Last year we moved our Fine Arts courses away from traditional report cards and onto digital portfolios as the primary form of assessment. Moving 600 kids onto portfolio based-assessment was a massive undertaking for our Fine Arts teams, and they did a commendable job of embracing the possibilities of these digital tools. The Fine Arts… Continue reading What we've learned about Digital Portfolios
Last year our grade 8 math teachers held a math fair with their students, supported by the Galileo Educational Network. Students were introduced to a number of classic mathematical problems and brainteasers, and were allowed to choose what medium would best represent their solutions. The Galileo site has a number of resources on math fairs,… Continue reading Podcasting Mathematical Understanding
The 2010/2011 school year means the introduction of a number of new initiatives at the Calgary Science School. It is our plan to share these new programs in a series of posts over the next few weeks. Inquiry-based Learning is what we do Teacher Collaboration how we do it The first of these new initiatives… Continue reading A Deeper Focus on Teacher Collaboration
Over the last few weeks, our grade 8 students have been working on virtual Rube Goldberg Machines, using a physics simulator called Phun. The planning documents and rubric for the project can be found here. For the assessment of the work, the teachers really wanted to focus on the students’ understanding of the various simple… Continue reading Virtual Machines: Final Projects
Our grade 8 Science students are just starting on a project building digital Goldberg machines. To accomplish this, the students will be using an application called Phun, which is a free, 2D physics simulator. Phun allows students to digitally build and combine a variety of objects including gears, wheels, springs, etc and to control different… Continue reading Creating Virtual Machines
Yesterday two of our grade 9 Humanities classes had the opportunity to have a discussion with two classes of grade 8 students at Wayne Highland Middle School in Honesdale, PA. Using Skype, the students were able to ask other questions about the differences between the political systems in our two countries. Student on both ends… Continue reading Cross Border Skyping – Part 1 of Many?
One of our grade 4 teachers, Greg Neil, is presenting next week at the GEOEC conference in Canmore Alberta. Greg’s presentation is going to focus on the Galileo Inquiry Rubric, and then use a Grade 4 project he designed on endangered animals as a case study of inquiry in action. The purpose of the project… Continue reading Grade 4: Endangered Animals and their Habitats
One of our Physical Educadtion teachers (Tammy Berry) is delivering a presentation this weekend at the Annual Conference for the Health and Physical Education Council of Alberta. Tammy is delivering a one-hour session on her grade 4-6 football unit, in which she strives to incorporate both inquiry-based learning and technology. In the past, when Tammy… Continue reading Inquiry, Assessment and Technology in Phys Ed
One of the luxuries we have at the Science School is being within walking distance of a protected wetlands area called the Weaselhead Natural Environment Park. Being so close allows our teachers and students to make us of the park for recreation, as well as scientific and environmental education. One of our grade 5 teachers… Continue reading Grade 5: Science in the Wetlands
As described in previous posts, here and here, our grade 8’s have been working through a study of the Italian Renaissance, examining the conditions that existed, and then making comparisons with life in contemporary Calgary. In order to help bridge the gap between the Italian Renaissance and contemporary Calgary, we made use of a number… Continue reading Grade 8: Renaissance Debates
