Wednesday December 19th

Today groups had project time. Many groups have yet to put their project into action, but many have also already finished! Just because their action phase is over, doesn't mean their whole project is! Students have to reflect on their project, deciding what went good and bad. 
 

Yesterday Michelle Kennedy from the Dale Carnegie training program came in to talk to the students. She talked about various things that could help them improve in leadership and be an overall better person. Students learned how to strike up a conversation and how to begin to be respected by adults. They also got the challenge to have a conversation with somebody everyday for the next month using their new conversation fillers. To find out more about the Dale Carnegie program you can go to their website: http://www.dalecarnegie.com/. 

 

Monday December 17th

Today, students got to participate in a celebration raffle. They had the chance to win a wide variety of prizes including a giant candy cane, Starbucks gift card, and other items.
Students also got to speak to the entire group about how, their project went or what they are planning on doing and what they need from the group. One group went to a school at lunch and gave kids mangoes to fight against childhood obesity. Another group had a food drive and collected over 300 pounds of food. One group has an event on Thursday called Ornaments for Autism. It will be from 4:30 PM to 7:00 PM in the North cafeteria and will cost $3 to get in. People can come in and make ornaments and color coloring pages. There will be free food and fun holiday music.  
They also had project time, honors English had a chance to meet, and they had workshop time as well.

Blog for December 7th

On Wednesday, we had Brenna Root from the Winnebago County re:TH!NK program talk to us. re:TH!NK is about benefiting the community's health through providing resources and educational programs. She talked to us about how FACT (Fight Against Corporate Tobacco) about how tobacco products are marketed towards children and teenagers using bright colors and flavors similar to those of candy. For more information about re:TH!NK or FACT, you can visit the rethink Winnebago at http://www.rethinkwinnebago.org/ or FACT's website at http://www.fightwithfact.com/.

  

Brenna Root presenting in front of communities.

Lately we have been continuing with the workshops and our projects of  how the body breaks down. On Monday, we will finish the prepare and plan stage of our project. This means that the brainstorming stage is over and we are moving forward with the projects, starting to get a better idea of what we want our project to be.

Monday Student Blog

Monday, December 3, 2012

Today at communities students continued on with the recently added block schedule. In the block schedule, students spend time learning as a class, instead of the normal project groups.  The blocks are all part of the investigation stage of the current project "How The Body Breaks Down." This will be the second week of this investigation stage. One may think this is to long of a time period if all that is being accomplished is simply finding a project topic, and researching the means in which the project will be presented. This is not true. The investigation stage is the most vital stage of a project. It is essential for creating a firm foundation, which can be thoroughly researched and well presented. Last unit, many students found there was no introduction to the project. These two weeks of investigation will eliminate that problem. Students will also, later this week, be contacting a partner. The initial contact is done by a teacher. This is because a call from a teacher is a much more professional way to attempt partnership. The success rate of actually acquiring a partner is also much higher when a teacher talks to the potential partner before the student. The rest of the week will be fairly similar to today. It is not the average week in the life of a student at communities, but the things done this week will help the students when the schedule is back to normal.

Blog for November 30th

Today we continued our project of "how the body breaks down". We are going to give a brief video blog of what we plan to accomplish with our project and why the topic is important to us. We are also considering community partners that we can contact to help with this project and continuing  to find out if there is a real need in the community.

When the Body Breaks Down

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Today, in Communities, we are continuing our unit "When the Body Breaks Down." This unit has us learn about how the human body responds when it fails. For example, some of us are researching diseases, cancer, obesity, and even psychological issues.

The teachers are helping us by giving workshops. One of the science workshops was a lesson on digestion. We watched a video that gave us information that we needed to complete a study guide. Later, we took a short quiz in class after the teacher reviewed what we needed to know. Understanding the Digestive System is important, even for the students whose projects do not involve this system.

Another workshop that was held involved English. Mr. Weber talked with one group about how fictional stories can allow the reader to see life from different perspectives. He gave us a short story that talked about a small family that was tragically affected by a deadly sickness. The story had us see the perspective of the father. The father was told he would die shortly, and since the mother was already dead, the father was forced to find a new family for his daughter to be adopted into. It was very moving and well written.

History was incorporated into this unit as well. We were taught about pandemics, such as the Bubonic Plague, and their effect on society. For instance, when the Bubonic Plague occurred in Europe during the Medieval Ages, food became much more expensive due to the fact that many of the workers died.

Be sure to check out the Communities website as well as our Facebook Wall!

 

Bria Lattery (a Communities student)

The Start of a New Unit

Monday, November 26th 2012

School this week for students at Communities will be quite different compared to previous weeks. Instead of being free to research and investigate, with minimal guidance from teachers, students will see the more traditional learning approach.  Benchmarks will be taught, instead of researched.  Today students were introduced to a new schedule. This schedule is part of the investigation and plan/prepare stage of their new unit, which focuses on how the body breaks down. Compared to last unit, students have much more freedom when choosing their topic.  However, this freedom will be much more structured, and it is this new schedule that will give the unit its structure. The new schedule breaks the three hours into two advisories and two blocks. During the blocks, students are grouped by their current science level. The different groups are put with individual teachers to learn in depth benchmarks, that will help guide them through their unit. The blocks are very similar to a the previous method of teaching benchmarks, however they are all within the investigation and plan/prepare stage of the unit  in hopes that students will be able to connect this information to their project topic before any real action takes place. In other words, this is to make sure the students don't get to far into their projects, before making sure the projects are doable. This is one of the many ways communities is continually improving, helping communities students learn the same things as other students, just in a different way.

Blog for November 19th

Monday 11/19
The , the students in Communities at oshkosh north are currently wrapping up their energy unit. Monday they had some time to put the finishing touches to their flipped classrooms. The flipped classrooms are presentations done at the end of a unit, that explain what they have learned. After a little time for some last minute finalizations, the students ate popcorn while watching each others presentations. The students also had the privilege of listening to guest speaker  Ashley Shipman, from UW Madison. She works in admissions, and lead the students on to a informative talk, that just included many tips, and valuable information about getting into college. This was a very valuable presentation to the students. Many students, due to the presentation, now understand how important the work ethic and performance that occurs in the early years of high school are. It was a day mainly for listening and learning.

Wrapping up the Election Unit

Hello Everyone! The communities new website participationnation.info now has the communities students summaries added. Their summaries will give everyone a non partisan view about some of the conflicts in the up coming election. On Monday and Tuesday of next week some of the communities students will be holding signs at street corners encouraging people to vote in the up coming election. Also the communities students have been on various radio stations and even on television telling the world what communities is about. You can go to participationnation.info to hear the communities students radio broadcasts. Check it out!

Guest Speaker and Summaries

Hello everyone! Today we had a guest speaker. Dr. Gundlach, the deputy superintendent of the Oshkosh area school district, explained to us what the district has planned for us as far as technology. Also, Dr. Gundlach showed his electric car. He explained to us how to works and some other basic facts. Finally, we will soon be uploading our election topic summaries to participationnation.info very soon.

Today in communities, Mr. Steve Ellision brought in a hydro powdered motorcycle for us to look at and observe! it was today's brain break and was a very cool thing! It showed students that when they think together they can produce great things! Students also today continued working on their election projects and created an outline! Their final draft is due on tuesday so make sure to check back and see how they turn out! Also the energy project deadlines are getting closer and students are continuing to work on those daily!

Today communities students continued on their energy and election projects. They also had an advisory challenge where famous speeches were given and the advisory had to guess what person gave that speech. Not a whole lot new in the communities world as students continued to do what they have been for the last week! It should start to get interesting though in the next week as students start to wrap up their election projects and continue to work on their energy projects!

 Today was a very busy day for communities students. They started the day of with an energy hour where they continued to work on their projects. It is starting to get exciting where projects are due in about a month! Groups also had partners coming in to help them further there knowledge on their topics. Students then closed off the day working on their election projects which they just started on Tuesday. Students were given a topic something involving elections, past elections to help further their knowledge on the election coming up. A great Friday in communities check in next week to see whats happening next week!

Chances To Volunteer

Today in communities all the students had a chance to volunteer to get more chances to  connected in the community around us. The student were able to volunteer for zoolaween, spooktacular, The November gallery walk and to go to a civic engagement meeting. Zoolaween is a event where the student could dress up in Halloween costumes at the Menominee park zoo and hand out candy to the little kids that came there to go trick or treating. The communities students also volunteered for spooktacular which is a event t north where communities students and other clubs at north dress up in Halloween costumes and hand candy to little kids that come trick or treating there. For the November gallery walk the communities students were given another chance to present their neighborhood pictures. Finally The Civic Engagement meeting is where to communities students and Mr. Leib will for to the meeting and explain to them how communities is doing.

Improving Our Projects

Today all the Communities students met with one of the four teachers and talked about their projects. The made sure they were able to produce their focus questions. In about a week, students are going to have to write a paragraph answering their focus questions so it's good they start practicing and working with answering them. Today also included a TED talk were the communities crew learned about leaders, what makes and leader and what you do to get follwers as a leader. They then will have to blog about specifally their group and how each member is a leader and who would be first to follow. A typical Wednesday as students kept working on their projects and learned techniques to make their project the best it can be.

Wrapping up the Week

This week was a busy one for the communities students at Oshkosh North. The Students had to organize and research their topics for a large project that will be the starting point for the independence that communities eventually will grant the students. Using this project so far as a preview to what communities could become, I have to say that I am impressed. There were some groups who have already contacted experts in their area of research. The groups are using the experts as a sort of guide to what their project could be, rather than for the information the project will have. With this week at a close, the planning stage for the projects is almost done. In the coming weeks, the students will finish up the planning, and begin the actual construction of their projects.

Energy Unit Discussion in LRC

On October 3, 2012 all of the Communities Students met in the LRC to discuss what each group has so far for the energy unit. Mr. Weber asked one person from each group to come up in front of everyone and share their topic. Overall there was probably about 15 to 20 people all sitting at a table. When it was their turn the person stood up and talked about there topic and what they were gonna do for their project. I thought it was very useful to hear what other groups were doing for their project, and some groups gave our group an idea.

Communities Gallery Walk

On Thursday, September 27th, Communities held a gallery walk inviting teachers, professors, and anyone who wanted to learn more about Communities. The gallery walk consists of student's photographs they've taken during their "My Neighborhood" project. Students had to choose one photo that represented their neighborhood and turn it into an 8 by 10. Along with the photo, they had to create a catchy headline to draw the in the viewer. Students then presented their photo by explaining what their photo was about and why it represented their neighborhood. Also, the viewers could ask any additional questions they had about the student's photograph or Communities in general. This gallery walk gave the students a chance to show other people out of Communities what they have learned over the past few weeks.

Communities Students on a Scavenger Hunt

On Thursday, September 20th, the Communities students were on a scavenger hunt in Downtown Oshkosh. The students were randomly grouped into 5-6 people and every group had a list of tasks they had to complete. The students were off on their own and were expected to use NITE communication when greeting business owners. Technology was involved meaning students had access to using their smartphones to find information they needed. This activity helped students that weren't familiar with each other come together and problem solve.

Welcome to the official blog of the Communities School at Oshkosh North!