Another Loved Lesson

This loved lesson comes form Ms. Johnson, assistant principal.

This week, I got an opportunity to be a guest judge in Mr. Tarrant’s 8th grade Civics class. In both Mr. Rooks’ and Mr. Tarrant’s classes, students were debating the topic of compulsory voting. Each student was assigned a side – either pro or con - and read through a couple of different sources in order to get arguments to support their assigned side. The debate was structured as a face-off with each student required to participate in either the opening argument or rebuttal. Each side lined up facing each other and the center served as a meeting point for whoever was speaking. Opening arguments and rebuttals centered around specific examples of data, the obligation of a citizen, protecting the integrity of our elections, the right to vote, uneducated votes, constitutional rights, etc…This was a great way for all students to engage in higher level thinking and questioning in a structured venue. I ended up siding with the “pros” as I felt they provided more specific details and examples, stronger rebuttals, and followed the debate format more consistently. Both sides were excellent, however. I would say this activity definitely forced students in three of the four C’s – communication, collaboration, and critical thinking. Great job, 8th grade students!

Election Season

It’s election season at Henley!  Today marked the kick-off of our 2013-2014 campaign for the Henley Student Council Association.  I always admire the students who take the initiative to run for office.  Not only do they have to spend time submitting an application and hours creating campaign posters and stickers, they all have to stand up in front of their classmates to give a speech about why they are the strongest candidate for office. 

The school was definitely abuzz this morning with posters going up and stickers being passed out.  The next four days will have students vying for their classmates votes and discussing their ideas for how they can make Henley a better place.  I’ve always believed that the students who choose to become involved in activities at school—be it SCA, an after-school sports program, or one of our many enrichment clubs—have a better overall middle school experience.  It’s also great to see just how many want to get involved.  While not everyone will walk away victorious at the end of the week, everyone who chose to participate will have grown as an individual and will be a better person because of the experience.  Good luck to everyone as campaign week continues!

A lesson I loved

I'm going to try as often as possible to highlight some of the great lessons Ms. Johnson, Mr. Critchfield and I see as we walk through our classrooms at Henley.  Here's the first one of the year:

When our staff worked together in preschool week I challenged everyone to think of ways to engage and excite our kids on the first day of school. I saw many teachers rising to this challenge as I visited classes that day, and wanted to point out a great lesson from Mary Beth Kooken and Kathy Verell’s seventh grade science class. Mary Beth and Kathy had their students building their critical thinking and communication skills with their opening day activity. Each student had a picture of an animal hung around their neck and positioned behind their back so that they could not see what it was. Their task was to develop questions that would help them identify what their animal was without ever seeing the picture. This is a really hard task (especially when you have an animal like a bearded dragon to try to identify) but one that the students really got excited about. I saw kids starting to develop deeper level questions that would help them to identify their animal and kids who were highly engaged with their activity. I know that all of those students walked out of class that day excited for what this year will bring. What a great start for our kids—way to go, Mary Beth and Kathy!