New Paltz Middle School Final Projects

After getting some very sensitive secrets from our students, Melinda and I, along with our mentor teacher Kim Sturgis, decided to bring the focus of our lesson toward a more positive goal.  Students were to remember their secrets, and come up with how the bullying situation could be resolved, or how students could be an ally to those who are bullied.

We ended up getting some really great projects at the end!
Each grade did the project a little bit differently:

6th Grade: Brainstorm slogans and images that would help others recognize the issue of bullying and create a design for the front of a t-shirt.  The most successful projects would be combined to create a collage peace sign for a shirt that will be sold as a fund raiser.

7th Grade: Created wordle posters from words and slogans that described an ally and how they could be an ally for someone who is bullied.  The students each chose a place in the school to post their poster. A few chose in the cafeteria, in the hallways, and in the bathrooms.

8th Grade:  Students recorded video of different bullying situations and worked either alone or in groups to edit the film to create a bullying awareness video.  Some chose to change color, add quotes, and add music to the video.  

Overall, the students learned a lot...and I know that I did as well!  It was really exciting to see the changes to the original idea actually play out into something that I feel was even better than it would have been before!

Thanks Kim Sturgis for such a great learning process!

Show and Tell

For my show and tell for my technology class I came across a website which one can explore a multitude of other resources.  The site is titled Exploratorium (the museum of science, art, and human perception).  When reading about the site on their About Us page, I realized that they encourage people to question what is around them to search for understanding.  This site allows one to easily explore their curiosity by giving many self-explorable exhibits.

After searching through many things on this site, I found a really interesting site that I connected back to a lecture, presented by Jana Levin, that we attended in class.  This site documents the "First Annual Art of Science Competition at Princeton University" held in 2005.  The connection that I saw between the lecture and this site, is the incorporation of visual art and science.  These two subjects although at first glance may seem very different, intertwine and overlap in many ways.  I think that many of the artwork displayed on the website found through Exploratorium allows a viewer to take a closer look at things we may not pay much attention to, and we can appreciate it's beauty through these artworks.

Here is a video that (although a little dated) shows some of the past work that has taken place at the Exploratorium.  

I think that the Exploratorium page is a good teaching tool because it allows students the freedom to explore the art world and be drawn in by what attracts them.  This site has a wide variety of visual arts from contemporary metal work to drawings done by Leonardo da Vinci.  This site can be used to attract all different types of learners.