Greek Interdisciplinary Unit

As a model teacher,  I wanted to encourage our JH teachers to participate in an Interdisciplinary unit.  We used these with great success when we were a MS.  Interdisciplinary units help to keep the students engaged as well as to see how the content works together and is not isolated.
On Friday, Feb. 16th, the 7th graders took part in our culminating activities for our Greek Unit (just in time for the olympics!).  In 7th grade math we used our ratio and proportion skills to make Math Proportion gods.  This took the students nearly a week to perform the task.  On Friday, the classmates voted on the best Math god to determine gold, silver and bronze places.  To be honest, all of the Math gods turned out great as the 7th graders worked really hard on them an followed the directions carefully.  
In Science, the students learned about  the Greek Scientist Archimedes Principle (Buoyancy). The students then had 15 minutes to design a tin foil boat that would float with the goal to design a boat that would hold the most weight.  Places were found for gold, silver, and bronze!  The winning boat held over 400 grams.
In English, the students worked for over 1 week on learning about Greek theatre style of comedies and tragedies.   They then wrote and produced their own modern-day versions of these plays.  On Friday, some of these play were shared.
Finally,   the students participated in a couple of “Olympic Events” where they were doing physical activities to compete as teams and also as individuals.

My perception is the students learned a lot and enjoyed participating in the lessons which lead to our culminating afternoon of work.  One student stated, “That was great! We should do something like that every month.”  Student engagement, enthusiasm, and learning!  Isn't it great?!!?!?!

Playing the game.
Teachers dressed in togas.
Winners of the math proportion god contest.
Winners of the boat contest.
Testing out the boats!

Andrea

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ESSA - A brief summary of Every Student Succeeds Act (please note...I am NOT an expert, this is just my personal summary of my day of learning.)

Yesterday I attended a session put on by the Department of Education.  It was a day of learning about the replacement to No Child Left Behind. This new act focuses on continuous improvement instead of accountability.  No longer should districts feel the “shame and blame” of the old SINA/DINA legislation. This new program for school improvement is called the “Every Student Succeeds Act”, referred to as “ESSA”   ESSA gives districts a score in several areas such as proficiency, growth as well as learning environment. Each category is weighed and students are measured against like peers. Schools that are below the 43.9 cut-off are marked “Targeted” or “Comprehensive”   Our elementary was given the “Targeted” status.  We are above the state average in proficiency in both reading and math (Reading 75.81 and Math 85.48) however, one our subcategories was not high enough.  Our low socioeconomic subcategory did not show the necessary growth. Our low socioeconomic rate in reading was 3
Read more

Incorporation of Song in a Math Classroom

Rise/Run, that’s how you can find the slope of a line.  The 7th graders have been studying this concept and other concepts related to linear relationships.   Several students were struggling to remember some of the essentials. So, I added “song” into my classroom.  Trying something like this for me was a first. I have to be honest, when I thought it up, I thought only a few of the kids would like it and the rest would hate it. I anticipated bad attitudes. What did I get instead?  Excited 7th graders! I told them they could use any school appropriate song and they had to write their own words to match the assignment.  They had to incorporate one of 2 main concepts and I challenged them to add more for additional points. If they did not want to sing, they had the option of doing a chant/cheer.  I let them have all sorts of choice on this assignment---the size of their groups, the people in their groups, song vs cheer, and concept(s) covered (from my list). How would I summari
Read more

Welcome!

Image
Welcome to the Gladbrook-Reinbeck's TLC Blog!  The TLC leaders at Gladbrook-Reinbeck will be posting about the exciting changes happening in the district.  We are building the capacity of teachers and preparing students for their futures.  We hope you enjoy the GR TLC Blog!
Read more