Paige Builds a Phonics Notebook

Having conducted extensive research into the history of the Orton-Gillingham (OG) approach, programs that are off-shoots of OG (e.g., Lindamood-Bell, Wilson Reading), sample OG lessons, and myths concerning dyslexia, Paige has reached a stage at which she feels ready to apply her extensive understanding.  She has debated between options for a few months now.  This careful consideration, however, has allowed her to settle upon a project:  a phonics notebook not unlike one that a tutor would craft with an elementary student at Kildonan.  Paige hopes to compile a chapter concerning open and closed syllables; this section would contain games, lesson plans, cards, and manipulatives.

To craft this piece, Paige is currently conducting a three-fold process.  First, she is communicating with both elementary school teachers on-staff, Mrs. Elliott and Ms. Hollander.  She hopes to observe both of their classes in order to determine how younger students respond to challenges in language acquisition, and she also plans to interview both teachers about their approaches to coaching students through these tasks.  Second, she continues to add content to a process portfolio that she maintains through iBook Author.  She manages this document in order to compile her notes, track resources, and hypothesize situations that she will face as a future elementary school teacher.  To date she has produced sixty-five pages.  Third and finally, she took time out during her break to draft sound-symbol cards.  Soon she will engage in a critique with Ms. Charlap during which the two can evaluate the layout and design of her slip.  They will also explore alternative designs for such manipulatives.

What do you think of Paige's work? Do you have a question or recommendation? Please post in the comments section below.

Description of 1st image:  A page from an interactive, kindergarten phonics notebook.  Picture located at www.pinterest.com.  Kildonan and its IP program do not claim ownership over the above photo.

Bull's "Cacophony"

Inspired by his tentacle piece, Bull decided not too long ago that he was ready for another project.  It would need to extend his whimsical streak, certainly, but it would also have to prove more rigorous in prompt.

Ms. Charlap hit upon a suitable option in no time.  Having advised Kildonan alumnus August Hunt through a successful application to The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (@cooperunion), she proposed a simulation of the Cooper Union home test.  This evaluation is an integral part of the application to Cooper Union's School of Art.  As described on the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section of Cooper Union's website, the home test "consists of a number of visual projects to be completed in approximately 3-4 weeks and returned to The Cooper Union for review."  Interested students choose from a number of prompts, respond to one directive through a multimedia project, and submit their work for consideration.

Ms. Charlap offered this undertaking to Bull, who - after examining several prompts - chose to represent the word "cacophony."  To flesh out his project, he worked with a limited number of resources under a strict deadline.  At week's end, he submitted a quirky yet heady project.  Sound waves, graphed and visually represented, played across the various surfaces of a box.  Random resources - cardboard feet and plastic tubing, for instance - were re-appropriated for anthropomorphic effect.  Overall, the piece was an eclectic, humorous, and interdisciplinary hodgepodge of math and art.

To share your thoughts on Bull's piece, please post in the comments section below.

Descriptions of four images:  A front view of "cacophony," pictured top right.  Top left shows the project's top view (note the sound wave graphed with pins).  Bottom right reveals the Newton-Laplace Equation, a calculation used by Bull to graph the speed of sound.  Finally, bottom left pictures a rear view (note the tubed tail).

Ramsey Musallam: "3 rules to spark learning"

 
As we enter the spring, the last months of the academic year hang blissful and ominous before us.  Will we have the energy to endure? Will our students succumb to senioritis?

Fortunately, an answer has come from our personal learning network in the form of Ramsey Musallam (@ramusallam).  Chemistry teacher at Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep in San Francisco, CA, Ed.D. recipient, and manager of the Cycles of Learning blog, Musallam has had time to consider this question across fifteen years of teaching.  In a TED Talk delivered in 2013, Musallam critiques contemporary trends in education and argues that teachers must assign themselves a very specific purpose:  cultivators of curiosity.

You know, questions and curiosity like Maddie's are magnets that draw us towards our teachers, and they transcend all technology or buzzwords in education. But if we place these technologies before student inquiry, we can be robbing ourselves of our greatest tool as teachers: our students' questions. For example, flipping a boring lecture from the classroom to the screen of a mobile device might save instructional time, but if it is the focus of our students' experience, it's the same dehumanizing chatter just wrapped up in fancy clothing. But if instead we have the guts to confuse our students, perplex them, and evoke real questions, through those questions, we as teachers have information that we can use to tailor robust and informed methods of blended instruction.

What did you think of Musallam's presentation? Please post in the comments section below.

Brad: Business Update &​ Lure Construction

Brad was suffering a bit of a slump when the IP team met with him in mid-February.  He had already been accepted to several colleges, so he felt eager to leave Kildonan and embark upon the next stage of his educational career.  But he was - and is - not yet done.  The IP team and his tutor joined forces to ask, "What do you feel like you still need to accomplish while here? How do you want to leave?"

Since this conversation, Brad has refined his plan and his business proposal.  He desires to improve his academic research skills as he writes a book review on bass fishing and a paper examining the history of charter fishing.  Using the ecological and economic factors affecting the fishing industry, he also hopes to plan a three-day fishing trip during which he studies the striped bass more closely.  Finally, he wishes to learn more about surfcasting, and he hopes to solidify a T-shirt design as well as a logo for his company.

Brad is impressing the IP team with his initiative and multi-tasking.  He has ordered and already completed half of Striper Pursuit:  Surf Fishing Beyond the Basics, by John Skinner, a work that he will examine for his book review.  He has also approached academic writing with gusto, for he is steadily examining citations and footnoting with his tutor.  He will soon be subscribing to Surfcaster's Journal (@SurfcastersJRNL) in order to learn about the process from a distance.  In addition to drafting more logo and design possibilities, Brad has also decided that he would like to explore lure construction.  He would like to create his own plugs and sell them at local tackleshops.  He has begun this work by forming collaborative relationships with his peers and inquiring after Maintenance's lathe, but he has also been experimenting with colors and otherwise designing the plugs throughout spring break.

Moving forward, Brad has many promising projects to follow.  His challenge will be not so much finding something that inspires him but sticking to his resolve.  Indeed, he will need to sort through his exciting prospects and choose those he would like to achieve in the two months remaining this year.

What do you think of Brad's work? Do you have a question or recommendation? Please post in the comments section below.

Description of 1st image:  A smorgasbord of fishing lures.  Picture located at www.mikejacksonoutdoors.net.  Kildonan and its IP program claim no ownership over the photo above.

Spring Break!

Hooray for spring break!! We would like to wish our iPeople, their families, and the Kildonan community a restful and safe two weeks.

The IP program will return with regular content on March 23rd.  Until then, we invite our followers to view the shorter content we post on Twitter.

James: Songwriting & Survey Monkey

Due to last week's unconventional structure, the IP team was privileged to meet with new (albeit temporary) iPeople from grades 6 to 12.  One of the students who graced our building was sixth-grader James.  James is known around campus not only for his good-natured spirit but also for his performance ability, his spokesmanship for Kildonan, and his stage name, "Amazing James."  Under this title, he has published a song, "Keep On Sticking With It," about his experience at the school through FreshStart Brands (@FreshStartBrand) and True Fusion (@mytruefusion).

During Killington week, James came to the IP team desiring to develop a song and, more generally, hone his songwriting abilities.  We began our first meeting together by attempting to generate ideas for lyrics.  The strategy produced little in real results, but James discovered a new tract.  He decided to tap into the collective creativity of the Kildonan community - students and faculty alike - by creating a survey through Survey Monkey (@SurveyMonkey).

His results? Eight people have so far responded to the survey, students and faculty alike.  Though this remains a relatively small number considering Kildonan's population, James believes that there is already potential in the responses that he has read.  Perhaps he will receive more input over spring break, too.

What do you think of James's work? Do you have a question for him? If so, please post in the comments section below.

Description of 1st image:  The poster for Amazing James's song, "Keep On Sticking With It."  Created by Kildonan student Livingston F., this graphic won a school-wide design competition hosted by True Fusion.  Picture located at freshstartbrands.com.  Kildonan and its IP program claim no ownership over the photo above.

Yusuf: Science Fiction Novel

Due to last week's unconventional structure, the IP team was privileged to meet with new (albeit temporary) iPeople from grades 8 to 12.  One of the students who graced our building was freshman Yusuf K.  A polite and quiet young man, Yusuf came to us desiring to work on a science fiction (#scifi) novel.  He informed us that his course load does not permit him much time to work on the piece, so he wished to capitalize upon the week's freedom in order to generate substantial material.

After reading several of his drafts as well as discussing the writing with the artist, I am convinced that Yusuf holds immense promise.  Without giving too much away, I wish to share some details of his story.  Through the narrator's commentary, the reader learns of a mechanized planet that resembles something of District 13 of Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games Trilogy.  Barren at the surface, yet a highly developed military complex beneath, Siferith is an enormous planet that is said to dwarf galaxies.  One product of this civilization is the Tribulis, a horrendous machine stolen from the narrator and insidiously reappropriated.

Yusuf weaves strong visual descriptions throughout his prose, evoking images of plants and landscapes that are perceived holistically and felt immediately.  He is no novice of lore, for while editing, he constantly spirals back to earlier pieces in order to thicken the soup, to add events and details of his world's history.  To continue his expansion as a writer, he would benefit from an in-depth exploration of punctuation and may want to consider the "show" vs. "tell" rule.  He and I began this work with me modeling the process.

Of course, this partnership lasted for but an instant.  The drawback - no...the necessary product - of explorative, innovative periods such as last week's is the residual questions that remain suspended, tantalizingly, in front of the mind.  What if this week's structure became the modus operandi for a school-wide curriculum? What if this freshman-soon-to-be-sophomore continued this intensive work by joining IP?

What if...?

What do you think of Yusuf's work? Do you have a question for him? Please post in the comments section below.

Description of 1st image:  A graphic of Cyberton of The Transformers:  The Movie (1986), a mechanized planet not unlike Yusuf's.  Picture located at www.ign.com.  Kildonan and its IP program claim no ownership over the image above.

Clancy: Nanotechnology &​ Nanomedicine

Due to last week's unconventional structure, the IP team was privileged to meet with new (albeit temporary) iPeople from grades 8 to 12.  One of the students who graced our building was sophomore Clancy.  Currently engaged in the Personal Project, Clancy approached the IP team with an interest in the ethics of technology and nanotechnology (@Nanotechnology, #nanotechnology).  Throughout the week, he proved himself an expert on the subjects and an ideal candidate for IP.

Nanotechnology, Clancy explained, is essentially the ability to engineer matter at the atomic scale.  The instruments of nanotechnology are "nano," or tiny, devices that are programmed to solve many of the world's most pressing, most flummoxing problems.  Such equipment could remedy the ozone by simply following pre-programmed directions to "seal" up its hole.  According to Clancy, however, nanotechnology is particularly promising for its medicinal applications. This fledgling field is known as "nanomedicine," and its primary focus is upon "nanoparticles":  bio machines designed to target disease and deliver cargo consisting of medicine.

Clancy taught the IP team about nanomedicine using a #TED Talk by Dr. Jamey Marth given at the American Riviera Bank in Santa Barbara, CA.  Marth, the Director of the Center for Nanomedicine, shares his groundbreaking research into the discipline:

Now, to be able to treat cancer requires the addition of nanoparticles to the patient.  And this is the future. ... These particles are emitting light, so they tell us back - in the surgical table and research - exactly where they are going.  They're not binding to anything because they only will bind to diseased tissue.  ... Again, because it's not radiation, it's not chemotherapy, there won't be any collateral damage.  We can target these particles precisely to where they are supposed to go in the body.

...So they travel through the vasculature, and now we're outside of the vasculature just watching an animation of nanoparticles.  As they come in contact with the tumors, they light up the tumors.  Scientists have now figured out how to not only attach the nanoparticles but to get the drugs to travel completely through the tumor (which is really important).  And once these nanoparticles attach to the tumor, they release their payload.  Their payload, again, which includes therapeutics.  It includes toxins that will kill the cancer, but they won't touch the other tissue.

What do you think? Do you have a comment for Clancy? If so, please post in the comments section below.

Description of 1st image:  A graphic of nanomedicine.  Image located at adigaskell.org.  Kildonan and its IP program claim no ownership over the picture above.