The Mississippi Delta is famous for its blues musicians, but the fourth graders at Tunica Elementary School are learning about rhythm, rhyme and chord progressions in a whole new way. By incorporating the blues into science, math, social studies and English, the school is helping students to retain more information through song while teaching them about their state’s musical history. In teacher Chevonne Dixon’s class, students follow the Mississippi Blues Trail Curriculum to write blues songs about the weather and about being a kid. And they study classic blues lyrics to learn about the challenges of growing cotton, the civil rights movement, media and transportation. The school’s principal, Eva McCool-O’Neil, says she wants to see other classes happily singing the blues next year. “I see student engagement really, really, really high,” she told the Associated Press. “Students love to do things other than just the traditional.”
Tag: Primary & Secondary Schools
These Kids Are Designing the Future — and 3-D Printing It in Their Classroom
How exactly does a 3-D printer work? You can ask the students at Glen Grove Elementary School, who are using one to solve potential urban problems. The students are taking part in the City X Project, an international educational program that challenges kids to come up with ideas for new devices that could help the imaginary residents of City X. The students use tablets to design their objects, then make models out of clay. Then they can use the 3-D printer to create real plastic prototypes. The kids at Glen Grove, outside of Chicago, are working on a device that would clean up a river after an oil spill, for example, and a pair of headphones that a city dweller might use to dampen urban din. The overall goal of the City X program is to use technology to teach students valuable problem-solving skills. It’s not only a great way to get students thinking and learning about design, but also to prepare them to work with the cities and technology of the future. Watching the kids build their models layer by layer with the 3-D printer, one teacher described it as the “coolest thing in the world.”
Can Software Close the SAT Achievement Gap?
Dan Driscoll started City Football Club, a nonprofit soccer program for middle and high school students in Washington, DC. To play soccer, students had to participate in SAT tutoring and college counseling. Driscoll found that his tutoring techniques helped his students gain an average of 100 points on each of the three sections of the SAT. And while many of his students were heading to college, he wanted to find a way to give the same opportunity to other students. So he started Prepify, a cloud-based service that teaches students to take the SAT and ACT. The program adapts to students’ progress—for example, if a student misses a question, an easier version of a similar question will pop up next—and could close the gap in test scores between low-income students and their affluent peers. Prepify is a for-profit company, and Driscoll plans to reinvest all profits back into the software to create tools like a progress dashboard to connect low-income students with top universities.
MORE: The Bay Area groups that are trying to close the STEM gap
Community Building Through…Baking?
How can you simultaneously teach students about math, science, reading and community service? By baking bread. Through the King Arthur Flour company’s Bread Baking Program, New Hampshire students learn bread baking techniques in school. Then they go home to bake two loaves of bread with their families, and bring one back to give to Rockingham Community Action. The entire student body of Lincoln Akerman School participates in the program: K-3 students create labels for the bread, 4th-7th grade students bake the bread, and 8th grade students bring soup to be served with the bread. Students learn about the process of baking bread, and use math and reading skills to measure ingredients and follow recipes, while giving back to the community in the process.
How an Internet Connection Revolutionized Music Class for Students in Rural Minnesota
An online project is connecting rural Minnesota schools’ bands and orchestras with the state’s oldest music education institution. Professional musicians from the nonprofit MacPhail Center for Music teach low-income students via video instruction. Through the partnership, small-town students get access to amazing learning opportunities that their schools don’t have other ways to offer. The project started in 2011 with one school, and has now expanded to 17 districts and 1,500 students. Teachers at the rural schools feel more supported, and say that the project gives student access to professionals who would normally only be able to provide lessons and instruction to students living in a city.
This School Cut Textbook Costs from $600 to $150 With One Innovation
At Archbishop Stepinac High School in upstate New York, almost every textbook is now digital and accessible from students’ laptops and tablets. The cost of books has dropped from $600 to $150, and all of the digital textbooks are kept in cloud storage. And more than just migrating traditional content onto a screen, the digital textbooks offer a much richer learning experience. The material is supplemented with videos, assessments, virtual labs and blogging capability. Students can also highlight passages or write notes in the margins without damaging a book for other students. Teachers say that student learning has improved, and homework with the digital texts is more productive, so they can engage students in more discussion and analysis in class. As tablets and computers become less expensive and more online lessons and books become available, either through publishers or through platforms that teachers find or create themselves, more students will benefit from digital textbooks and materials. “It’s all great,” said one Stepinac junior. “As long as the Wi-Fi doesn’t go down.”
How Tennis Helps These Boston Students Graduate High School
Tenacity was founded by Ned Eames, a management consultant and tennis pro who wanted to give more opportunities to inner-city students. The organization is built on a unique collaboration between athletics and academics. Tenacity staff work with teachers and school administrators to create individual study plans to help students in reading comprehension, vocabulary, and journaling, while the tennis program gets students active, and teaches them discipline, confidence and social skills. More than 95% of Tenacity students graduate from high school, versus Boston’s average of 70%. Also, 80% of Tenacity students go to college. In the next five years, Tenacity will serve 2,000 students, expand its academic support to math, and partner with schools to create multi-purpose spaces to increase capacity in its tennis instruction. Sound academics, life skill development, field trips and athletics is clearly a winning combination.
More Fun Could Fix Science Class
Parents want kids to learn more in science class, and students want school to be interesting and relevant. The solution? Make science more fun! Programs like the Mission Science Workshop in San Francisco give kids a space to explore, experiment, learn to think scientifically, and find subjects they can pursue further at school. It’s part of a new set of teaching guidelines called Next Generation Science Standards that get students to go beyond rote memorization and experiment like scientists, putting them in charge of their own exploration and learning.
Students Shouldn’t Have to Choose Between Vocational Education and College Prep
Traditional technical education can do a lot of good for students, but it’s often stigmatized for neglecting college-prep and locking kids into one job. But Georgia high schools’ new Pathway program features big improvements. All students in the program choose an academically-focused path, and participate in electives, college preparatory courses, and career exploration. The courses in the program challenge students to develop problem-solving skills as they earn industry certifications through a hybrid model. At Dalton High School in Dalton, Georgia, students work with 3D-printers, welding equipment, and computer-controlled machinery. The program makes academic and economic sense, and it’s a great way to prepare students simultaneously for the workforce and higher education.
How iPads Can Totally Revise the Way We Teach Kids to Write
Everyone knows the drill of writing a five-paragraph essay for school: the blank notebook paper or Word document, and the daunting process of brainstorming and organizing. But that writing process can all be changed by the iPad. Tablet apps provide a variety of options for students to brainstorm and compose according to how they work best. And using technology, teachers and peers can easily leave feedback both in the form of written comments and videos. Using iPads also opens up new opportunities for collaboration among students or classrooms — like when students from a school in Chicago collaborated with students in Iceland to write a book about communities. The iPad takes the writing process and its many stages of drafting and editing off a static page and into a dynamic, digital learning environment — exactly what students need to engage with the process of creating essays and stories.