU CS Academy for the first time at South Fayette!
Carnegie Mellon CS Academy has been piloting, this Spring, the first semester of a one-year introduction to programming and computer science in Python, designed for high school students with no pre-requisites other than algebra readiness. The curriculum is graphics-based and exercises are auto-graded, with an emphasis on fun and broad participation. This workshop will enable teachers with no prior programming experience to engage with and learn the curriculum in an immersive experience and leave prepared to deliver the curriculum back at their home schools as early as Fall 2018.
The curriculum is under active development and presently includes: Getting Started with Graphics; Functions & Conditionals; Events and Animation; Variables and Expressions; Objects and Properties; Images, Sounds, and Motion; Loops, Strings, and 1d Lists; and more. The course includes a large amount of creative tasks, as well as a large creative term project upon course completion. Warning: graphics are fun and addictive! You will enjoy yourself!
