Wednesday, October 31, 2012

ESL Group October 31st

Today I had the pleasure of visiting another PLC group in order to learn more about what other groups are doing. I visited the group of Mrs. Ault, Mrs. Caminos, and Mrs. Ripley. We discussed the process of getting students to talk more in class through whole class discussions and small group discussions. We were able to brainstorm some ideas about how to get students to be more comfortable in class where they feel that they may talk more in class. Overall this was a very productive day and there were many great ideas brought up.

Thanks,
Jeff Kreiling

PLC Showcase

At the end of our semester of work, all PLCs will be showcasing their work at the Wyandotte High School PLC Showcase on Wednesday, December 12th in the Social Hall.  The showcase will be a public demonstration of our learning, collaboration, and results.  Each PLC will showcase work that reflects how your learning and collaboration has impacted student learning.  Each PLC is encouraged to be creative and innovative in their demonstration (student examples would be highly encouraged); however, please be sure the following are addressed through your presentation -
    PLC Focus
Collaborative Actions   
Summary of PLC Learning
Impact on Student Learning
Connections to Future Teaching and Learning
In addition, all staff will have an opportunity to visit each demonstration during the Showcase.  Many outside guests will also be in attendance.  

If your PLC requires any kind of additional resources, please submit any requests for those materials via the comment section to this blog entry by NOVEMBER 9th. You will receive these materials by or before your November 28th meeting, so you will have AT LEAST two weeks to work on organizing your demonstration.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

October 24th, 2012

Over the past week I was able to take a group of seniors to the World War I Memorial in Kansas City, MO. This ended up being a excellent opportunity for me to incorporate math and Social Studies together. I was able to do so when we were in the part of the museum where the students can view the numbers of those who died during World War I. I had several students look up what the populations of the countries that were involved with World War I were while the war was going on. Once we had determined what the total populations were, I had them then see how these numbers compared to the numbers of people who were killed from select countries during World War I. I think that not only was this a good way to incorporate math and social studies, but it was also a very big eye-opener for students. It seemed as if this was probably one of the first times where the students truly saw the percentage of people who died during World War I. I was able to show the students that in some cases, whole towns basically lost nearly all the men and young men during the war. When we took a look at the level of wounded people it was even more astounding than was the percentage of those who died. Overall I think that this was a successful fieldtrip and I was very happy to get such a good chance to incorporate both math and social studies into the students school day.

Thank You,
Jeff Kreiling

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

October 17th, 2010

Today Mr. Kreiling and myself continued to work on integrating math into the Social Studies curriculum.  I have a World War I unit coming up in this next few weeks and we are thinking this is an excellent opportunity to incorporate some math into the classroom. 

October 17th, 2012

Coming up in the next week we will be discussing two different subjects. The first being the relationship that can happen between math and government. This can be in the form of population sizes, economics, and especially taxes. Another subject is the correlation between math and World War I. During our World War I topic, we plan on looking at the different numbers of those killed from the different countries that were involved in World War I. Once we have dipped into these numbers we plan to look at the ratio and how that relates to the population numbers of the countries involved. This way students can truly realize the numbers lost in World War I and the percentage of people in countries who were lost during World War I. The second is we will try to find a correlation to formulate the chances that those in the service had of survival in the war.

Thank You,
Jeff Kreiling

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

October 3rd, 2012

This week we were able to correlate the interest period into our Economics class. We worked on figuring out interest rates when discussing credit cards while the students were given a set interest rate that they would be paying on a credit card. We were able to incorporate technology by showing the students the different tools that can be used on the internet such as interest calculators and tools to calculate time to pay off debt.

Jeff Kreiling

First Time

This is my first attempt at blogging.  I thought that only one person from our group had to blog, but was informed that I was wrong.  Anyway, we'll see if anyone reads these things.
10/3/12

We've been working on lessons that Shane and I can co-teach.  One of the lessons involves using the distance formula and equation for distance during his lesson on explorers - their path to their destination.  Using the distance formula, we can use coordinates on a map to calculate.