Martians landed last week at HMS!

Last week Martian’s landed in Leslie Tanner and Dana Stokes’ sixth grade science class. As an introductory lesson to some of the work the will be doing around the 4C’s in their project-based learning Design 2015 curriculum, Leslie and Dana challenged students to communicate with the Martians using nothing but symbols. The students were divided into groups and given forty five minutes to come up with a symbol based message that would welcome the visitors, explain what a school does and what students do while in attendance. Students used the portable white boards, their table tops and the idea paint wall to develop their speeches and then completed a gallery walk at the end of the lesson to determine which speech would be used to greet the aliens. It was so fun to see the students working on this project. They loved the novelty of writing on non-traditional surfaces, and they really got hooked into this activity. They had to work together, think in different ways, and tap into their creative juices to develop a way to send a simple message to someone who has no comprehension of our language or customs. The kids were totally engaged, and Leslie and Dana used this activity to develop some baseline measures of their students proficiency in each of the four C’s. Kids were buzzing about it at lunch and I heard form some parents who told me the kids were raving at home as well. This is a great example of helping students to develop the competencies that they will need for the world of work and college. Great job, Leslie and Dana!