Socratic Seminar: A Game of Catch

This week we completed our first Socratic Seminar. We used the text A Game of Catch to reinforce the habit of buttressing claims with evidence from text. In this case, students had to build their case and answer the questions, Why did Scho fall from the tree?

Our Socratic Seminar followed the structure listed at www.ProjectTahoe.org (here) in which 100% of the talking and arguing is done by the students.

Our DeskCycle is Immediately Put to Use

It didn’t take long for students to start using the DeskCycle. In fact, all of our 15 minute slots were immediately taken after I posted time sign-ups on our whiteboard. Great that the kids are excited to move and great that they are opting into exercise. Most are reporting burning over a 100 calories in their short turns on the cycle.

 

A Visit from the Sierra Watercolor Society

We were very fortunate in having the Sierra Watercolor Society visit our classroom and share their expertise with us. We engaged in careful observation of how watercolors work, learned more about the medium of watercolors and were instructed on specific techniques to take full advantage of the watercolor palette we worked with.

The finished product will serve as a terrific holiday gift. Moreover, there was no cost to the students or Roy Gomm. Instead, the four volunteers shared all the necessary supplies and a lot of their time.

Reinforcing STEM Concepts

Today we continued to work with the ideas of concentration, dilution and volume. To help with this, we created an experiment in which students manipulated solutions to determine the effects on volume and mass. Ultimately, this experiment not only built greater understanding with the Next Generation Science Standards but also proved a terrific introduction to volume.