Classroom Portrait        

Outside Views:

Rockbridge County is a relatively small county with only around 20000 residents. The two largest cities, Lexington and Buena Vista, are enclaved within the county. What this means for the students of the county is that there are separate school systems for the county and for the city schools. This means that funding for the schools is coming from the county or the city. While schools like Maury River are within the boundaries of Lexington, they are still a county school. All the students from the relatively geographically large county are bused into a central school. However, The county and city work together to create a shared high school for students within the geographical bounds of the county. 

 

      According to school quality of Virginia, they rate Maury River Middle school with a level one science achievement. This entails that Maury River prepares their students in the sciences which allows for groups such as the Eagle Academy to develop and discuss ideas such as the environment and formulate solutions that would help the society adapt and fix necessary areas to improve the environment around them. Eagle Academy was able to form because of the level one education the Maury River is providing.  

 

Inside Views:      

We have spent the beginning of semester with a group of middle schoolers who decided they wanted to help the environment. These kids, although they are not the best academically, they are the best when it comes to thinking aloud and discussions. These are some of the brightest kids we have ever met. They developed ideas that inspired thought and deep conversations on how to improve their environment. Project Based Learning has really allowed the students to think for themselves and gather as one to develop ideas that would and possibly bring change to a society. We believe that all institutions across the country should think about and at least look into what project based learning is. 

   

   

If we had PBL during our time during elementary and middle school  it would have been better at academic thinking. PBL from our experiences so far enables students to gather into groups and think about an issue and develop solutions that would fix what the problem is.

 

 

It has allowed for students in our classroom to take ownership of their own learning from their class charter of shared values to their participation in NEST FEST (See Lexington News Gazette article) with all the other middle schoolers. 

Models of Excellence:

three w’s model card

 

 

Final Proposal: Water. Waste. Wildlife.

Team Members: Matthew Jingle, Cole McCarty, and Sam Moreira

Intro: We want to teach the students how to enjoy their environment and learn to understand the world around them and that is through teaching them the three W’s they have been working on since the beginning of the year.

Experience learning from a community expert- Ms. Elise Sheffield, a member of the Boxerwood Education association in Rockbridge County, guides our students and helps provide them with knowledge about the three W’s in Rockbridge. With her expertise and connections to others in the community she provides the students with the knowledge in their curriculum. Matthew, Sam and I, being English majors, can provide the students with help for public speaking. We are not experts but we all have experience in public speaking as well as the ability to talk with professors in the ERH department. The students are surrounded by mentors that are confident and want to help them become more confident and comfortable when relaying their ideas in a public situation.

 

Link to Activity 1: 3 W’s TEach-In Slide Show

Have students break up into three groups (Waste, Wildlife, and Water) and discuss solutions to improving their particular area. Then each student presents their group’s solutions to the rest of the class. This allows students to continue working on their curriculum while practicing public speaking and building their confidence. This activity can be conducted over several meetings, allowing students to build on their discussions with each other and research their topic. With each progressive meeting they should be engaging more thoroughly in their proposed solutions within their assigned domains. 

Calendar: The calendar will be broken up by number of discussions; 

• D1: An into the assigned topic, each student should share with the group what they already know about the topic. Students should leave knowing what gaps there are within their pre-existing knowledge 
• D2: Students come back with more knowledge on the topic and begin to  discuss the direct impact to their school, outlining the gaps within their schools current infrastructure and analyzing what the school does well.
• D3: Students discuss how the gaps they previously can discussed can be filled, with each student offering ideas with each other
• D4: Student’s proposed ideas are brought together in this discussion to create a final proposal incorporating all member’s ideas. 

Activity 2– Students work together to develop solutions to the three W’s and propose their solutions to the schools principal. This allows students to improve the environment around their school and influence change amongst the school in terms of sustainability, all while practicing their speaking skills.

Calendar: The calendar will be broken up by different meetings with school administrators.

• M1: Students show draft of proposal to school administrator and explain their ideas. Admins will then go and decide what they can do to affect the goals students have proposed for the next meeting.
• M2: Students and Admins come together for admins to share what can be feasibly done in response to issues students have brought to their attention. Students will leave and come up with a final draft to propose.
• M3: A final proposal will be shown to the administrators taking into consideration all the factors of what can feasibly be done by the school. 

M4: School admins share a plan of action in response to the students proposals. 

Mode for sharing students’ final project with the community- If the students propose their solutions and ideas to their principal and they get approved. The students can apply their solutions to the school and use their school as hard evidence to make a new proposal to the community at a public meeting. Using the same proposal as before with their principal, they will have proof that their solutions work by bringing pictures of their school.

Interactive Activity

We will first break the students up into three groups and each group will be assigned one of the three main topics to focus on. Once the groups are settled and decided each one of them will receive a photo that is of nature and the photo will contain trash and is very hard to look at. We will then assign each group to assess the situation and how the picture will affect their topic.

Part 2

We have decided that it is the best option to let one another conduct research and after that we would come together and share what exactly we found. We hope to find multiple sources and once we come together we could decide which are the best sources and resources to help us on our project.

ANCHORED TEXTS

• http://mrms.rockbridge.k12.va.us/

This is the website for the Maury River Middle School

• This is the map of Maury River Middle School

Annotated Bibliography:

Expeditionary learning core practices: A vision for improving schools

ELO Bound – NYC: Expeditionary Learning, 2011

• This article provides the elements to EL Education. Along with the principles this will allow our group to get familiar with EL Education. Learning and understanding the basic principles and elements belonging to this type of education will open our eyes and be able to hopefully teach the students from using these simple principles taught through the El Education handout.

Reed, Ronald F., and Tony W. Johnson. Philosophical Documents in Education. Longman, 2000.

• This handout was given in class and it allowed us to look into the philosophy of education and will enable us to reach and understand the students. I believe this hand out will help partly and briefly but it is important to the group.

Udall, Denis, and Amy Mednick. Journeys through Our Classrooms. Kendall-Hunt Publishing Company, 2000.

• Getting to know the stories from teachers themselves enables us to learn their lessons and teachings. Getting to know and understand their classroom will help us in our effort to teach and with this handout and book shown to us in class we will have this ability to expand our lessons and teach our classroom.

Websites: 

• https://my.pblworks.org/projects?gclid=CjwKCAiA7t3yBRADEiwA4GFlI1gJGMDQxaOH-EUvbLqxR7ZA7IDI8d4cqI7ZsXy5U7R1ra_XqmuiehoCCIAQAvD_BwE
• http://www.doe.virginia.gov/testing/sol/standards_docs/science/2010/k-6/stds_science6.pdf
• https://modelsofexcellence.eleducation.org/?_ga=2.263038216.504083799.1582810982-1743933455.1582810982&_gac=1.88329833.1582810983.CjwKCAiA7t3yBRADEiwA4GFlI_H0CBNhG5bVTXPKHBQ2Z6Yh3x26z4ykNpSMmfORq4i-r5W7RRDsyxoCzRsQAvD_BwE

 

Work cited:

https://schoolquality.virginia.gov/schools/maury-river-middle-school 

http://lexingtonva.gov/community/schools/

https://www.rockbridge.k12.va.us/