Leveraging proportions

So one of the young men who solved my library "earth-sun proportion" question and pridefully brought me a print-out of his classroom solution last week, turned up today with four pages of calculations for distances and diameters for all the planets; given three different starting sizes for model suns! Yes!

Parting shot

With only minutes remaining before the loan of our 3D printer ended, we made a last print (Xbox buttons!). We had already packed up the spools, and only had a 8-foot length of miscellaneous filament left. Here it is spiraling away along with the seconds! Thanks again to our BOCES SLS and the SCRLC for providing this great opportunity for our students. It was a blast!

Close Text Reading Support

In response to my renewed invitation at last week's faculty meeting, I have enjoyed locating and analyzing resources this week from teachers' queries about hydraulic fracturing, adaption of the peppered moth, the mills at Lowell Massachusetts, and the Erie Canal. I set up some stacks (see links in this post) for ease of sharing and updating. This collaboration is the result of a presentation about Close Text Reading procedures we need to be adopting and the service that I can provide in locating and analyzing resources, as well as drafting questions of rigor for the readings. I am excited about the prospects for myself, our teachers and outr students.

Shhh! It's the basketball team.

ACS Creates

Over the past ten weeks, eleven of my 7th graders have been working to craft an engaging script and learning how to tell that story on film...as a group. It has been a process of discovery, compromise, ingenuity, patience, adaptation, attention to detail, and skills development. The film that follows is like the diploma we pass out in June; meaningful in proportion to the growth and understanding that stands behind it.

Quiet on the set. Action!

NYS Librarian: it takes the whole community

I enjoyed the opportunity to meet the NYS Librarian, Bernard Margolis, at the NYSHA Library this week. I liked his challenge to us to engage the entire community, not just the school community, in working to meet our grade-level reading goals. His expectation of us that we are indispensable and entirely capable of pulling together this kind of collaboration was worth the trip to C-town.