Gender Equity #worldslargestlesson

With the help of Emma Watson, and World's Largest Lesson, the 6th grade boys looked into Gender Equity issues for a few days in math class.  After learning a little bit about what the Global Goals are in advisory, the boys took a two day deep dive into Gender Equity.  The conversation was thoughtful and engaging and full of multiple perspectives.  I am always impressed with how much 12 year olds KNOW on one hand and how little they KNOW on the other.  This is going to be a fun year for sure:)

More engaging conversation into gender equity to come through the lens of poverty as we embrace micro finance and poverty in the days and months to come. Stay tuned! But for now, check out my lesson slides, World's Largest Lesson website and the results of our survey as seen in the graph below.  We also computed mean, median and modes and talking about statistical questions to be explored in our our future. 

Looking for Global Partners Early and Hard - We Have Empty Seats:)

With Global Collaboration Day here I decided to try and find some global collaborators for a project we have been doing in the garage for a few years.  How fun is it to write non-fiction word problems about where we live and share them with others?  

If you are a educators, please visit my collaborative slideshow. Consider adding a problem you create yourself that we may use in the classroom and then think about how you see this fit into your classroom.  I have learned not to come to the table fixated on the details of projects and have made changes along the way.

Don't like the media- Let's change it!

Want to add math talks with the problems? -Sure.

Math Mystery Skypes to launch? - In.

No time for anything crazy but see value in the basics- Works for me!

Feel free to take a look around my site to see other ways we can collaborate on global projects.  I am openminded and ready to work together.  

Celebration of Learning Kiva Kids 2016

Each year I continue to be amazed by what the boys accomplish at Town School for Boys in conjunction with Kiva.org.  This year, in addition to raising approximately $1665 in new funds (equating to 64 loans and a $65 donation), we also had the opportunity to team up with 2nd and 3rd graders to teach them a little about lending and microfinance too!  Additionally, the 6th grade Core math class participated in a unit of their own making approximately $400.  

The Annual Celebration of Learning is always a wonderful opportunity to have the students share with parents and other community members what they have learned.  We also had a special treat- Bumzy's Cookies!  (Kiva Zip Borrowers from SF) Feel free to check out our overview video and dive into some of the business presentations too.  More lending to come in 2016-2017.

RFL

(Sean, Mason & John)

 

Squeeze Inc

(Colin, Noah, Lucas & Kitt)

 

Squishy Squad

(Josh, Jack, Alesso & Ben)

 

Hacky Town

(Alfred, Harrison, Spencer & Charlie)

 

Putty Putty

(William, Gordon, & Alex)

 

Slap Bands +

(Benjamin, Charlie, & Jackson)

 

Little Changes in the Hope of Making A Big Difference

The 6th graders have been busy working on their Kiva Advertisement project.  While I haven't had an opportunity to post, it's not because we haven't been working.  As in years past, I introduced the project with the driving question, How can we create advertisements that encourage new and existing kiva lenders to make a loan in _(blank)__ geographic area? In addition to that driving question, and inspired alongside my own grad school work on research, I decided to concentrate on the following questions:

How can we be better consumers of statistical representations?

How can we be better creators of statistical representations?

My goal for the Kiva project this year, on top of getting my students to empower many lives across the globe, is take a look at the rubrics, grading process, research components and intentionality of everything we do.  The first stop on this "Year of Change" was to recruit the help of the library team in the hopes that we could create some common language, reinforce protocols for using sources, and discuss citations. We got this and a whole lot more.

Ms Stuart visited our classroom after the launch and provided examples of advertisements that were much more similar to what we were looking for then the examples I had been able to provide in the past.  While I had never heard of Ad Council, I certainly had a good time reminiscing about some of their famous commercials, "This is drugs, this is your brain on drugs, any questions?".  To learn more about Ad Council you can watch this quick video .  Ad Council fits right into what we are trying to accomplish in our project and I am so glad Ms. Stuart introduced us.

The boys were not only engaged in the examples provided but they were also very knowledgeable abut appropriate sources, creative commons and the libraries resources.  So, I pushed them on their way to discover a little bit about Kiva and the countries they decided to focus on.  At this point, they have all had short interviews with me where they presented the statistics they are going to use to convince others and are about to begin creating.  Commercials, Infographic Posters, Brochures and more... all coming your way soon from the GARAGE! Stay tuned, we are just getting started!