The Countdown Is On!

Invitations have been sent. Promotional Posters have been created and are ready to go up. Challenges are receiving their final touches. It's hard to believe the End is Nigh! 

Today, students worked harder than I have seen them work before. I pumped some inspirational Friday afternoon Songza Jams and they busily worked on adding details, pictures, and other final touches to their Challenges. I am starting to feel less nervous about the final results and definitely more excited! I am so incredibly PROUD of each student and what they have accomplished over the past 5 months. 

Next week I will be opening my classroom each lunch hour for the "mad dash" to the finish line... Our Challenge Trade Fair on Monday, January 25th. Also next week, we will be using our class to present our Challenges to each other in a safe environment. We have all bonded and supported each other over the past two terms, so it will be nice to present our Challenges to each other first. 

Here are some pics from today's class: 

10 days to go!!! 

Presentation Success!

Yesterday's class was such a hit! My good friend Anne Harvey came in to present information on the Abundant Community Neighborhood Project that she is heading in Edmonton. She was an enthusiastic presenter who really had the kids engaged from the moment she started speaking. 

Before introducing her, I reminded the students of the quickly approaching deadline for project completion. Our January 25th Challenge Trade Fair is just around the corner and we have a lot of work yet to do, including advertising. Next week I will be sitting with each student to assess what help they need to ensure they are ready for the Trade Fair! 

I also took a few minutes to go over the presentation rubric that we created before Christmas. This rubric includes the 3 important elements of presentation we chose to focus on, including Voice, Contact with the Audience, and Subject Knowledge. I let the students know that they would be using this rubric to "grade" Anne's presentation and then will add 3 presentation goals for when they showcase their Challenges at the Trade Fair. 

The project that Anne is heading is incredible! One of its focuses is to create "Block Connectors" in as many of the 200 neighborhoods in Edmonton, who take on an active role to help citizens within the neighborhood interact with each other. Nowadays, in many communities, people have very little interaction with each other. They pull into their garage, shut the door, without much interaction with even the people living directly beside them. Anne's project aims to create a real sense of community, based on interaction, sharing of human assets (skills like helping shovel, community clean up), and enhancing the sense of both pride and safety within one's cul-de-sac or street.  

Anne quickly got the ALC students talking about the communities they live in, the interaction they and their parents have with neighbors, and the skills that their families bring to the community. She had the students working with various partners, interviewing each other and then collecting all answers written on sticky notes, and adding them to poster paper for discussion afterwards. Circulating around, the students seemed to be really engaged and interested in what they were discussing. 

Anne and I were discussing her presentation afterwards and the topic of human assets came up. In her project, the Block Connectors ask each neighbor what skills or assets they can add to the community. Perhaps they are very outdoorsy and would like to help maintain the skating rink and toboggan hill or maybe their kids are of babysitting age. Whatever skill they are able to bring to the neighborhood is greatly appreciated! We realized that the students in my ALC option are doing the very same thing within their project - they have chosen an "asset" or skill that they have passion about and are completing their Challenge on it.... Wow! What a connection to make! 

Overall, this class was a huge success! I am so happy I decided to have an expert presenter come in to show students what a GREAT presentation looks like. Next class we will take time to reflect on Anne's presentation and use what we learned to help guide our upcoming presentation practice! 

Enjoy the pics below! 

Merry Christmas from ALC!!!

The best way to spread Christmas Cheer, is singing loud for all to hear! 

We had fun in ALC today, singing along to the Best Christmas Songs of ALL Time (courtesy of Songza!), crunching candy-canes, and working hard on the final stage of our Fabrication Phase. With 6 classes to go after Christmas, we are working hard, checking things off our ALC to do list! 

We did take about 20 minutes of the first block to discuss what a good presentation looks like. With Anne Harvey coming for our first class back in January, we wanted to be sure we were prepared to really focus on her presentation. We came up with 3 categories of presentation skills and decided on a 4 point rubric to grade both Anne, and our classmates when we complete our trial "Challenge Fair" on January 15th. I began working on developing the Rubric based on what the students came up with during our discussion and will post it as soon as it is done! 

Here is the rubric... We will be using it to score Anne's presentation and then making any adjustments that are needed afterwards. 

In the meantime, Merry Christmas from ELJHS' ALC Option!!! 

Wow! It's Fabrication Day.... 13!

It's hard to believe that we are on Day 13 of Fabrication! The finish line is quickly approaching and there is still so much to do. At the beginning of today's class, we spoke about our timelines and just how much time we have left.... 7 classes to be exact! But of those 7 classes, 1 is a special presentation, another is the Challenge Trade Fair, and the last one is going to be a celebration of our success! Eesh... This is going to fly by fast! 

Students are busy working on various stages of the Challenges. Some are very close to completion, while others are a bit behind. Some students have admitted that they will need to do some work over the Christmas break in order to get caught up. Pretty typical of junior high students, wouldn't you agree! I just hope everyone is ready to go for the January 25th Challenge Fair! 

A student working on composing an original, Baroque inspired, song. 

Here are some important things coming up that I am pretty excited about: 

Wednesday, December 16th - we will be working as a group to discuss what a good presentation looks like. I want to discuss things like presence, tone, word choice, posture, etc. We will create a rubric as a class to score presentations based on what we discuss in class. *This rubric will be used to grade each other's Challenges before the actual Fair! 

Thursday, January 7th - we will have a special guest coming in! My close friend, Anne Harvey, is a project manager with the Abundant Community Initiative (ACI) and a Community Recreation Coordinator (CRC), both within The City of Edmonton. She has done some amazing work bringing neighborhoods closer together and supporting them in their efforts to build a stronger sense of connection. Anne will be presenting a talk for my ALC students, one that she often uses at conferences and for University classes. We will be using the rubric we created to assess Anne's presentation for content, but also her general presentation skills as an experienced presenter. Exciting stuff!! 

Friday, January 15th - we will present our Challenges in small groups, using our rubric to grade each other and offer feedback. Students will then use this information to improve their Challenge and prepare themselves for the upcoming Challenge Trade Fair. 

Monday, January 25th - Our Challenge Trade Fair!!! Students will be set up in the library from 1:00-4:00pm to finally showcase their hard work! We will be inviting other classes, staff, and parents to come check out our Challenges! 

Again, I can't believe how quickly the time has gone by! Looking forward to seeing all of my student's hard work come to fruition in just over a month's time :) 

A Tale of 4 Cupcakes... Yummy!

Much to my surprise, and an absolute bonus on a Monday morning, one of my students brought me in 4 cupcakes she had made over the weekend for me to sample. Talk about a yummy Challenge! One was quickly eaten up by my coworker and I sampled a delicious chocolate one with my afternoon coffee. I am so impressed at how hard the majority of my students are working, especially those continuing to work outside of the class setting.

Another one of my students just returned from a trip to Japan. Jet lagged and adjusting to the quickly falling snow, we sat and chatted about his trip. It was really cool to hear about his experiences, from riding The Bullet Train to eating squid and octopus sushi. I am looking forward to learning more about his adventures as he completes his Challenge on his experiences in Japan... and eating the Kit Kat bars and other goodies  he brought back and shared with me!

I continued pulling students aside to work on midpoint evaluations. I think the students are really benefiting from having a candid conversation with me about their Challenges and are reassured that they are on the right track to Challenge completion. Adding my personalized comments on PowerSchool allows the parents to be updated on student progress as well! 

Good things continue to happen in my ALC option and I couldn't be happier or more PROUD! 

Check out this student's notes from learning Korean on their own!! 

Midpoint Evaluations Have Begun!

Now that Term 1 has officially ended, I have started to sit with each individual student to go over their progress to date. We discussed their Challenge Proposal, their Budget/Resources, their Logbook and what actual elements of their Challenge have been completed. I decided to call upon students randomly so that I could get a real indication of their progress with out them being too prepared ;) 

While completing the evaluations, students continued to work on Challenge completion. One student was styling another's hair, as the model completed a drawing for her portfolio. Talk about multi-tasking and using their time wisely! Another student immediately had his headphones in to continue learning Korean as a second language. Many poster boards have begun to show up for use as Challenge displays and it is great to see the Challenges taking shape. 

One thing that has been on my mind is the assessment portion for this complimentary course. Each complementary course factors in to be about 2.5% of the grade 9's final grade, but how can I assign a "grade" to something that is so unique? Each student is working hard to produce a different Challenge of interest to them. There are no exemplars; there is no curve to mark them on. I had asked my principal if it was okay to write a personalized comment for each student for Term 1 without a grade and we agreed that it would work for Term 1. But what about the end of the course, when Term 2 marks are due? Coincidentally as I wrote this, a colleague came in and I asked him what he thought about assessing these kids and their Challenges.... Self-assessment was his immediate response. Could we, as a class, come up with the criteria to mark the Challenges using "I" statements taken directly from the CTF curriculum? Could we assign our newly instituted "Not Yet Met, Beginning, Progressing, and Proficient" as the grading scale upon which each "I" statement is graded? Hmmm.... Interesting idea; one that I will explore on our PD Day November 27th!  

Fabrication Day 6!

I am incredibly impressed by many of the things my students have accomplished in just 2 months. Projects are really taking shape and you can really see how much fun the students are having completing projects of their own choice. 

Today, the focus was on making sure our Logbooks are kept up to date. Many students are stuck writing down just a simple sentence about what they did during class, where I would like them to stretch and really explain not only their accomplishments for the day, but the thought process that went along with it. We went through some of the guiding questions that I put on the Logbook assignment sheet from September to refresh our memories. 

We are getting close to the Term 1 report card, and I have come to the conclusion that all I will provide for them at this point is feedback, both verbal and written, as at this point formative assessment is what is really going to give them an understanding of how well they have been working on their challenge. Starting November 19th, I will be completing midterm evaluations with each student, going through their timelines, logbooks, and project completion to date :)