Headline Poems
Students wrote found poems using magazine headlines.
Our Latest Genius Hour on a Beautiful Spring Day
Here’s what we worked on during our latest Genius Hour.
Global Learners
Thanks to all those who answered our three geography surveys about “What do you call it?” The surveys have been taken over 250 times. A special thanks to our friends in the student blogging challenge who took the surveys for us. We will report back our learnings as soon as we figure out how to!
March Genius Hour Reports
We’ve had a busy spring. Because of snow days, Easter break, and TSA, we’ve not had genius hour for three weeks. We’ll be back at it this week.
Here are our March updates:
Cool Shot Basketball – Cooper Brian Dustin
Hula Hoop Rugs – Jade Kaylee Anna
Ripping Phone Books – Thomas and Lucas
Stop Motion with Race Cars – Deven and Joey
Sounds 0f the Planets – Jared
Dodge cars – Jason
Writing another novel – Anna
Cross-stitching with love – Lauren
Teaching Piano – Atze
Rainbow Cake – Kennedy Sierra MaKenna
Stop Motion Animation Mini Farm – Jordan Mason David
Sewing slippers – John
Let’s Scale-Up Genius Hour
Angela Maiers has inspired me lately. She does that quite often. Now it’s about scaling up Genius Hour. It’s taking “You are a genius, and the world needs your contribution” to a new level.
LOVE 4U to share/be involved w/Quest2Matter buff.ly/Y17FLj @mcdclassroom @mrsdkrebs @kirrclass @mrszvisclass#geniushour scaled!
— Angela Maiers (@AngelaMaiers) April 8, 2013
You can read more at the link above and at Choose2Matter.org, and be sure to read the You Matter Manifesto.
Do you believe it? Yes, I hope you do!
Here are some questions to ask yourself as you plan your next Genius Hour project:
What matters to you? What breaks your heart about it?
What matters to God? What breaks God’s heart?
Consider issues like pollution, endangered animals, slavery, drug abuse, suicide, global climate change, poverty, disease, illiteracy, injustice, intolerance, abortion, bullying, what else?
What are you going to do about it?
How can you join God in working to solve that problem?
Are you willing to suffer for it?
Can you build grit, determination, perseverance, stick-to-it-iveness during your Genius Hour project?
I want you to consider some of these questions
for your next Genius Hour!
We have already had good examples of this kind of genius at work. Like when Jade and Kaylee made many scarves and then sold them at the benefit for Laurel.
The world needs your genius!
Philip Gans, World War II Concentration Camp Survivor
We recently heard Philip Gans speak about his life during WW II, including surviving hard labor in Auschwitz III labor camp for 17 months.
At the end of the 1.5 hour talk, he left us with three DON’Ts:
- Don’t give up hope.
- Don’t hate.
- Don’t be a bystander.
Here are students’ reflections (Click on a name): David John Sierra MaKenna Kennedy Mason Jordan Anna Atze Cooper Jade Deven Paige Lauren Kaylee Madi Lucas Brian Joey Dustin Thomas.
Kids and Grown-ups Working Together to Change the World
The 45th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., was yesterday. Let’s keep working together to make his dream come true!
Poetry Brackets
Students this week perused PoetryFoundation.org. Each one found a great poem. We then randomly chose brackets and pitted the poems against each other. The only criteria was that the person liked it and it is a GREAT poem.
Now we want to see what you think!
Which poem do you think is great in each of the matchups?
KrebsClass Sweet Sixteen Poetry chosen by 8th graders
KrebsClass Elite Eight Poetry chosen by 7th graders
Here’s a little tutorial if you’ve never voted on Bracketeers:
Geography Surveys
Will you please help us understand how geographic and human characteristics create culture and define regions?
What?
Wait, it’s not as bad as it sounds. We mostly want to know what you call some of these common items. Please take one or more of our surveys. Thank you!
Images are from the iClipart for Iowa schools subscription service.
