Lisa Yacomelli

Putting Hamlet on Trial

by Tiberiu Dragoiu-Luca

This week, the Blue Sky Project features two classroom innovations by Lisa Yacomelli: her Senior Trial and her iMovie project based on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Students who participate in the Senior Trial are engaged in the creation of a legal hypothetical based on literature they read, and they then choose either the prosecution or the defense based on the legal issues. Class members demonstrate collaborative problem solving as they assemble textual evidence to support and present their arguments in a collectively written “brief." They share responsibility and learn to work effectively and cooperatively as they present these arguments orally in the culminating trial. This project teaches students to work collaboratively as they critically examine world issues as related to the literature, plus it gives them a bit of a glimpse into a real-life working situation. Past trials have examined Hamlet’s sanity, Victor Frankenstein’s parental neglect, and literary censorship by the Republic of Gilead in The Handmaid's Tale.

The second project is a hybrid between Student Centered Learning and Digital Literacy. The class progresses to an open-ended essential question discussion, conducted in the Harkness method, during which students identify themes they can then relate to their own lives or apply to situations and problems they may encounter. The students divide into four groups, and each group selects one of those themes. Then each group uses an iPad or laptop to demonstrate its understanding of the theme, and then extend this to contemporary life. For example, one group examined superstition in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and then included movie clips demonstrating modern superstitions, as well as interviews with students and teachers regarding whether or not they have superstitious beliefs. The entire unit takes about a month, and culminates in a popcorn and movie day! The project helps promote not only student understanding of the book, but also increases students’ ability to express themselves through digital media.

Below is a video interview with Ms. Yacomelli, including one of the Huck Finn student projects.

Kate Butler

The Principle of Expected Value

by Lucie Knight-Santos

Earlier this year, when the Blue Sky Project first began, we took the opportunity in our cohort meetings to ask about the innovative methods our fellow “cohorters” were using in their classes. Ms. Kate Butler told me about the work she was doing with her Probability and Statistics class involving the game of Roulette and the Principle of Expected Value. As someone who is the farthest possible from being a math genius, I was fascinated and decided to take this opportunity to find out more about the unique methods that she uses to teach this class.

The Principle of Expected Value predicts what return a player can expect if they bet one dollar. For example, in the game of Roulette, you can expect to lose 5.3 cents on every dollar bet. Knowing this, students can then calculate what each bet is worth if the player wins. Since Roulette involves different kinds of bets, such as placing a bet on a single value or only even numbers, students have their work cut out for them calculating the expected return on dozens of different bets that a player can make in this particular game. In Ms. Butler’s class, the students first play an electronic version of the game on an app and then discuss the different types of bets possible, especially the riskier kinds of bets such as a bet placed on one number. They then go through the bets and calculate the probability of winning and the expected pay out. They receive one chip, place bets and keep a running tally of their winnings and losses to check the validity of their own calculations.

Ms. Butler has designed this Probability and Statistics class keeping the students, who tend to find math challenging, very much in mind. The classes focusing on the Principle of Expected Value and Roulette form part of a larger theme that has students learning how to calculate the expected value of games, varying from Blackjack to the Lottery and The Price is Right. The latter game forms an entire unit towards the end of the year that involves students creating simulations of their own games, that they then play and track the results to see if their data matches up with their own calculations. Last year, students created their own Plinko games that they took around campus and asked other students to play, betting - for example - hugs or high fives.

In creating these classes, Ms. Butler has successfully turned these games into an effective and fun teaching tool that engages even the most challenged and skeptical math learners (myself included)!

Alex Lipoff

Shark Tanks & Fantasy Football

by Ted Shaffner

We talk a lot about student-centered learning these days, and at times, it's hard to get a handle on precisely what that means. Alex Lipoff spends a great deal of his time working this out and performing a wide variety of experiments to test the concept fully. In his seminar class, he allows students to determine a large portion of the actual curriculum, and finds in the process that he is still able to teach the essential skills for higher order thinking and communicating. In the video below, you can see him talk about three of his experiments, including the Seminar Passion Project, a student feedback exercise based on the television show, Shark Tank, and a Harkness reflection exercise based on Fantasy Football. You will also hear him talk about modeling risk taking, focusing on skills-based learning, and the difficulties and potential messiness of innovation in the classroom.

The creative mind at work is impressive here, but even more important is how thoughtful Mr. Lipoff is about balancing content and skills, and how willing he is to inspire and follow the trail his students want to forge with him. I have been lucky enough to observe his classes and discuss his ideas at length, and I felt others should be able to share in this opportunity. I have learned a great deal from him, and plan to adapt some of these projects into my own lesson plans.

Laura Bishop

Creating a Library and Media Center For the 21st Century

by Melissa Dorfman

Laura Bishop has dived right in to her new position as Director of the Library and Media Center at Hun. She started her first year by introducing students and teachers to new and creative ways to approach their projects and research assignments.

Ms. Bishop credits attending inspiring conferences such as the Education Information Technology Conference earlier in her career, and the innovative people she met there, for introducing her to some of the “must haves” for a 21st Century Library and Media Center.

Lib Guides is one of the most important tools our Media Center Director feels she has implemented so far at Hun. This organizational tool for digital data keeps information for projects, learning about a particular theme or topic, and guides to research in one place. Ms. Bishop introduced my students to Lib guides as what she calls a “one stop shop” to find all instructions, printed materials, and data bases that our library has to offer, relating to our topic of an imaginary trip through Central America. After research is completed using the help of the individualized guide for the project, students can post their project right on the guide itself. From start to finish, Lib Guide allows students to create their projects with ease. 

Thanks to Ms. Bishop, some Hun students have also already been using the “Questia” app for advanced work and research. It contains thousands of ebooks that unlimited users around the country and the world can use at the same time. Students have their own folders and can highlight and take notes while they are reading. Here is a Youtube video Ms. Bishop created to make using Questia as user friendly as possible for our students and faculty.

Finally, our art courses have been enhanced with the the Artstor app. It is a repository of images and works from around the world. Ms. Bishop says excitedly, “You can see the brushstrokes in the pieces.” This allows students to easily compare and contrast some of the world’s greatest artists. Check out Mona Lisa from Artstor!

From my perspective as a very grateful teacher whose students have benefited from the new resources Laura Bishop has brought to our Library, I am very excited about the new opportunities for learning she has brought to Hun. I know we all look forward to continued collaboration with her to help enhance our students’ learning experience at our School. She is excited about what students can do in her library, and the enthusiasm is contagious for all who work with her. 

Chris Cooper

Middle School Robotics

by Karin Guns

I visited a newly revamped Robotics course in the Middle School this past week and was thrilled to see the students engaged in the process. Chris Cooper took over the course, which is a marking period elective class designed as pass or fail. The day I visited, the pupils were downloading the new program for their robot design. They each had to make sure they had the design in their computer on their own, but the rest of the time, they worked cooperatively to complete the task at hand. 

They had to accumulate all the necessary materials for the next part of their robot. It was fun to watch as Mr. Cooper worked the room and made sure each boy was aware of his expectations and responsibilities for the entire class. In the end, all the students were motivated to help their classmates and ready themselves for the building process. They do not have a final project, but they follow a progression that builds figuratively and literally on what they have done.

Mr. Cooper has them build projects following what he calls an “Act, React, Interact” model. They start with programming basic robots to “act.” The video below is their first “act” project. They had to work cooperatively to program all of the robots to play Happy Birthday at the same time. They will then work on the “react” process, which will require the addition of sensors to the robot and program them to act out different behaviors based on what the sensors pick up. The final task will be to build an arm that is able to “interact” with its environment. The students are active participants in this well-designed, cooperative course.

Matt Ator

Math Balderdash
by Peter Albert

I first worked with Matt Ator in our faculty cohort last year and was impressed by the thoughtful and creative approach he took whenever addressing educational topics. I was especially impressed to hear about his Logic and Reasoning course, which unfortunately is not running this year. This course demonstrated not just Mr. Ator's level of commitment to teaching excellence, but his concern with providing authentic lessons for his students.

One of Mr. Ator's innovative lesson plans is "Math Balderdash." Aadil Mufti, one of his students, says the lesson "really helped [me] understand how and why graphs are formed for certain purposes. The exposure to the different graph shapes really challenged [me] to create a logical purpose for the graph." When I asked Aadil to help me spotlight this lesson, he lit up and was excited to help, a sure sign of not just a great lesson, but great teaching.

Here is my interview with Mr. Ator, describing the game and his thoughts on education and innovation.

Peter Albert: Can you describe the game? What are your objectives, and why do you think it is successful?

Matt Ator: The game is a variation of Balderdash, in which players are shown an obscure vocabulary word and have to guess what the definition is. Players then vote on which definition they think is correct. In my version, students are broken into teams of three or four, and each team logs in to Pear Deck. I show them a graph with limited information (no units, axes are not labeled, etc.) as shown here:

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Students then look at what is happening in the graph and try to guess what is being represented. They type in their answers to Pear Deck, and I add the correct answer from my own account. Guesses might be:

• Temperatures in Princeton through the month of October 2014;

• Average visitors to the air and space museum in Washington DC; 

• The chance each team in this year's World Series game 7 had to win over the course of the game, etc. 

I show the answers to the entire class. They will only know their own answer and are asked to guess which explanation is correct. Teams receive two points for guessing the correct answer and one point for every other team that guesses their explanation. Teams also get five points if they guess the correct explanation for the graph (this has only happened once since I started the game).
The game's success comes from the creativity required to play. Students have to understand how you would display data in different ways. What would make sense as an independent or dependent variable? Why were the colors used in the graph chosen? Occasionally, I will give some of the units on the graph (notice above the x-axis goes from 1-9) to assist in guesses, and they have to figure out what units are being used. Instead of students having memorized a formula and regurgitating facts about it, they are asked to think creatively and make connections between real life situations and how those might be represented graphically. Students who might struggle with memorizing formulas are often very successful in the game.

Peter Albert: How do you think that this game creates authentic learning that will contribute to the real-world success of these students? 

Matt Ator: When students encounter "real world" math, it will rarely be in the form of "Read an example and copy the methods to solve for x." Students will need to be literate in math ideas and how they can be utilized. This forces students to analyze data with minimal information and figure out what it could be applied to. This can be reverse engineered to ask students to create interesting representations of data they might have collected. By thinking about creative examples, they are able to become more creative in their own work.

Peter Albert: What place does innovation have in the math classroom? 

Matt Ator: Many adults were turned off of math at an early age because of the way they were taught. I could easily lecture 50 minutes a day about how to use a formula, give an example, do an example as a class, then have the class do one on their own. This is repetitive and boring; it is very easy for students to be left behind or resent the subject if you never show them more than one method for how to do a problem.

In my classroom, I will often skip the first two steps and go straight to the students trying an example on their own. They are then required to work with each other to think about how things they have used in the past might be applied to the given problem. They are forced to try to solve with a trial and error method. They have to talk to each other about the topics they have learned and how they could use them in different ways. Even if they are not able to figure out the given problem, they have, hopefully, gained a deeper understanding of past topics. This has been much more effective than feeding them they steps they need.

Peter Albert: How important is risk-taking as an educator? 

Matt Ator: Risk taking in the classroom is being stressed in just about every book, blog, and conference you'll see right now. It is very important that teachers feel able to try something different, because when it works, the rewards are incredible. However, with a very limited number of teaching days throughout the school year, it is very intimidating to break from what is comfortable, because the potential clean-up can put you far behind where you want to be. I have found that trying out smaller discovery learning lessons, 15-20 minutes, will give me a good idea of what my classes are capable of and how much freedom they are capable of working with. By building from smaller unique lessons, students can become more comfortable with a new style and eventually can get to the point of learning entire sections in a more student driven way.

Peter Albert: Grant Lichtman says that innovation "enhances value for your organization." How do you think that this game "enhances value" for The Hun School? In other words, how does it contribute to our mission and our search for best practices as teachers to serve our students? 

Matt Ator: The game "enhances value" by allowing students of all levels to be put on the same playing field. Basic graphing principles are taught in Algebra I, so nearly every student in the upper school could participate in the game. Students enjoy the competition and want to come up with their best answers to win. Although every time we play there is a winner, I have never given out a prize. Students are driven to do their best because they are having fun and competing. In numerous college recommendations, I have mentioned this game as an example of creativity, making connections, and mathematical understanding. One of the best skills for the game is well-roundedness, and that is a prime characteristic we are looking for in all our students.

Peter Albert: How do you think this game could translate into other classes and disciplines in a productive fashion? 

Matt Ator: The graphs I choose can require making connections between topics ranging from science

Sunrise sunset times over the course of a year

to technology

MySpace users with respect to time
note: students have no idea what MySpace is 

to silly​

Preferred temperature of different animals (real and imaginary)

and the first graph I showed... 

Athletics​

Data analysis will be required no matter what you do in life, whether it is a quarterly report or just understanding the next week's expected weather. This game gives examples of all of these and helps students gain a better understanding of their applications.

As an observer, my favorite part of the activity is the requirement of the students to interpret data for which they do not necessarily have any context. This provides an authentic experience, reflective of the messiness and complexity that will appear in students' lives as the move into the "real world." As with all of the other innovators featured in this blog, Mr. Ator is giving his students a rich learning experience that is also, as Aadil says, "a genuinely enjoyable" experience.

For anyone interested in some real, interesting depictions of data, see http://flowingdata.com.

Karin Guns

An Old-fashioned Innovator

by Todd Loffredo

When Karin Guns first came to Hun four years ago, she had 25 years of teaching experience at a public school under her belt. Ms. Guns came to Hun from Pemberton, an Abbott District school. Abbott Districts have a large percentage of both minority and low income students, so crafting creative lessons and having hands-on activities became tantamount to her teaching. Ms. Guns has taught all levels of Biology here at Hun: AP, Honors, and Regular. Additionally, she has taught physics.

My favorite thing about Ms. Guns is her dedication to her students and colleagues and the diligence with which she approaches the classroom. My best Ms. Guns story comes from five years ago, when I taught her son Nick in my Biology class during my second year at Hun. I was so nervous to have a parent teacher conference with a “real” Biology teacher. Instead of coming in with guns blazing, she came in with four grocery bags full of extra lab supplies for me to use in my class. Her collaborative nature and desire to help others is remarkable.

Students use hydrogen peroxide and a liver milkshake to study enzymes.

Ms. Guns, without fail, does at least three hands-on activities or laboratories each week in her Biology classes. In a time where buzz words such as hands-on, experiential, and student-centered might be an educational phase, Ms. Guns is unwavering in her approach to pedagogy. She honed her teaching skills before coming to Hun and has really perfected them over the past several years. You might be thinking that it is easy to teach biology - a subject in which there are built in exercises to do hands-on work. Ms. Guns, however, takes these activities to a new level to keep her pupils engaged.

When I asked several of her students what words three words they would use to describe her, the adjectives that came up often were dynamic, fun, and challenging. Ms. Guns' students know that she demands a lot from them, but they look forward to her class, because every day offers them a new opportunity to get up from their desks and take ownership of their learning.