Welcome to the newest member of our class, Finnegan Leon Knoblock.
Finnegan had a leading role in Karen K.’s linear story “The Tail of 15 Fish” and now he lives here.
8 Dec
Flaws in Standardized Testing? NO!
Had a conversation this week about the difficulty in focusing on important concepts in lessons, specifically the idea that what might actually be important might not be what will be on that impending standardized test. A school board memeber in Florida took that state’s standardized test, and the results might not be particularly surprising, but I hope they are at least eye-opening…
“I have a wide circle of friends in various professions. Since taking the test, I’ve detailed its contents as best I can to many of them, particularly the math section, which does more than its share of shoving students in our system out of school and on to the street. Not a single one of them said that the math I described was necessary in their profession.”
You can read the rest of the article here.
8 Nov
Penguins and Batman!
Continuing with the same trend line project that brought us Nivlac…
I left the presentation end of this fairly wide open on this one. Students were invited to create PowerPoints, or type a report, or create a poster — whatever you felt was the best way to get your information across. Thus far, two have stood out.
Great job, Mackenzie and Ryan
It has googly eyes!
That would be pec size over time.
7 Nov
Nivlac
For the last week, students have been working on a trend line project in which they would find or create a set of data that was positively or negatively correlated, use Excel or a web all to create a scatterplot and trend line, and use the equation of the line to make predictions about the situation.
Again, I underestimated the creativity of these kids. I’ll upload some more next week, but I have to share this with you immediately. One student, Calvin, did his project on the growth of a octopus sponge in water over time…and he brought the octopus into class! Meet our new mascot: Nivlac!
Nivlac is Calvin backwards, by the way.
Update: he’s getting BIGGER!
Only four days later!
3 Nov
No Lie, Alligators Are Terrifying.
Look, I don’t know why this was drawn, or whether it’s an alligator or a crocodile…but either way, this exists.
Thanks, Ryan, for wondering what this scene would look like.
