Day 4 Reflection

WHAT DID WE DO? WHAT'S NEW and CHANGED? (reflection and description of event / activity)

EVIDENCE OF LEARNING (include artifacts, photos, videos, drawings, sketches)

Today was a very productive and interesting day for our group with a lot of changes and revisions. Starting the day, we determined that the workshop would be the main idea with a mini cookbook and possible social media page as smaller parts of the solution. Mr. Tate then spoke to our group and stated that we had to generate new ideas that are very different from the three we decided on. In fact, he said that we were not even allowed to mention these ideas in our new ones because our ideas were too basic and not revolutionary. The teachers then gave us 7 minutes to generate new ideas. We were stumped. The ideas we came up with were not realistic or revolutionary. At this moment, a few of us started to panic but this was actually a blessing in disguise. Before the teachers left us to help other groups, Ms. Ricci posed two significant questions that we had yet to answer. Are we truly passionate about our topic? Who is the targeted audience? We decided to take a walk and ended up sitting down on some lounge chairs and going around the group and answering the questions posed by Ms. Ricci. Tim was the first to explain that he was not passionate about the idea and if not everyone was passionate about the idea then we knew we had to change. We looked through the google doc with all of the different problems and still could not find one we all liked. Finally, we returned to the classroom and again talked with Ms. Ricci. She led us through some exercises, which made us list off ideas and not worry about the quality of them. She brought up Play Kindergarten and from there a new idea for our project was decided. How can we incorporate a fun learning space into the school environment? This interaction with Ms. Ricci helped our team climb our way out of the bottom of the U. We only had a few minutes to discus the new topic before we switched directions into a new activity but in these few minutes, we were able to brainstorm a few thoughts and decided that we can transform a classroom into an activity area with games such as Ping-Pong and Legos. Also, during the product pitch, we received many insightful questions, which we immediately began discussion solutions for. Overall, our struggles as a group and interactions with the teachers, led to us forming a new problem and topic, which we are all passionate about.

Blog Summary 11/29

WHAT DID WE DO? WHAT'S NEW and CHANGED? (reflection and description of event / activity)

EVIDENCE OF LEARNING (include artifacts, photos, videos, drawings, sketches)

Today, Mikhail, Michael, Ashley, Tim, Rory, and I made a lot of progress on our project, Collaborative Cooking. We started our day in the classroom where we continued to add and refine our idea of creating a club at the Middle School where students would be able to make snacks that are both tasty and healthy. After deciding upon the basic idea of what we were going to do we ended up refining it, and making a game where we had 5 healthy ingredients, and 5 unhealthy ingredients, and the kids would have to make a snack with these ingredients. From there, we would have judges that score the snacks based on how healthy and how tasty they are. After we finished coming up with this we pitched our idea to the class, and received a lot of feedback. After receiving this feedback and speaking with Mrs. Ricci, Mr. Tate, and Mr. D we decided that we were going to try and come up with a new idea. After moving to the auditorium and staying there for quite some time, we concluded that it would be best if instead of making it a club, we could just make it a workshop. In addition to making it a workshop, we added some ideas that our peers suggested, such as adding a recipe book.  After re-pitching this idea to the class, and receiving more feedback, we decided that it would be best to continue to refine and add to the workshop idea, as we believe that this is the most effective way to encourage middle school students to eat healthy.

Collaborative Cooking (Tim, Mikhail, Jacob, Ashley, Rory, Michael) - 11/28

WHAT DID WE DO? WHAT'S NEW and CHANGED? (reflection and description of event / activity)

EVIDENCE OF LEARNING (include artifacts, photos, videos, drawings, sketches)

Today, our class formed project groups and began work on projects. I worked with Mikhail, Jacob, Ashley, Rory, and Michael on forming possible action plans to encourage healthy eating at the Lower School. The physical environment did not change--we were still working in the chorus room--but all of us had to begin collaborating with new classmates. Setting group norms helped create an environment conducive to creativity. These norms include finishing work on time, letting everyone's voice be heard, and responding to messages in a timely manner (e.g. text messages or email). I personally felt comfortable throughout the creative process, since we were all willing to suggest our own ideas as well as offer concerns about those of our teammates. We were all respectful to each other while refining our ideas. We were also able to give and receive constructive criticism when sharing our ideas with other project groups. This respectful, yet critical environment helped us narrow our solution down to a collaborative cooking class led by Upper School students. We may also incorporate a game that rewards Lower School students for eating healthy. Throughout the rest of the intensive, we will continue to develop and refine our solution.

Our logo Some of my notes during the group-to-group share Mikhail's notes on our solution ideas