This week in Mr. Houck’s class we started the Great American Book Return, worked on our object stories, watched The Energy Gamble, and shared our disease research projects.

This week The Great American Book Return has begun. Last year the winner returned 48 books! So if you see any books with a teacher’s name written on the top make sure to get them back in class, and maybe get a prize.

We have also been working on our object stories, a story about a special item that has a special meaning in your life. On Monday, May 14^th we will be sharing some cool stories.

The Energy Gamble was a movie that talked mostly about all the little things that people in California could do to save energy. During the movie some people fell asleep, so Mr. Houck put on the chicken mask and touched one of their feet, which woke them up with screaming ear to ear. The whole class burst out in laughter.

We also finished researching our diseases, and shared them this week, getting information from each disease to be ready for our jeopardy review, and then the final test next week.

This week in Mr. Houck’s class we just started our first drafts of object stories! We’re all excited to do it.

Throughout the week each one of us had to memorize a poem, and also we finished our last couple of art talks.  And on Tuesday we started learning about smallpox, malaria, viruses and bacteria. Then, my favorite part, was when we got to pick our diseases to learn about. Somehow my ball from the bingo spinner was lost so I got what was left, but I still like the disease I’m learning about.

On Wednesday we did a fun comparison and competition to share our energy comic books. And we watched an interesting video about viruses.

On Thursday we watched another video about bacteria, and turned in our cool poem visuals. The poem was written by an amazing poet named Emily Dickinson. It was the same poem we had to memorize.

This week was the best I think.  Some of the 8^th grade speeches were great and we also started a new read-aloud book called ‘Cold Cereal.’ I honestly think it’s better than ‘Ender’s Game.’

This week in Mr. Houck’s class we did these posters called Metaphor Models, where you had to pick something you could buy and compare it to the three civilizations we have studied this year: Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Ancient China. I really enjoyed doing these, because you got to pick your own topic to compare each one too.

We also started to revise our art talk speeches, because we had to turn in our rough drafts to Mr. Houck by Thursday. Thank goodness he gave us time to work on them in class, because I might not have gotten mine done in time, but I did, so I’m good.

Mr. Houck also introduced us to a new topic, called Newton’s Toy Box. That’s where we get to do these different lab tests with a wooden ball. So far that seems to be fun, so I’m looking forward to what’s coming up next.

We also started to talk a little about energy. This was pretty fun to learn about, because I’ve never really learned about energy.

Also, last week we started the first part of a movie called ‘Guns, Germs, and Steel,’ so we got to finish the second part of that movie, which was interesting.

My Father’s House is a family shelter that serves 30 families at a time who are trying to turn their lives around.

My name is Jake Gradwohl. I am an 8^th grader in Mr. Houck’s class, and I am doing a service project for My Father’s House, called Socks for a Second Chance. I am collecting new socks and underwear for the homeless families currently living at My Father’s House. I will be in the Middle School front entrance every school day from April 9, 2012 to April 21, 2012, from 7:40 to 7:50, collecting donations. The top three donators each get a $15.00 iTunes gift card. Thank you for your support!

This week in Mr. Houck’s class the Cardinal Call, the Corbett middle school newspaper, came out, so we took the newspaper quiz on all the stories in the newspaper. It was written by C.M.S. students about our school.

8^th grade speeches continued this week, with many great speeches. They all did a fantastic job telling about their time in middle school and giving valuable advice.

We finished our ancient civilization unit by watching a short video called Guns, Germs, and Steel, about how civilizations are made and destroyed.

We also made posters, using metaphors to describe something we learned from each of the three ancient civilizations: China, Egypt and Mesopotamia. In my poster I compared carrots, stacks of apples, and coconuts to describe tombs, pyramids, and city walls. I think it was a fun way to end the unit.

We started art talks this week, too. We each selected a piece of literature, a song, and a painting. We will write a speech about how these pieces are connected.

This week we also continued to read Ender’s Game. I’m enjoying the book so far and can’t wait to see how it ends. We got new enrichments this week, including language hunters, P.E. and gardening. I’m still in band for 6^th period, and am doing P.E. for 7^th period.

I think we had a good week, and I’m ready for next week!

This week in Mr. Houck’s class we accomplished our goal of Doink Day! Walking through all of the booths in Marblandia showed me how much effort people had put into this, and also some people who fell a bit behind. My group, ‘The Grid,’ had to rush at the end, and surprisingly, our marble land made it through the day, and was visited by many students.

Our current read aloud book is ‘Ender’s Game,’ which I finished reading just last week.

On Tuesday this week, we started the first A.M. block with two and a half hours of math. I got a math test done, but I thought the extra time was a little excessive.  In the afternoon, we had a nice long break of free read, during which I got to go through nearly half of my book ‘Speaker For the Dead’ of the Ender’s Game series, which I enjoyed. Some people had troubles going through to the end of free read, judging by all the voices I heard while reading my book.

On Wednesday, we started making Chinese kites, where we use wooden skewers and tape to create the frame of the kite. My partner Kurt and I have gotten most of ours completed.  Now we just need to attach the string and tail. Making the kites is a seven-step process. Kurt and I just painted ours purple, and Mr. Houck broke his on his first flight. Today we continued with the kites, and most people are finished with painting and are nearly ready to fly their kites.

In 7^th period, there will be a teachers vs. students basketball game. I am thinking the teachers are going to win, like last year’s students vs. teachers basketball game. If I see Mr. Houck get a slam dunk, I will put the last few dollars I have into the pizza party jar.

This week in Mr. Houck’s class we got to write Found Poems, using the materials that we wanted to use. We worked on Marblandia, doing commercials, radio ads, and basic construction.

We also shared speeches! Even though everybody was nervous, it was amazing finding the differences between these speeches and the ones from the beginning of the year! Everyone was more confident, spoke louder, and stood a bit taller. There were a lot of interesting things to be learned, like Chinese culture, famous people in China, and more.

The seventh and eighth graders played a game to see who knew Mr. Houck’s class better. Seventh grade had Devon and Tristen, eighth had Isaac and Kadyn, and seventh grade won. Then the class got to test Mr. Houck, and he knew almost all the answers!

We took a super quiz, and made silly Chinese dragon faces to turn them in (even thought some of them looked like fish).

On Friday Mr. Long was not at school, so we listened to a new song at morning meeting…it was an interesting song, but I don’t think we should listen to it again. We also got four new books from Scholastic!

Scenario one:

Sarah is given an assignment: a persuasive essay, due at the end of the week.  She picks a topic—‘Facebook should be outlawed in schools’—because she already knows a lot about Internet safety and school privacy (her aunt teaches high school and talks about it all the time), and because she thinks her teacher will agree with her.

The week passes.  Sarah is a talented writer, and she knows she can throw this together in an evening, so she does minimal work in class.  In fact, she spends most of her time frustrating the others at her table, who are trying to work.  She fails to workshop with the teacher (who hardly notices, because, well, Sarah always turns in outstanding work…) and she is rude and condescending during peer workshops.

The night before the assignment is due, Sarah sits down at her laptop and whips out the paper in under an hour.  She did no research, she failed to grow as a writer, she negatively affected the others in her class, and, to be honest, she learned nothing.

Sarah gets an ‘A’ on her essay.

Scenario two:

Dawn is given the same assignment.  She picks a topic—‘We shouldn’t put fluoride in the water’—because she had heard something on the news, and thought it was strange that people would put chemicals in the water for health reasons, but she wasn’t sure what it was all about, and thought it’d be cool to learn.

The week passes.  Dawn scrambles to find information on the topic.  Much of it doesn’t make sense, and she has to ask for help from her older brother, who’s in college, and can try to explain to her about solubility, and aquifers, and what socioeconomic means.  She’s a struggling writer, but she’s determined.  She works quietly in class, meets with the teacher (who has trouble workshopping her essay, because, let’s face it, Dawn’s spelling is atrocious, and her handwriting…) and she tries to help her tablemates think of good hooks and conclusions during peer workshops.

The night before the assignment is due, she and her mom sit down to type the paper together, and they get it printed out before she goes to bed.  Dawn researched her topic, formed her own opinion, learned the basics of the persuasive essay, and was helpful to her classmates.

Dawn gets a ‘C’ on her essay.

Photo courtesy DcJohn

Now, obviously these scenarios don’t occur all the time.  Maybe they’re even the rarity in some schools.  But they do illustrate several of the fundamental flaws of a grade-based system of assessment at the middle school level: it doesn’t account for growth; it fails to address attitude, behavior and use of time; it is difficult to adjust to fit students’ ever-changing (and widely varying) ability levels.  And probably most important, it does a disservice to students by rewarding the easy speech choice, or the vanilla book report, or the ready-made science project, rather than the challenging health topic, the biology experiment that might fail, or the history research that yields little more than a few paragraphs worth of material, but will stick with a student for years.

A letter grade has no language for a student’s interest, or boredom, or intensity, or curiosity.  It cannot describe to you the rough draft, riddled with errors, that goes through multiple revisions and edits.  It cannot communicate shame, risk, or frustration, and it cannot tell you about pride, fulfillment, or joy.  Yet these are emotions that students deal with every day.

In Corbett Middle School, we constantly assess students, but we don’t give letter grades.  We test, we evaluate work, we score projects, and we do it continually.  But we have better means of communicating progress.

We score informally, with one-on-one dialogues, workshops, peer reviews, writing shares, museum walks, and flash critiques.

We score formally, with state tests, with the Oregon Benchmark rubrics, or with teacher- and student-created rubrics that can be specifically tailored to a unit that might last eight weeks or three days.

We communicate with a narrative report card that includes hundreds of hours of schooling’s worth of information: writing, speech, social studies and science projects; the books we read as a class; synopses of every unit; details on PE and enrichments that might be skipped on a traditional report card; and the real meaty stuff—the personalized comments and goals for each student in the upcoming weeks.

We often let the students’ work speak for itself.  They compile portfolios in their ‘Work-I’m-Proud-Of’ drawer, to share during student-led conferences.  They design and implement service projects that involve their peers and help those in need.  They publish their writing in the Cardinal Call, or Cardinal Sparks, or the Gresham Outlook.  They host community nights to showcase their work, or invite the grade school up to walk through their museums.  They compete in math contests, and chess tournaments, and athletics, and drama, and music.

And the look on a student’s face when her story makes a classmate cry, or she gets through the speech without notecards, or her painting is hung in the commons, or her medieval catapult works, or she throws a spiral, or her movie trailer has the whole school laughing out loud, is a lot more telling than an ‘A’ or a ‘C’.

This week in Mr. Houck’s class we researched more for our ancient China essays, talked about some of the religions in ancient China, got started and finished our Marblandia blueprint rough drafts, got a visit from Mr. Fruehauf, and got more done on our book group movie trailers.

During Mr. Fruehauf’s visit we learned all about ancient Chinese religion and how those religions worked, about exercises, and how energy plays a big part of every thing in ancient China and now. Also, how food has energy in it and how natural foods have more energy, about how food has a huge impact on personal health and that foods with more energy are better for you. He also talked about his experience in China and all the things he learned about qi-gong, a sort of karate type practice, where he learned about how to harness energy, and how people do all the fake tricks you would see in karate films, like how they crush stones with their hands, or make things light on fire by just pointing at it. All in all it was a really unique and fun experience hearing Mr. Fruehauf talk.

The other thing we did that was pretty fun was make our Marblandia blueprint rough draft. If you haven’t heard about the Marblandia project we are doing, it’s kind of like making a Rube Goldberg machine, except we can interact with objects more than once. The blueprints are supposed to show how our Marblandia machine will work and show all the steps the marble will roll through.

That’s about it for this week!

This week in Mr. Houck’s class we started studying our Ancient China topics, and to help us out we went to the central library, on Wednesday during a field trip, to check out books. Before we went to the library, though, we looked at Ancient Chinese and European art at the Portland Art Museum. I thought that the trip to the museum was one of the best parts of the field trip. It was really cool to see the difference between the art from China, and then to see the art from Europe.

Next, we went to a Chinese restaurant to have lunch, then to the Chinese Garden. I really enjoyed the Chinese Garden, because it was so peaceful and pretty to be in. Our last trip was the to the library.

Besides ancient china, we started our marblelandia group projects this week. We got into our groups and chose what our marble land is going to be about, and what adventure the marbles are going to go on.

We also started public service announcements for issues that we have in our school. I think that these posters just might help a little, especially by using the techniques real advertisers use. But these are just practice for the big marblelandia advertisements.