HUMS staff blog update, November 24, 2019

A bit thank you to Jackie and Sarah for being the points for our very successful 

ITEMS:

1.11/26: A community celebration. Instead of our planned Learning Community meetings, meet in the Middle School Gallery. Details to follow. This should be great time for all!

2.December Meetings

December 3 - Dept Mtg (this will be a middle school staff meeting - agenda will be sent out on Monday, December 2. Topics include: Board decision recap, transition work timeline brainstorming, SBAC, - please let me know topics that may need some attention... )

December 10 - Shared Staff

December 17 - Faculty/LC

3. Book Summary of "ENGAGEMENT by DESIGN"

Take a moment to review this book summary (linked below) as it relates to engagement.  I hope to use the book summary at our upcoming dept meeting.  

Learn the 3 parts of student engagement outlined in Engagement by Design: • Relationship building • Teacher clarity • Student challenge 4.  FYI Duane will be out of the building on Monday from 9:30 - 1:30.  5.  I couldn't resist sending to everyone inspired by Katelyn's recent Barbie bungee unit.   Using Barbie, Batman, and Bratz Dolls to Teach Proportional Reasoning             In this Rethinking Schools article, Flannery Denny describes spending several years trying to figure out how to teach proportional reasoning to her New York City middle-school students. She believes this is one of the most important math concepts for the age group, with all kinds of real-life applications: cooks scaling recipes to feed different numbers of people; farmers planning seed orders for their fields; and anesthesiologists determining dosages for different patients. Denny liked the idea of using Barbie dolls, but worried that girls might compare the doll’s “idealized” proportions to their own, and boys might fixate on certain features. Then in a workshop with teachers from other schools, Denny hit upon the idea of using action figures. She reached out to her school community and gathered a diverse collection including Buzz Lightyear, Bratz dolls, G.I. Joe, Batman, Robin, Ant-Man, Aquaman, Ariel, and, yes, Barbie and Ken. Over three days, students worked in groups of three measuring foot size, height, waist, and shoulder width and using charts of human measurements to extrapolate what the action figures would be like if they were full size. Three question for students working with Barbie:  -   Size 8 is one of the top-selling women’s shoe sizes. If Barbie’s feet were that big, how tall would she be? -   What size shoe would Barbie wear if she were 5’4” tall (the average height for women in the U.S.)? -   What would be the circumference of Barbie’s waist? Students were able to calculate that given the size of the doll’s feet, a Barbie with human size 8 feet would be 11 feet 4 inches tall! Students answered similar questions for other action figures, read and discussed articles about dolls and body image that Denny posted on the class homework website, and on the third day completed life-size posters for a hallway display with some eye-opening discoveries on how disproportionate these iconic bodies are – including 33-inch-wide Batman shoulders and a 19-inch Barbie waist circumference. :) ......... “‘Do You Have Batman Shoulders?’” by Flannery Denny in Rethinking Schools, Fall 2019 (Vol. 34, #1, pp. 22-27), no e-link available; Denny is at flannery.denny@gmail.com.