Should Teachers Talk Less?

Ariel Sacks asks this question on her blog, On the Shoulders of Giants.

NMHS Teachers are on the Cutting Edge in So Many Ways

Kristin and April, you have instinctively exhibited many of the 20 Tips for Developing Positive Relationships with Parents found in this blog post by Elena Aguila from Edutopia.  :-)  Thanks, Kristin and April, for all you do!

There are Ups and Downs to PBLs--and we can calculate the force, momentum, acceleration, and kinetic energy for all of them!

Students are studying Newton's Laws of Motion using roller coasters.  They had to construct a roller coaster out of paper and test it.  There are many formulas that go along with the scientific laws... so they learned to solve one and two step equations while they were at it:  force = mass times acceleration, distance = rate divided by time, kinetic energy = 1/2 mass times velocity squared... 

And more to come..!

Parent-Teacher Conference

Our parent-teacher conference experience didn't go quite as smoothly as it has in previous years. As always, it was wonderful to meet the parents of our students, and reassuring to know that so many of them have wonderful support systems at home. The difference this year was the panic from the parents of the Straight-A students. We'd heard going into this year that the students who struggle the most with PBL are students who have excelled in the traditional classroom. Why would they want to change things up when they're great at tests, quizzes, and bookwork? These students are extremely grade conscious because they are already thinking college, scholarships, and future which is fantastic! At the same time, these students feel that they are taking on most of the burden in their groups' project.


The parents of these students conveyed this concerns to us and expressed concern that the group work would ruin their childrens' GPAs. We tried to reassure all parents, that the majority of grades our students receive are INDIVIDUAL grades, so group projects shouldn't tank their averages. Also, we informed the parents about the process of calling a group meeting and potentially firing a group member if he isn't pulling his weight. We hope that in the next PBL we do a better job of preventing one or two group members carrying most of the load for the whole group. I don't think it happened in most groups this time