Mike Allen's         Class of 2008/09                           Replies to messages

                                                                                                                                                                                   What's new?

                                                                                                                                                                                     Home page

                                            Teacher plans - the year in review                                                                          

                                                     Student Pages  Projects  Communicate  Favorites  Archive  Calendar  Homework  Photos

September:

The opening project is called 'Perfect World?'
We will ask the question:' what is a perfect world?'
The students will work in collaborative teams of four or five for this project.
Their challenge will be to create a future world they would like to live in. Fantasy aspects will be encouraged. They will design a specific wall space in the classroom with maps, drawings, and other artwork of their worlds. They will present their 'future worlds' to the whole group, and explain and show what makes them great. Perhaps there will be music, drama, Power-Points, etc.
We will talk and read about utopias and dystopias, and investigate emerging technologies through magazine articles.
This primarily relaxed and creative project takes just over two weeks.

Perfect World?

October:

Simple Machines?

The Simple Machines project is based around answering the question, 'Do simple machines confer an advantage in doing work?' We need to take one lesson to learn about the Simple Machines we didn't cover last week: the wedge, the pulley, the gear, and the screw.

Invention Challenge 1: The Ramp Run - build a wheeled device using K'Nex that rolls furthest from the top of a ramp.

Designs are entered into a Ramp Run Challenge competition. Students enter as many vehicles as they like into the competition. Design team-ups are encouraged.

We investigate: What are the main problems each design faces? Students generate testable hypotheses, conduct tests, improve designs.

In the final competition we award Gold, Silver, Bronze, as well as Most original, Most unlucky, and Most artistic awards

Space - the Infinite Frontier

This week the students will be working mostly in partnerships.

We will start our new project concerning 'Space'. We will start by constructing a list of all the questions the students want to answer about the subject, as well as list of what they already 'know'. Then the project begins...

• Survival on the moon - a NASA exercise for potential astronauts.

• Design a Space Home.

• Gravity - what it is, according to Einstein

• Design a Jovian and Pluvian.

• How did the Universe begin,? - theories, two pieces of evidence, and a conclusion.

• The students will also work together on developing their understanding of the Planets through a group project that will culminate in a 'Space Convention' for younger students and adults.

  The project currently has the following components:

  • 'The Universe', by Seymour Simon - research reading, searching for answers to topical questions.

  • Make a travel brochure for a selected Planet - this aspect of the project has specific details that need to be included, including research reading, summarizing, bullet pointing, as well as artistic design.

  • Make a robot explorer for a selected planet using Knex/ Lego.

  • Design a Space Home (Homework).

  • Write and record a 'Planet song'.

  Make a PowerPoint/drama about selected planets in preparation for the Space Convention.

Headlice Information

That's the news everyone. It's the sofas that did it!

The School Committee has announced that all sofas be removed from classrooms.

Both of the shame filled guilty sofas , the root cause of the thirteen class Brooks School Pandemic, have been removed from the building.

November:

Space Convention

Friday, November 7th

Wealth, guns, germs. and steel - a World History primer

Having established where the World's wealth is concentrated,  we begin our journey to understanding why this pattern exists.

Our journey to answer that question begins back through time, 20,000 years. We will try to understand what life must have been like at that time.

·        
The specific activities are:

·          
· Write short essays. The first asks, 'What would a typical day look like in 20,000bp?' The second asks, 'Would you rather be a farmer, or a nomad? Explain your choice.'
· 'Time travel' back to 20,000bp. Meet the citizens of 'the Village', find out more about them ...

·         · Create a drama comparing and contrasting the nomad and farmer lifestyles. Learn about the domestication of plants and animals.
· Find out about the emergence of farming in the near east. Make a poster showing the changes that the new lifestyle engendered.

·         · Find out about the critical importance of Ghengis Khan and the Mongol empire - design a talk show to explain the points that led to Europeans setting sail for the Conquest of the Americas!

·         · Find out about why Iraq and China dropped out of the fifteenth Century 'Race for the Riches'.

Here are the links for the support data for this project:

Poverty and wealth data - GDP information for all the countries of the World.

Cajamarca, Peru,1532 - the European Invasion begins!

December:

Explorers?:

This week and next the students will be working in partnerships towards whole class goals.

The subject is, 'The Explorers'.

The project has the following components:

·         Scene setting - reading, taking notes using the nested notes strategy. This will be a whole class lesson.

·         T/O maps - looking at Medieval maps and designing the students own versions based on them.

·         Read and research about specific explorers answering focus questions.

·         Prepare a presentation and handout about the selected explorer for the other students, including PowerPoint display. Design the work into a format for the website.

Droobworld

January:

We will be watching the historic Presidential Inauguration on Tuesday morning and discussing the future!

Rocks, minerals, and fossils

We start this science unit this week with a series of tests of twelve mineral samples in an attempt to identify them by using their properties, and a key.

The students read about minerals. They focus on diamonds, quartz, and iron and steel.

The students answer questions about minerals from their reading; 'What are the tests used to distinguish minerals?', and 'How is iron made into steel?'

We will be reading about iron and steel, then about metamorphic rocks. Finally, we will be reading about the structure of the Earth, about how rocks bend and break, and a more involved section on the formation of fossils. We will finish our visit to the UCMP ( University of California Museum of Paleontology) website for the tour of geologic time and the classic cheesy animations on how fossils form and how we date rocks and fossils.

February:

Writing Workshop - 2009 - home

·         Invention Challenge 2: Egg drop Challenge- build a contraption to protect a cute little egg when evil Mr. Allen chucks it off the roof of the school!! (Rules apply to this challenge restricting the nature of the device.)

·         Invention Challenge 3: Wind Vehicle Challenge - build a device that rolls furthest using only the power of the wind. Secondly, design a  vehicle to be crashed into another vehicle. Which vehicle is the last vehicle standing?

DARE Graduation

New England Percussion Ensemble - special event.

March:

This week is the Recording Studio project.
We will write and record original music to be published on this site.

We still may attempt covers of some of the great songs we have learnt.
The nature of the project involves a 'multi-station' approach to the week. The students are organized into groups of three or four. Each group will spend roughly forty five minutes at each station, then rotate to the next one:

Station 1: Recording studio - work with me to record a musical piece.

Station 2: Prep. for Studio - finalize/create lyrics, rehearse any instrumental performances, agree on roles for the upcoming piece, observe the studio in action, encourage the team currently recording.

Station 3: Writing Workshop - continue to write, edit, and prepare work for web publication at the end of the week. Complete a writing exercise called 'Small Moments' concentrating on stories from our own lives.

Station 4: Science - read and make notes about Sound. Make an instrument - design and make an instrument we can record as part of the project.

 
Station 5: Math  - see below.
·
Station 6: American Indians Project - read and research a Native American group. Make a 'secret room' book about the selected group. See below.

 

Thin Ice

Native Americans

This week the students will continue working in groups towards whole class goals.

The subject is 'Native Americans'. Each group will be allocated a region to research: North East (Iroquois, Ojibwa), Pacific North West (Puget Sound), South East (Seminole, Cherokee), South West (Anasazi, Pueblo, Hopi, Apache, Navajo), and Plains (Sioux, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Comanche).

The project has the following components:

Read and research about specific Native American cultures answering focus questions.

Each student needs to make a six page book called a 'Secret Room' book, with one page for each topic selected from the list above.

Each book will be judged using a four point rubric, focusing on: Effort, Quality, Creativity, Detail, and Accuracy.

The Colonies and the American Revolution

This is a three to four week plan for the next Social Studies unit, the American Revolution. There are three main parts:

Causes of the War

The War itself

The Meaning of the War

This week, we will continue to try to immerse ourselves in the language, dress, and style of the times. Students will be encouraged to come to school dressed in Colonial era fashions, and to use Colonial era language throughout the project.

Tavern's Home Page - 2009

Language MCAS tests  - week of  March 30th - April 3rd

April:

SHELTER PROJECT 2009

Field Trip to Sturbridge Village

We're going for a lovely day out to Sturbridge village as a culminating activity for our Social Studies work.

When: Thursday, April 9th

Field Trip: Guided Walking tour of Boston

When: Friday, April 17th

Project : Life on Earth

This is a three or four week plan. It is broken into these primary areas:

Moral and ethical issues concerning life on Earth- to what extent do other animals feel what we do? How should animals and plants be treated? What rights do they have? What rights should they have?

The Mechanics of life - How does D.N.A. work? What are cells? What are genes?

The Organization of life - What are the habitats of the Earth? How are creatures adapted to their environments? What are the relationships between living things in these habitats?