11.26 - Poetry Out Loud

We started today's class with a follow up piece of writing from yesterday's status check in with project teams. This writing focused on what, individually, people had done so far. In identifying tasks, everyone was asked to be specific about what they had done (how much time they took, how often the task was performed, what specifically completing the task involved).

Everyone then had the opportunity to hand in their ELI5: Belongingness work and letter to Rufus Wainwright regarding his version of the song "One Many Guy."

Next, we started working with Poetry Out Loud. I read the poem I am going to memorize ("To a Mouse") to the class. We then reviewed the guidelines and practice tips for Poetry Out Loud.

Everyone then had the rest of the period to read poems and identify poems they may be interested in reading. The approach for reading poetry today was to be a lot like looking at a restaurant at a menu where you review a lot of the items and keep in mind what sounds best before making a final decision.

The Poetry Out Loud poem finder page is a great resource in looking for poems.


Homework:

Read through a variety of poems for Poetry Out Loud and find a poem that you would like to memorize and recite (choose a poem you want to explore and would like to work more with).

Complete missing work and revise any assignment that scored below a 92.

 

Keep up to date on your grades through Pinnacle:
In school: 192.168.8.7/Pinnacle/PIV
Outside of school: http://pinweb.lisbonschoolsme.org/pinnacle/piv

11.25 - Project Team Check In

We had a shortened class today due to the Student of the Quarter assembly. When we did meet, project teams met to discuss current and planned work. We then had a class meeting in which project teams shared out the work that they were currently working on and what their next steps would be. This provided us with the opportunity to address questions that groups had about their work and to re-establish a sense of what we were all doing together.


Homework:

Respond to the Wainwright and Belongingness by Anita Hugg (rubric available here)

If you did not do so in class, finish your Explain Like I'm Five summary of your section of the belongingness paper.



If you would like to look at any of the sections that people presented on today to help strengthen your response to Ms. Hugg's letter or to clarify your understandings of any sections, extra copies are available:

Belongingness abstract
Introduction to Belongingness
Overview of the conceptual background (reviews the 8 criteria for beloningness as a fundamental human motivation)

1 - Forming Social Bonds / Operating in a wide variety of settings
2 - Emotion
3 - Cognition
4 - Deprivation / Partial Deprivation
5 - Satiation and Substitution
6 - Universality
7 - Non-derivativeness
8 - Applicability

11.22 - ELI5 Share Out & Anita Hugg Letter

For class today, everyone had the a few minutes to meet with their partner(s) and prepare their share out for their Explain Like I'm Five summary of their section of the belongingness paper.

I then introduced the assignment which we will use to bring all of these pieces together in an everyday sort of discussion. This was in the form of a letter response to a woman (Anita Hugg) who is concerned about her friend (Rufus Wainwright) because he has released a song in which he claims to be a "One Man Guy." The assignment requires writers to fulfill Ms. Hugg's request of writing to Wainwright to explain the various effects that being a "one man guy" may have on him and what sorts of behaviors are and are not healthy. In class, we listened to the song "One Man Guy" and read the letter prompts so that everyone could have this in mind while hearing the summaries of the different sections of the paper.

The prompt and rubric for this assignment are available here:
Wainwright and Belongingness - Prompt
Wainwright and Belongingness - Rubric (also includes ELI5 response rubric)

Next, all of the groups shared out explaining what their section talked about, reviewing examples given by Baumeister and Leary, and providing examples that relate to high school students today.

While listening, everyone took notes on these elements using the note sheet from the ELI5: Belongingness hand out.

At the end of class we listened to the song, "One Man Guy" (included below) once more to help people review their notes and thinking about how to start responding to Ms. Hugg's request.



Homework:

Respond to the Wainwright and Belongingness by Anita Hugg (rubric available here)

If you did not do so in class, finish your Explain Like I'm Five summary of your section of the belongingness paper.



If you would like to look at any of the sections that people presented on today to help strengthen your response to Ms. Hugg's letter or to clarify your understandings of any sections, extra copies are available:

Belongingness abstract
Introduction to Belongingness
Overview of the conceptual background (reviews the 8 criteria for beloningness as a fundamental human motivation)

1 - Forming Social Bonds / Operating in a wide variety of settings
2 - Emotion
3 - Cognition
4 - Deprivation / Partial Deprivation
5 - Satiation and Substitution
6 - Universality
7 - Non-derivativeness
8 - Applicability

11.21 - ELI5: Belongingness

For class today, everyone had the period to work on their Explain Like I'm Five summary of their section of the Baumeister and Leary paper (ELI5 Summary sheet).

Extra copies of the sections are available below:

1 - Forming Social Bonds / Operating in a wide variety of settings
2 - Emotion
3 - Cognition
4 - Deprivation / Partial Deprivation
5 - Satiation and Substitution
6 - Universality
7 - Non-derivativeness
8 - Applicability

Homework:

If you did not do so in class, finish your Explain Like I'm Five summary of your section of the belongingness paper.

11.20 - Explain Like I'm 5: Belongingness as a Fundamental Human Motivation

In class today we were looking at specific sections of Baumeister and Leary's argument for belongingness as a fundamental human motivation. To begin this process we were looking at the qualities of a good summary. To inform this discussion, we looked at the sub-reddit "Explain Like I'm Five" from the internet message/posting board Reddit.

In class we talked about how we were looking at responses to questions on Explain Like I'm Five (ELI5) not for their factual accuracy (since this is highly questionable), but for their qualities as good summaries. Summary and not (necessarily) facts are the hallmark of ELI5 where people ask complex questions and get a solid summarial answer in response.

Background information and a sampling of ELI5 questions and responses are available in the
ELI5 background document.

Everyone recorded their responses to what makes a good summary a good summary on the
ELI5: Belongingness document.

We reviewed everyone's responses to what makes an effective summary in class and then everyone worked with their partner(s) to read a section of the Baumeister and Leary paper. We will be writing an ELI5 explanation of these sections and sharing them with the class tomorrow.


Homework:

If you did not finish reading and taking notes on your section of the Baumeister and Leary paper in class, do so for homework (see Mr. Collins if you need an extra copy of this sheet).

Work associated with your project as appropriate.

Update your project team's task schedule and contact log as appropriate.

Complete missing work and revise any assignment that scored below a 92.

 

Keep up to date on your grades through Pinnacle:
In school: 192.168.8.7/Pinnacle/PIV
Outside of school: http://pinweb.lisbonschoolsme.org/pinnacle/piv

11.19 - Belongingness Conceptual Background

At the beginning of class today, project teams had 15 minutes to meet and attend to business related to their projects.

We then used the rest of the class to review the conceptual background for Baumeister and Leary's argument for belongingness as a fundamental human motivation (if you need a copy of this reading, see Mr. Collins).

The categories as we identified them were as follows:

(click image to enlarge)

Everyone took notes on how Baumeister and Leary defined these elements as we discussed them in class. We will look at specific sections of this paper tomorrow.

Homework:

If you did not do so in class, finish identifying the specifics of the eight criteria outlined by Baumeister and Leary to establish belongingness as a fundamental human motivation.

Work associated with your project as appropriate.

Update your project team's task schedule and contact log as appropriate. 

11.18 - Beloningness Conceptual Background

We started today's class with an assessment review of the 2013 Lisbon bond order assignment (see below). In this we looked at trends in what people were doing well and which points seemed to trip people up in completing this assignment. Everyone then had time to make revisions to their responses or to complete their response and turn it in if they had not done so already. People who had not yet turned this assignment in were asked to review and make any necessary changes based on today's feedback.

(click image to enlarge)

We then returned to working with Baumeister and Leary's article on belongingness. We reviewed the selected vocabulary that the class identified last class as a way of reviewing key ideas for the reading. Next, people shared out their 1-2 sentence summaries for the first page of the text.

We then read the second column of text and people individually summarized the information covered in this section. We talked about the significance of transition words to key in on where big ideas are being addressed or summarized in the text. 

Our next piece of work with this article will be to read and summarize the individual points that Baumeister and Leary have identified as helping to prove that a need for belongingness is a fundamental human motivation. These points are outlined in the conceptual background section of the article. We are tracking these points with the conceptual background sheet and will continue working with this tomorrow.

At the end of class, project teams had time to meet and discuss their recent work.

Homework:

If you did not do so in class, finish reading the first two pages (up to the conceptual background section) of Baumeister and Leary's belongingness paper.

Work associated with your project as appropriate.

Update your project team's task schedule and contact log as appropriate. 

11.15 - Need and Belongingness Vocabulary

Today we began working with the article on Need and Belongingness that will be our model article for academic papers. To become more familiar with this article we reviewed the purpose and set up of abstracts of papers and then took a look at the abstract for this paper.

In looking at this abstract, everyone was identifying and defining significant words used in the abstract to better prepare for reading and digesting information in the article.

Once everyone had finished reviewing significant vocabulary from the abstract we reviewed and discussed the various terms that people had selected. See Mr. Collins if you need a copy of this article.

Next, I read the first page of the article and, after listening to this, everyone summarized what they felt this page was about in 1 to 2 sentences at the bottom of the page.


Homework:

If you did not finish with your identification of significant words/terms from the article abstract, do so for homework.

If you did not finish writing your 1-2 sentence summary of the first page of the article, do so for homework.

Work associated with your project as appropriate.

Update your project team's task schedule and contact log as appropriate.

11.14 - Belonging

Today we started work on our research projects associated with the projects that project teams are working on. The idea of these research projects will be to identify and explain why there is a need for the project and how the activities of the project benefit society. In their project teams everyone drafted questions in response to the following:

What questions would someone need answered in order to understand why your project team’s work is good?

To model possible questions in response to this prompt, I reviewed a list of brainstormed project questions for one of the projects we did not end up committing to (creating an animal shelter for Lisbon).

Animal Shelter
What services do animal shelters provide.

Why are homeless pets a problem?

How much of a problem is domestic animal homelessness a problem in this area?

To what degree do animal shelters help problems associated with homeless pets.

What are the benefits to having pets (when people get them from shelters)?

After creating their brainstormed lists, teams shared out their questions and we discussed these as a class to refine and improve the questions.

For the next part of our research, we are going to have a short unit on how to read and digest information from academic articles. In class we talked about how these articles are a lot like eating a coconut, hard to crack into, but then excellent and really sweet and refreshing inside. The article we are going to take a look at talks about the idea of a need to belong. To prepare for this topic we looked at the quote "People who need people are just people who need people." This quote is from an LCD Soundsystem song and provided us with a way to talk about whether there really are people who don't need people (prompt and song below).

 

Everyone had about 7 and a half minutes to respond to this prompt as we listened to the song "One Touch." Everyone then shared out their responses to this prompt with a partner and then we discussed responses as a class. The main points of our discussion were as follows:

1 - Everyone likely needs some contact with other people, but some people might require more or less than other people to have enough contact.
2 - It is probably possible to survive in the sense of being alive without contact from other people as long as someone has appropriate food and shelter.
3 - Someone without any contact with people might begin to change psychologically and become mentally unhealthy.
4 - People like Christopher Knight, might be the exception to this rule. He had food, shelter, and no real contact with people for 27 years and seemed to be doing fine.

We will continue developing our understanding of this topic in the next few classes.


Homework:

Work associated with your project as appropriate.

Update your project team's task schedule and contact log as appropriate.

11.13 - "Can Service Save Us" Revisions, Project Team Questions

We started today's class with a review of class performance on the "Can Service Save Us" article responses (assessment data shared in class below).

(click image to enlarge)

Suggested revision areas identified below the graph were for the class in general. Individual needs for revision may vary.

Everyone also had the opportunity to work on their responses to the work we did around the Lisbon 2013 bond order ballot questions.

In the second half of class, project teams met to review their previous meeting minutes and discuss recent progress on their projects. In addition to this, teams were beginning work in the research process by brainstorming questions that would need to be answered in order to prove that their was a need for their project team's work. The question to which groups were responding was:

What questions would someone need answered in order to understand why your project team’s work is good?

Some model questions for one of the projects we did not end up pursuing (creating a local animal shelter) were:

Animal Shelter

What services do animal shelters provide.

Why are homeless pets a problem?

How much of a problem is domestic animal homelessness a problem in this area?

To what degree do animal shelters help problems associated with homeless pets.

What are the benefits to having pets (when people get them from shelters)?

Homework:

Work associated with your project as appropriate.

Update your project team's task schedule and contact log as appropriate.

11.12 - Presentation Practice

At the beginning of class today, presenters from each project team delivered their 2 minute presentation for the school committee tonight. We then critiqued these presentations in terms of delivery, presentation content, and meeting the 2 minute target time. Project teams then revised their presentations and we did another final round of presentations.


Homework:

Work associated with your project as appropriate.

Update your project team's task schedule and contact log as appropriate.

11.08 - Presenation Finalization and Practice

In class today, project teams were finalizing their presentations for the school committee. We then presented these in class and revised presentations based on what changes groups needed to make.

Homework:

Work associated with your project as appropriate.

Update your project team's task schedule and contact log as appropriate.

11.07 - Presentation Preparation

We started today's class with a review of the effective presentation slideshow delivered yesterday since a number of people were absent/on filed trips.

Everyone then had the next half-hour to continue working on their presentation.



Specifics on the slide presentation and talk include:

Groups will need six slides (identified below) and have exactly two minutes to present. Our goal is for each group to take exactly two minutes which will use eight of the ten minutes we are allotted (the remaining two minutes will probably be used in transitioning between groups and with a little time for questions).

Each group should have the following slides:

1 - Title slide with project team name
2 - Project team's goal/mission
3 - Work completed so far
4 - Work currently going on
5 - Planned work for the future
6 - Intended outcomes and impacts


With fifteen minutes left in the period, we began a run through of our presentation to see what we needed to work on and how we were doing fitting each individual talk into its two minute time frame.


Homework:

Work associated with your project as appropriate.

Update your project team's task schedule and contact log as appropriate.

11.06 - Effective Presentations and Project Team Meetings

We started today's class with the announcement that a representative (or several representatives) will be presenting at the next school committee meeting on the work that we are doing. This will be next Tuesday at 7 p.m.

In preparation for this, I presented on how to make an effective slide presentation (this was done in a mystery-solving style with people in the class identifying what was wrong with each slide).

Groups will need six slides (identified below) and have exactly two minutes to present. Our goal is for each group to take exactly two minutes which will use eight of the ten minutes we are allotted (the remaining two minutes will probably be used in transitioning between groups and with a little time for questions).

Each group should have the following slides:

1 - Title slide with project team name
2 - Project team's goal/mission
3 - Work completed so far
4 - Work currently going on
5 - Planned work for the future
6 - Intended outcomes and impacts


Project teams then had the rest of the period to prepare their slide presentation for the meeting. This was to be done as part of a regular project team meeting with the team also reviewing completed work, current tasks, next tasks, updating the call log and task schedule.


Homework:

Work associated with your project as appropriate.

Update your project team's task schedule and contact log as appropriate.

11.05 - Lisbon Bond Orders

We started today's class with some revisions on the final answers for the Logic Model Revealed: The Affordable Care Act / ObamaCare. I returned copies of this assignment and students had fifteen minutes to work on their revisions and/or ask questions. Students who scored a 92 had the option of pursuing a 100 by using their analysis to respond to the following question:

For a 100:
What are specific strengths and/or weaknesses you see in this program design? 
What outcomes or impacts will these particular strong/weak elements have on people/society?

We then transitioned to looking at where careful reading and critical thinking skills are really important in life beyond high school: voting. Specifically, we were taking a look at the bond questions on this year's ballot in Lisbon.

In looking at these bonds, we read the bonds and then everyone received a typed copy of each bond, an article about bond question 1 (re: the Worumbo mill), and questions that analyze these bond questions.

Documents:
Article on the Worumbo Mill bond (link)
Typed bond questions (document)
Response Sheet (document)

For bond order question 1, everyone is to read the article and determine some of the arguments for and against the town buying the mill and then explain what they think is best to do based on arguments presented in the article and culled from their own experiences.

For bond order questions 2 and 3, everyone is identifying significant language in the question to help figure out exactly what the question is asking and then explaining how this fits within the context of the question. The idea here is that understanding the question is half the battle and decoding language is key.

Note: The questions on the response sheet do ask what people think the best choice is for the options listed. The questions were intended to be phrased in a manner which was not specifically asking how anyone particularly would vote though we acknowledged in class that this is a very slight difference. I was available to construct different questions for anyone who felt uncomfortable giving their perspective on the matter. I did talk about viewing discussion around voting and what the right choice is as a way to have dialogue and learn more about a topic, not a way to convince someone that your own view is correct. For the assignment there is no right or wrong answer, responses are assessed based on evidence and discussion of language (see rubrics on the response sheet).

Everyone had until the end of the period to work on this assignment. At the end we talked a little bit about the bond order questions. We will recap this reading tomorrow in class.

Homework:

If you did not do so today in class, finish responding to the questions on the response sheet for the bond order questions.

11.04 - Can Service Save Us

Today, we returned to working with the "Can Service Save Us" article from Time magazine with everyone responding to the reading and post-reading questions for the article. People then met in the groups with which they worked last class to review and discuss their answers. We went over possible responses to these questions in class and then everyone turned in their responses.

Next, project teams got together to update and manage work. I went around and checked in with groups during this time. Project teams should have someone be sure to take minutes for each meeting.

At the end of class, I handed out updated grade sheets for first quarter grades.

Homework:

Work associated with your project as appropriate.

Update your project team's task schedule and contact log as appropriate.

11.01 - PTSD and Service

Today in class, we returned to our discussion of PTSD and explored more of what the condition is like, how it affects people, and why it is a social problem. We achieved this by listening to act two of the This American Life episode "484: Doppelgangers."

For this activity, we compared the experiences of Curtis and Brandon in the episode and discussed what point the producers were trying to make in comparing these two people's lives. We discussed this story within the wider context of PTSD. I then handed out the Time article and questions associated with the article.

All of the documents used today are available here:

PTSD Background information and "Can Service Save Us" questions
"Can Service Save Us" article


Homework:

If you did not do so in class, finish reading the "Can Service Save Us" article and respond to the reading questions on the reading sheet for the article.

Update your project team's task schedule and contact log as appropriate.

Complete missing work and revise any assignment that scored below a 92.

 

Keep up to date on your grades through Pinnacle:
In school: 192.168.8.7/Pinnacle/PIV
Outside of school: http://pinweb.lisbonschoolsme.org/pinnacle/piv