Wildcat Weekly
January 14, 2019
Happy Monday Wildcats!
I have been reviewing our activities for the past few years. We have been preparing students with a wide variety of skills which is great for kids though creating these experiences has made our jobs more and more challenging. One of the areas I am very interested in and believe could use some stretching is that of exhibition.
A New Focus on Exhibition
With incorporation of our Open House and Exhibition NIghts, as well as our STEAM Nights we have worked to make our students' work more public. This in itself has helped create a culture of deeper learning in giving students a greater motivation and has helped communicate the kinds of skills we teach through the projects students are doing. Our kids are proud of their work and feel good about showing it off.
The next challenge is to increase student involvement in exhibition through explaining and demonstrating learned skills and explaining intended outcomes and probably most important providing reflection on their learning process. Our kids are comfortable within our classrooms, with our students and staff and now the hope is to have them exhibit in slightly different venues.
Though we have had a handful of experiences created over the past few years that have involved a larger community exhibition as described above, getting community members in to serve as an audience has proven difficult . We have a few things coming up in the next couple weeks in hopes that we might learn new ways to involve students in stretching their learning.
On Tuesday we will have our first STEAM Night of the year. Our Student Ambassadors (we just made this up, but the kids are really excited about it!) will become the experts demonstrating their learning as well as leading participants through STEAM activities. This will be challenging for our kids, but believe they are capable of doing amazing things! Next week our 8th grade social studies students will be running a History Expo for the 5th graders in which they will run stations sharing their learning. Also next week, we will have our first Student Stop Motion Film Festival held at our local Dallas Cinema. All this has taken a lot of work and appreciate everybody's extra efforts. I am sure we will learn from these experiences which will help guide activities in the future.
Have a great week Wildcats. Glad you're here!
Coming Up On Our Calendar
This Week
1/15 - STEAM Night 6 - 8 PM
1/16 - Fire Drill 2:35
1/18 - Wildcat Pride Activity and No Tardy Party - afternoon assembly schedule
Next Week
1/21 - No school MLK Day
1/24 - 7th grade STEAM Film Festival, 4:30 at Dallas Cinema
1/24 - 8th grade History Expo
1/25 - No students - District grading day
Coming Up In PLC
January PLC Schedule
1/14 - Content Area PLC - 6th grade DESSA training
1/21 - No School MLK Day
1/28 - No Kids Planning Day