Weekly Update 9/27-10/1

The passing of the inspiration book

Hello Everyone,

What a great week of project based learning we just had. All three divisions have completed guided inquiry based projects.

Here is this week's update:

Things to ask your student about:

• What "monster" did you create during design this week?
  

• How are you doing with the pace/grades in your FLVS classes?
  

• Tell me about how you used slideshare, Youtube, flicker, google docs, evernote and other network learning tools while you were putting together your guided PBL project.
  

PBL update:

• All students have now completed a guided Project based learning assignment from start to finish. They will be starting on their individual PBLs in the next few weeks.
  

Project Feature:

• Please go to this link to see the middle school inquiry project that they completed this week:

• http://docs.google.com/a/oh-institute.org/present/edit?id=0AcahQgRWy2c2ZGQ0NzNydjdfMzUycnoyN3BkYg&hl=en

• They have completed their portions of the project and have contacted experts to review their work. They will being doing a formal presentation/defense of the project once the experts have reviewed it.
  

Parent Meeting Update:

• Thank you to everyone for attending our first parent meeting of the year. It was great to have the chance to showcase all of the exciting things that the students are accomplishing.

Five Week Family Meetings:

• I am happy to be meeting with everyone this week. Please remember to bring your child and a computer with you to the meeting.
  

Field Experience:

• Hannah B, Mitchell, Davis, Alyssa, Ellee and Jack will all be going on a field experience to Chef Nelson for a cooking lesson Friday October 1st. Each student will be making a plan of how to cover some of their standards using what they learn about cooking and the job of being a professional Chef.
  

Testing time:

• We will be taking the ITBS test this week starting on Tuesday.
  

Fundraising meetings update:

• The students met Thursday 9/23 to come up with some ideas about the trip and fundraising. This week we will be working on making a mission statement for our trip and talking more about what an educational philanthropic field experience really looks like.

• Parents will meet again this Friday at Amavida at 9:00am to go over the fundraising ideas that we came up with. Each parent that came up with an idea will bring details of what their proposed fundraising will take to accomplish. Students will most likely attend this meeting as well to present their mission statement for the trip.
  

Extra Help/Time:

• One piece of feedback that Randy and I both receive a lot from the MS and HS students is that they would like some extra time at school to work on and have help with their FLVS classes. There are two ways that students can receive this support. First, we are at school every afternoon until between 4:30-5:30 (and sometimes later) and both of us are happy to help. Some students like to stay for the extra work time which is fine too as long as they are working. The second way to receive extra support is for the students to let Randy know that they would like him to meet them in the morning and he can arrive early to allow for extra work time or help with coursework. We are here to help them succeed!
  

December travel window:

• Please start making your plans now for travel and field experiences in the three weeks in December. We need to have everything arranged by mid October to be able to plan the students project work and start building background knowledge on their topics.
  

Happy Birthday to : Ellee 10/1!!!!

Attitudes of gratitude:

• Thank you to all the parents that came to both the parent meeting 9/21 and the fundraising meeting 9/24!Thank you Denise for being the parent liaison for fundraising! Thank you Ruder family for the awesome snacks and sharpies!

"Education helps one case cease being intimidated by strange situations."

Maya Angelou

I am looking forward to another great week of learning at OH!
Amy