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.