Independent Project Reflections

 Now that you're done presenting your projects, share and reflect on your experience.  Include the following:

• Make sure you've submitted your project on Canvas.
  
• Now reflect on Canvas.  Briefly describe your project, both your topic and the format in which you presented. 
• What do/did you like most about your project?  Explain. 
• Were you prepared to present on the due date?  Did you use your time wisely in class?  Explain your work ethic during the project work time.
  
• If you could do the whole thing over again, what would you change and/or improve?  Why?
• How does your project meet each letter of our Class Mission Statement?
• We Grow by challenging ourselves and each other.
• We Overcome our limits and failures.
• We Advance our thinking and our expectations.
• We Learn today to improve tomorrow.
  
• If you have any genuine suggestions for Mrs. Edlin about how to improve this assignment or how to make this project more meaningful to future students.
  

 

Submit your reflection.  When you finish, you may visit any link under Idleness Prevention Society at the left-hand side of this blog.

 

 

 

 

Mock Trial Reflection

6th grade GOAL students:

Answer the following questions in paragraph form on your Canvas reflection assignment.  Look over your work, and be thorough.  You do not have to copy the questions, but you need to set your paragraphs up so anyone reading your blog will know what the question was (TASTE method).

1. What jobs have you had in Mock Trial?  What has been good about them?  What has been challenging about them?  Explain.
2. Do you think you'd ever be interested in a career in the field of Law?  Why or why not?
3. What questions do you still have about how our Legal system works?
4. Watch the following TED talk.  Start at 5:30.  After watching the TED talk, reflect on what it made you think about concerning the topics of injustice, fairness, punishment, and equality.  Write a comment on this blog post including some of your thoughts.

Book Trailers

 Look at these examples of student-created book trailers.

Be thinking of a trailer you'd like to produce to get kids interested in reading a book you love! 

A few rules:

• Less than 2 minutes!
• No more than 10 slides!
• Try for 10 words or less per slide!
• Use iMovie, Google Slides, Powtoon, Adobe Spark, Animoto, or any other format you're familiar with or want to learn!
  

Shark Tank Project Reflections

picture from Wikipedia
 

Reflect on your Shark Tank Projects.  In a new blog post, complete the following tasks and answer the following questions in paragraph form.

• Upload your pitch visual to your blog.  It might be the picture of your poster or your actual slideshow.
• Explain your pitch.
• How did you come up with your idea?
• What was the best part of your project?
• What would you improve if you had more time?
• What did you learn about problem solving from the Computer Science Discoveries unit?
• What did you learn about computers from the Computer Science Discoveries unit?
• Describe your experience of actually pitching your idea to the Sharks.
  
• Besides your own project, which one in your class was your favorite?  Why? 

When you're done, publish your post.  Copy the url and paste it to the assignment submission on Canvas to be graded.  

 Read posts from your classmates and comment on at least two others.

Deep Thinking Friday: 9/30/20: Amazing Insects

 

 

What do you notice?  What do you observe?  What do you wonder?

Deep Thinking Friday: Quarantine Edition 5/1/20

What do you observe?  What do you notice?  What do you wonder?

Deep Thinking Friday: Quarantine Edition, 4/17/20

This video comes from a student recommendation... thanks for sending it, T.H.!  It is indeed mind-blowing!  And, even though we're facing some big challenges right now, this video reminds me that I'm glad to call earth home.  Although, two shadows would be pretty cool.  ;) 

Book Talks from 4/10/20

I've linked all the books that were talked about on Friday in our Zoom session, in case you're interested in reading them sometime.

The Last Boy and Girl in the World

Anne of Green Gables

Adrift

Series of Unfortunate Events (this is linked to book 1... I think there are 13 total?)

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Heroes of Olympus (also a series... this link takes you to book 1)

Percy Jackson (another Rick Riordan series... this link takes you to book 1)

Refugee

The Sand Warrior

Darth Vader and Friends

Bravelands (also a series... this is linked to book 1)

Tucket's Travels (this book has 5 Tucket books in one publication)

Deep Thinking Friday: Quarantine Edition 4/10/20

I'm hope to see some of you online today for our Virtual Book Talks and DTF time (see your e-mail for the link), but if you can't come to that, or if you need a little more Deep Thinking Friday, here you go!

Deep Thinking Friday: Quarantine Edition 3/27/20

In case anyone is checking the blog, below are some things to explore for this Deep Thinking Friday.  It's hard to think that the last day we were together was Friday the 13th when our topic was Coronavirus.  It seems like a lifetime ago!  Be well.  Keep reading and thinking and learning.

What do you notice?  What do you observe?  What do you wonder?

Japanese Chef's Meal Journal

Space Shuttle Thermal Tiles

The Crusher

Balcony Marathon

Tallest Outdoor Elevator in the World

3-D Trick Art

Fingal's Cave (I saw basalt columns like this in Iceland last summer... very cool!)

Comments are welcome, of course!  What cool things are you finding while you're home?  Share with us all!

Deep Thinking Friday

Let's talk Coronavirus!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tarahaelle/2020/03/13/why-everything-is-closing-for-coronavirus-its-called-flattening-the-curve/#2bc741396e2b

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/11/politics/read-trump-coronavirus-address/index.html

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2020/03/03/coronavirus-schools-closing-online-florida-washington-california/4928377002/

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/11/coronavirus-global-panic/

https://grownandflown.com/finest-hour-covid-19/

Coding

Let's work on some coding!

 You may use any of the following options:

https://code.org/ (drag and drop/block coding... this is the beginner level for those who haven't tried coding before)

https://scratch.mit.edu/ (more block coding... this site lets you use your imagination to create more than to solve puzzles like on code.org)

https://www.madewithcode.com/ (several coding activities... I don't know much about this one... maybe you could become our expert on this site!)

https://www.codeschool.com/learn (this is where you can learn different computer programming languages like HTML, JavaScript, and iOS)

https://www.khanacademy.org/computing (a variety of computer programming experiences in the Khan Academy course platform)

https://www.codecademy.com/ (another site to learn different coding languages)

Look through the sites and find an area that interests you.  Decide what you will learn in the next few weeks.   Create an account for yourself using your school e-mail and password, and start learning!

I Hate Shakespeare Links

Attention, cast & crew of I Hate Shakespeare!:

The following links will help you understand some of the big stories in our play.  Watch, learn, and enjoy!

MacBeth
Why Should you Read MacBeth? 
MacBeth CliffsNotes

Othello
Othello Cliffsnotes 
Othello Summary by Schmoop

Hamlet
Why You Should Read Hamlet
Crash Course w/ John Green: Hamlet, Part 1
Crash Course w/ John Green: Hamlet, Part 2

Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet Cliffsnotes
Romeo and Juliet Summary
Romeo and Juliet Visually Explained

William Shakespeare
Shakespeare in a Nutshell
Shakespeare's Top 10 Deaths
Comedies, Romances, and Shakespeare's Heroines
Shakespeare's Tragedies and an Acting Lesson
Shakespearean Insults

King Lear
Your teacher on stage... eek!

Deep Thinking Friday, 2/6/20

ddkdoijd

What do you observe? What do you notice? What do you wonder?  What does this TED talk say about classical music?  about any music?  about reading?  about learning?  about people?  about leadership?  about life?

Deep Thinking Friday 1/16/20

Find your community of learners.

Who can you teach today?

Independent Project Reflection

Independent Project Reflections

Now that you're done presenting your projects, write a blog post sharing and reflecting on your experience.  Answer each section as its own paragraph, in complete sentences.  Remember, we want your posts to make sense to people who look at them without knowing what questions you're answering.  Include the following:

• Embed your project into your blog.
• Briefly describe your project, both your topic and the format in which you presented. 
• What do/did you like most about your project?  Explain. 
• What was the hardest part of this project, and why?
• How did you improve as a learner or as a student during the process of this project?  Explain.
• If you could do the whole thing over again, what would you change and/or improve?  Why?
• If you have any genuine suggestions for Mrs. Edlin about how to improve this assignment or how to make this project more meaningful to future students, please include them at the end.

Publish your blog post, and after you publish, please comment on the posts of at least three other people.

When you finish, you may visit any link under Idleness Prevention Society at the left-hand side of this blog.

Rubik's Cube Reflections

5th grade GOAL:

Now that you've had some time to ponder your experience with Rubik's Cubes, start a new blog post and reflect on the following questions:

1. What was the hardest part of solving Rubik's cubes?  Explain.
2. How did you feel when you finally solved the cube?  Describe.
3. What are the life lessons that people can learn from Rubik's cubes?
4. What advice do you have for other kids trying to solve Rubik's cubes?
5. What advice do you have for other kids trying to do hard things? 

After you've published your post, comment on the posts of your classmates.