Time Flies

This has been a tremendous year of growth for us all in 9-1. I cannot believe how quickly the end of the year has arrived, and looking back over the year, I am amazing at the progress made by each member of our class, myself included. In history, we traveled from the caves of Africa to the tournaments fields of medieval times. We learned about meteorites, oysters, the Great Pyramid, and trebuchets, taking a small part of each home with us (a larger part, in the case of the trebuchet). The boys have become better writers, leaders, mathematicians, readers, builders, collaborators, historians, creators, athletes, problem-solvers, citizens, and friends. They have worked hard, made mistakes, reflected, and persevered with success. I could not be more proud of a group of young men, ones who will be strong leaders of the school next year in Tenth Age. I look forward to morning visits as they take the walk to their classrooms and updates on their summer adventures. This has been an incredibly special class, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have been a part of it all! Thank you for sharing this year with me.

I thought this video from the first day of school was a sweet reminder of how much we have grown throughout the year.

Feel free to watch any of the videos our vimeo site from this year, watching them certainly shows that time flies when you are having fun!

Music Class Composers

In music class, Mrs. Elliott had the students collaborate with one another to write and play their own music. Below is a video of one of the group's performance. Terrific job boys!

Harris Burdick Reading Class Project

We have spent the last two reading classes working on our Harris Burdick project. Harris Burdick is a mysterious illustrator/author who disappeared without a trace after passing along his illustrations, never returning with the matching stories as promised. For years students and famous authors alike have been writing stories based on the images. We read the introduction to "The Chronicles of Harris Burdick" together on Thursday, and will share our stories as well as read exerpts of famous authors' interpretations during our final class on Monday.
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More Information about Harris Burdick

Trebuchet Project

The boys have completed the next step of their trebuchet project. I was especially impressed by their eagerness to partner together to complete this step without needing assistance from me!

Witches Final Presentations

Our reading group was busy presenting and reviewing potions, jeopardy games, and virtual stories today in class. I decided to do "science fair" style presentations to give each student the chance to share his or her presentation for several classmates, but then walk around the room and hear/discuss the presentations of several other students. With the variety of presentations and different processes, I hoped that this would allow for more dialogue and interaction, instead of the more formal presentation that we have done in class previously.

Following the presentations, I asked for student feedback and was impressed, as always. A few of their suggestions will definitely be on the plan book (or at least the discussion board) for next year:

• Have two different presentation days so that everyone has the chance to walk around and see everyone's presentation.
• Have another option for a final presentation based on the main character's next adventure battling witches.
• Since storypatch (an iPad application) can only be used at school (the stories created are stored on the school's iPad), allow a student to bring in his smart device (BYOD) so that he can use it at home for homework as well if needed.

This was definitely one of my favorite reading projects of the year: student directed, student planned, student presented, and student reviewed. It seems that these students are really ready for Tenth Age!

Reading Final Projects

Two more Storyjumpers have been completed and are ready for presentations tomorrow!
The Grand High Witch's Life                                                                   The Grand High Witch

Building Begins

The students began their trebuchet projects yesterday, eagerly sanding their wood blocks and gluing down the first support post. This is one of my favorite projects of the year as it allows the boys to get a little dirty (mainly sawdust and wood glue) and physically create something.

So often children participate "once removed" from activities...Playing football on an Xbox, building on Mindcraft, playing music on Guitar Hero. My view of virtual activities is not a critical one, in fact their value is quite untapped at this point. However, we are seeing children that are less interested or able to create, build, problem-solve, and interact within a physical world simply because their access to it is decreasing.

The new concept trending now is the "return of the tinkerer," recently covered in the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, to encourage creativity. While the idea of children in basements once again taking apart televisions insteading of simply watching them (I may just have heard a collective gasp from my parents at the thought of losing their Hi-Def) makes me smile, I do think that there needs to be a balance. Within my classroom I do not think that virtual and physical creation should be an "either/or," as our students have the capabilities to integrate both worlds, given the opportunity. In fact, wouldn't this convergence be the foundation for creativity?