Los Angeles Unified School District

Panorama High School

Department of VAPA

Department Meeting Minutes

Tuesday 10/15/2013

1:40 – 3:01

Room B 105

California Standards for the Teaching Profession:
6.1 Establishing professional goals and engaging in continuous and purposeful professional growth and development.

VAPA Department Minutes

1.  Tomorrow is the PSAT. Dean Rose passed out summonses.

2.  Each of us talked about what kind of lessons that involve students writing.

3.  Ms. Arlington said her kids are writing down their own questions and answers for each of the five categories that they have created from the information from the dairy section.

4.  E ach member of the group suggested for Yakerson to allow students to bring in and get excited about writing down their own thoughts as to why their favorite artists are writing about what they are hearing on their iPods by using their own favorite music.

5.  Have students write down what it takes to produce a song and why posture should be important in vocal music singing. Have students listen to recordings and write down what they think they are hearing for example Mussorgsky’s” Night on Bald Mountain”. What is this story about?

6.  Mr. Burch has an assignment about writing about types of guitars, and listening to a piece of music like “On the Trail” from the “Grand Canyon Suite”. Do they think that the music portrays the dusty trail and what types of instruments are being used as a higher level of thinking.

7.  Mr. Castillo says that mostly at the beginning of the semester the kids have to write about the impact of the computers on society. The students are given names of programs and they have to find out what are the requirements for the program to work properly in the computer. They talk about safety and OSHA. They need to do writing about scenarios that if a company needs a certain product how would they come up with a final product that a company needs such as a case study. How are computers being used in industry today and how do they affect the jobs. Kids create power points. They have to integrate everything they learn in a final practical project using computer language skills.

8.  Rosenfeld is creating writing assignments using a drawing assignment where the kids are doing a self portrait without a self image. They choose items that are important to them, and then they draw a still life and write down why and how these objects are important in their lives. They have to evaluate how successful they were in capturing the essence of the objects that they were trying to portray.