Earth/Space
Students in Mr. Ocon's Earth/Space Science classes competed in the annual Natural Resources Tournament.
Students researched a specific natural resource and then debated in a tournament style activity for their natural resource to be deemed "most valuable".
Students created hand-drawn posters to accompany their research and argument.
Everyone did great work and the competition was intense. Water was a big winner, as well as sunlight.
Sociology
Students in Sociology classes created Culture Boxes for a class project. They decorated the boxes and added tokens to represent various parts of their personal culture. Some students focused on specific culture that they are involved in while others included items from the various cultures that they identify with. Students did a great job of thinking more deeply about what culture means and even added a few secret items in the bottom of the boxes that others might not assume about them!
Research Paper Process
As the semester raced on, students in all senior ELA classes started the research paper process. The process has been refined over the years to encourage students to research thoughtfully, organize their resources, frame their thoughts, and produce a thoughtful and articulate argumentative research paper. Students chose topics during the Topic Selection activity, began research during the Preliminary Research activity, and wrote thesis statements to serve as their main argument. 10 ELA and Contemporary Communications classes moved through the beginning of the process this month, which made the library days fly by. It is exciting to see these students begin to understand the importance of the process and how much they'll use it after leaving BVN. Research paper or not, these students graduate with the skills to use information and evidence to form their own thoughts and opinions!
Economics
After learning about some school data regarding reading scores, we developed a close read activity to help students practice the skills needed to focus on and understand difficult texts. Students in Mr. Breedlove's Economics class participated in our first close read activity. Students were given an article to read with no instruction. Then they took a quick multiple choice assessment to see how well they read. Students then received direct instruction and 3 practice opportunities to practice and use close read strategies for reading difficult texts. Students had the opportunity to look through the multiple choice questions again after reading the text with the strategies. Finally, students answered some higher-order questions to demonstrate their own thinking in relation to the difficult text. This idea was a complete success as students worked really hard to read and understand a difficult article. This activity will be presented at PD next month and continued with multiple content areas and classes!
AVID
Students in Mr. Dudley's AVID class had a College Fair in the library. Students researched a college or university that they are interested in and created poster presentations and swag to give out during the fair! Other classes attended and students acted as admissions officers to convince others to attend their university! It was a great activity and the students did a great job as hosts of their college of choice.