Sarah Strong

February 6, 2008

HTH 216

A place for the 6 A’s in Sixth grade

For most students, sixth grade is the first year that they are exposed to the High Tech High learning environment. For sixth grade teachers, it is a difficult task to structure projects that makestudents feel comfortable and successful while allowing forfreedom to express creativity and connection to the adult-world. It seems that there is alwayssometriviality that seeps into projects as a result of this difficulty. Unfortunately, I oftensee facets of my project, that I designed to be authentic and rigorous, being diminished to contrived assignments that simply relay meaningless information. This is due to a lack of time and a lack of maturity on the part of the students. I frequently sit back in wonder at how a seemingly small task like typing up a project reflection can take an entire week to accomplish. This frustrates me because I feel like I am wasting the children’s time and that I am not doing my best to keep them thinking, working, and producing their best at all times.

So I come to a point of discontent. Do I continue to oversimplify the projects so I can make sure we complete all of the necessary steps? I have a few times taken this route and, as previously mentioned, it has left me feeling like I failed the students. So this time I have decided to try the opposite. Instead of moving the bar lower, I will push the limits and take it higher then I ever have in a sixth grade project. My partner and I have designed a project that has attempted to meet each of the six-A’s of project planning as discussed by Adria Steinberg, in her book, Real Learning, Real Work. The six A’s include authenticity, academic rigor, applied learning, active exploration, adult relationships, and assessment. In this project, it is my goal to meet each of the six A’s, making sure that I don’t sheepishly deem them “too hard for sixth grade.” We will create nothing less than an authentic, academically rigorous, applied, and active project where students are engaged regularly with adults outside the classroom and are assessed using a variety of methods.

Collaboration was key in the design of this project. In our planning phase, my teaching partner and I sat down and talked through the project, our perspectives on what would happen in each class, and how they tied together. As she talked, I interjected ideas and suggestions and she did the same with me. One thing I was struggling with was honing in on a meaningful product worthy of exhibition night and she helped me to brainstorm my ideas about a solid product. She was unclear on how our two ideas would tie together and, in talking about my ideas we were able to see the larger picture of global change vs. local change. Together we decided that the focus of the project would be the students not only conducting meaningful research on the topic of preservation, but taking this research outside of the classroom through various activities. This would happen through the production of art focusing on a National Park’s beauty with a silent auction of that art to raise money for an organization devoted to the main cause of their park. We also determined that in my class we would focus on the scientific ways that humans are destroying the earth and the ways that parks are working to protect the biodiversity. Her class would focus on the writing and filming of PSA’s outlining what students can do in their own community to make a difference.

The following pages provide a glance of the various project components:

Parks and Preservation Project: The Why and How of protecting Nature’s Beauty

Authors:
Sarah Strong and Melissa Daniels

Grade level, subjects:
6th grade math/science, humanities, and art

Essential questions:
”Why do humans need to protect the earth, in particular the National Parks, and how can we as sixth graders play a role in this?”

Duration:
8 weeks

Description:
In a study of preservation in the National Parks, students will work in groups of four to create an “informational trail marker” of the biodiversity in their park, a piece of art displaying their park’s beauty, and a PSA demonstrating one way to get involved in preservation on a local scale.

CA standards/domains:
6th grade earth science:

Ecology

  1. Organisms in ecosystems exchange energy and nutrients among themselves and with the environment. As a basis for understanding this concept:
  2. Students know energy entering ecosystems as sunlight is transferred by producers into chemical energy through photosynthesis and then from organism to organism through food webs.
  3. Students know matter is transferred over time from one organism to others in the food web and between organisms and the physical environment.
  4. Students know populations of organisms can be categorized by the functions they serve in an ecosystem.
  5. Students know different kinds of organisms may play similar ecological roles in similar biomes.
  6. Students know the number and types of organisms an ecosystem can support depends on the resources available and on abiotic factors, such as quantities of light and water, a range of temperatures, and soil composition.

Investigation and Experimentation

  1. Scientific progress is made by asking meaningful questions and conducting careful investigations. As a basis for understanding this concept and addressing the content in the other three strands, students should develop their own questions and perform investigations. Students will:
  1. Develop a hypothesis.
  2. Select and use appropriate tools and technology (including calculators, computers, balances, spring scales, microscopes, and binoculars) to perform tests, collect data, and display data.
  3. Construct appropriate graphs from data and develop qualitative statements about the relationships between variables.

6th grade Language Arts

Structural Features of Informational Materials

2.1 Identify the structural features of popular media (e.g., newspapers, magazines, online information) and use the features to obtain information.

Research and Technology
1.4 Use organizational features of electronic text (e.g., bulletin boards, databases, keyword searches, e-mail addresses) to locate information.

2.5 Deliver presentations on problems and solutions:

  1. Theorize on the causes and effects of each problem and establish connections between the defined problem and at least one solution.
  2. Offer persuasive evidence to validate the definition of the problem and the proposed solutions.

Overview/Learning Goals:

  1. Students will research one way that humans are destroying the earth (overpopulation, deforestation, pollution, etc.) and create a neat and informative “one-pager” including an overview, significant image, and three factual statistics to create a persuasive poster.
  2. Students will conduct meaningful research of a National Park of their choosing using personal interviews, student-selected literature, and the internet. Research will include learning about the park’s most famous attraction and how it was formed geologically.It will also include a look at the ecological diversity in the park including the ways that organisms in the ecosystems exchange energy and nutrients. Finally they will examine the struggles and successes that this park has faced in their attempts to preserve. This information will be presented on an informational “trail marker”to be used for presenting at exhibition night.
  3. Students will research a foundation that supports a cause that is crucial to their National Park. They will then produce a work of art using any type of media used in art class this past semester (graphic design, drawing, mosaics, prints) that depicts the beauty of their park. These pieces of art will be sold at a silent auction on exhibition night and the profits will go to the foundation of the group’s choosing.
  4. Students will create a Public Service Announcements using Moviemaker identifying one way that they can play a role in preservation in their everyday life. One group will be in charge of creating a special presentation to present to the HTM community about recycling and the way that this can be improved around our school.
  5. Students will attend all 4 of the field trips associated with this project: San Diego Ecocenter, Landfill/Recycle center, Imperial Beach Estuary, and CabrilloNational Monument. Students will also be attentive and thoughtful audience for each of our guest speakers who either work in parks, or ecological preservation.

After my partner and I finished laying out the tentative requirements of the project we decided to take our project through each of the 6 A’s of project planning to identify weak areas. This was a very useful process because we were able to pinpoint “adult relationships”and“assessments” as areas in need of some tuning! After making modifications to the project, here is a glance at how our project measures up:

Authenticity:

Most students have experienced human destruction around them. From trash on the ground in a beautiful park, to bottles and cans floating ashore at the beach, the students see the unattractiveness of this destruction. In the initial phase of the project, they will thoroughly research one aspect of destruction, hopefully generating deeper meaning to for the second phase of the project where we look at preservation. There are adults around the world that are working on problems like these on a regular basis and the students will get to see and hear from many of these adults throughout the project.

Academic Rigor:

The project directly promotes the acquisition of knowledge in all content areas, however it is particularly heavy in earth science, language arts, and art. It also requires higher order thinking skills as students, particularly in the phase one study of destruction, will have to sift through a lot of different perspectives. Finally, the research in itself will be particularly rigorous for the students as they are used to “wikipedia” and will now have to find many other methods for researching.

Applied Learning:

Students will, throughout the project, be developing self-management skills as each student will be given a job in which they will focus their efforts of the project. Students will also develop their teamwork, problem solving skills, and communication skills as they are required to communicate with professionals in a variety of settings.

Active Exploration:

Students will spend about 4 full days outside of the classroom on field trips and additional time in the classroom doing authentic research. They will also communicate what they are learning in a few ways through presentation at exhibition night, and through weekly check-ins with an adult mentor.

Adult Relationships:

Students will, on our field trips and in our guest speakers, observe adults with relevant expertise. They will work closely with one adult in the form of parent mentors who will come into the classroom once a week and check in with their project group.

Assessment: Students will, after meeting with their adult mentor, reflect weekly on what they have learned. They will also complete accountability charts documenting the work that they completed each day. As we progress in this project, the various components will be graded both with rubrics and finally in the form of an exhibition.

As we progress in the project, we will regularly reflect in journals and orally with one another about the progress of the 6 A’s in sixth grade. It is our hope that this project will lay the groundwork for us to continue to raise the bar on the projects our students work on. We hope to find ways to continually help our students feel comfortable in the new environment while experiencing rigorous and authentic projects.