October Recap

Systems: This month our CSI focus has been on questioning and eye witness accounts.  Students participated in various activities geared toward understanding quality questions in interrogation, the often unreliable nature of eyewitness testimony, and the power of close observation. Students witnessed a theft in our own classroom and used what we learned about composite sketches to make a drawing of the perpetrator. We then looked at some online activities testing their powers of observation and helping them match the suspect with the crime.  Try them for yourself!

Art of Crime Detection

Perp Walk

Face Memory

We also used our time to do research into forensic science and the order of events when a crime scene is processed.  Students learned about Locard's Principle that criminals always take a trace of something with them and leave a trace of something behind at a crime scene. They also learned about collecting that evidence and how it gets from the crime scene to the courtroom.

Critical and Creative Thinking: This month students practiced reasoning strategies by using clues to complete matrix logic puzzles.  They used the given information to make one and two step deductions in order to find or eliminate matches between the puzzle categories.  These were a good test of growth mindset and a class favorite!

Habits of Mind: Our main Habit of Mind focus has been on Managing Impulsivity.  We read the book Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein and discussed it as a non-example of managing impulsivity, thinking before acting, and using your brain to manage your body.  Students then created their our Interrupting ___________ stories and presented them to the class.  I'll tell you, we have quite the creative crew!

We have also been practicing flexible thinking with our morning Morphic Thinking exercises and Persisting with Set puzzle and Mastermind challenges.

September in Review

A big THANK YOU to Ms. Lytle for getting things going this year and making the first month of ALERT a success! Here are some highlights of what students were working on in September.

Systems: Students were introduced to this year's theme of Systems and became familiar with system parts and how these parts interact. (Input, Output, Boundary, Elements)  They used these terms and concepts to identify and label systems they come in contact with everyday and to create a list of generalizations that can be made about systems.

• Systems have parts that work together to create a whole.
• Systems interact.
• Parts of systems are interdependant and rely upon one another.
• A system may be influenced by another system.

We are highlighting our study of systems by looking at forensics and crime scene investigation. Students began their study by looking at fingerprint evidence and handwriting analysis.

Critical Thinking: Using the Children's Guide to Critical Thinking, the three types of thinkers were introduced.  Students learned about Selfish Sam, Naive Nancy, and Fair-minded Fran.  Using these characters as a conversation starter, we began to look at the importance of being a critical thinker, and traits that critical thinkers have.        

Creative Thinking: Students have gotten familiar with our mascots of creativity, the Nerds!  We use these particular mascots because no two are alike, they are colorful, fruity, and fun- just like creative thinking! Students  explored our creative side by discussing and demonstrating the four keys to creative thinking.  We began by taking a simple figure, looking at it from various perspectives (flexible thinking), brainstorming what it could become (fluency of ideas), choosing the idea like no one else's (originality), and filling in the details of our picture (elaboration)! These creative pieces became the covers of our ALERT binders reminding us to "think outside the box"!

Habits of Mind:  Art Costa's Habits of Mind represent 16 traits that successful people can use when faced with a problem.  Throughout the year, we will be focusing on building these individual traits in students.  As an introduction, students looked at the habits collectively and became familiar with them playing our Habits of Mind matching game.

Morphic Thinking: We kicked off our Morphic Thinking morning routine where students warm-up with a spontaneous problem and boundary breaker.  We will be including these weekly. A spontaneous problem is a brainstorming type problem to be solved in a specific amount of time and scored according to the number and creativity of responses generated.  The point is to challenge students to be flexible thinkers, to elaborate on original ideas and to think fluently and creatively about a specific topic. A boundary breaker is a group experience which works toward creating a sense of community.  Students gain an awareness of and respect for the opinion of others by the use of questions that go beyond superficial depth and have no right/wrong answers.

M^3 (Mentoring Mathematical Minds) Digging for Data: We had our commencing Digging for Data math lessons and students looked at both their rights and obligations as we embark.  This math curriculum focuses heavily on discussion, defense of one's thinking, and writing about concepts.  Students were introduced to the term rate and collected data based on their rate of completing some chosen activities. They used this data to ponder the question "what is typical?"