Acquire, interpret, and present

In Health and Career Education students have been using Art Costa’s ‘Habits of Mind’ to help identify and use common language around expected behavior in their learning community. As described by Costa “Habits of Mind is knowing how to behave intelligently when you DON'T know the answer. It means having a disposition toward behaving intelligently when confronted with problems, the answers to which are not immediately known.” One of the habits of mind the class is focusing on is persisting. In this video, a young boy explains what he has learned about persistence and what it means to him.

This project was assigned at the end of patterning unit in mathematics:

You have been hired to create a new video about a math concept. Your video must contain a visual aid, like a poster, and a scripted dialogue that describes the necessary steps that you would use to solve your question. For this assignment you can work alone or in a group of two.

Students were provided with a rubric and a checklist to help them understand the assignment expectations. In the video, a student explains how to construct a table of values.

This student is presenting information to her classmates about something important to her: her pink stuffed pig. The class has been working on using their senses when presenting information. The student made connections to math and science: in math, the class was working on solids and she made connections to her learning (it can roll, it is round). In science, they were learning about what materials make up certain items; this student independently gave details about what her item was made of.

During their literacy time, this class was working on story telling, characters, and the beginning, middle and end of a story. They had read a variety of versions of Little Red Riding Hood that offered several different elements and endings. This student was able to independently take a variety of stories with the same title and incorporate them into his retelling. He shows strong oral language skills and is able to use a variety of language to add detail to his story.

During Daily 5 literacy activities, this young girl chose to make a list of the names of children in the classroom. She is supported by an adult.

The students were given one hour of free choice time, where they were free to choose any activity and change whenever they wanted. Five students sat on the classroom couch to read. Three students chose to share a book together (the early version of a “book club”) and two students chose to read independently. At the end of the clip one of the independent readers engages with one of the group of three to point out something in her book.

These two pictures show a student and his father presenting the father's career in the oyster business. The other students listened and then asked questions. The student was highly motivated and extremely proud to prepare and present because he chose the topic of their presentation, and it was personally important for him. The student's confidence was strengthened through the interest and encouraging support of his peers.