Celebrating the Chinese New Year at SLMS
On January 31st, teachers and students at Southern Lehigh Middle School celebrated the Chinese New Year together, the year of the horse. During 1st period, with the help of Mrs. Snell, Mr. Peng taught the students how to make traditional Chinese dumplings. Then all the students made dumplings by themselves and enjoyed the delicious traditional Chinese food they made. Later in the other class periods, Mr. Peng shared a presentation on the Chinese New Year culture to help the students know and learn more about this topic. During the presentation, Mr. Peng talked about how Chinese people celebrate the Chinese New Year, decorate their houses, what special food they have, and some interesting Dos and Don’ts during that time. While learning about the culture of the Chinese New Year, Mrs. Snell made Chinese style egg fried rice and Mrs. Yocum made green tea and black tea for the students to sample. Everyone enjoyed their day and learned a great deal about the Chinese New Year’s Day.
Genetics, Discovery Learning Centers and the Common Core
The objective of this Introduction to Genetics inquiry activity was to immerse students in a Common Core activity using strategies from both Reading Apprenticeship and Discovery Education. Students worked in groups at stations that presented the topic of genetics to them in a variety of sources. Students accessed information about genetics through a Discovery Education Assignment site, learning from written text, PowerPoint presentations, raps, Discovery videos, and cartoons at each station. They compared information from each type of source as they moved from one station to the next during the course of the lesson.
Prior to doing station activities, students surfaced existing schema on the topic of genetics, and shared these schema with the station groups on large newsprint. As students interacted with the resources at the table, they searched for evidence to support what they already knew, refute what they thought they knew, or add to their recorded knowledge (citing evidence – Common Core). This cited evidence was recorded on different colors of Post-it notes to represent the three types of evidence required (support, refute, add to). As the groups of students moved from station to station, students added to the Post-it notes left by the group before.
