We Start Building Towers and Drawing Mice.
I know, I haven't been blogging much recently.
Sorry.
I am trying not to let school run my life each and every day. Most days, it does, but not EVERY day. I only worked for about 2 hours over the weekend and I only stayed until 7:00 p.m. on Monday. Tuesday, I had to leave early to take care of some school business and today, I was out of school by 4:30 p.m.
Tomorrow, I stay late to do some grading.
In a couple of my AutoCAD classes, I have started doing some project work, which I vastly prefer to book stuff. In the 4th Period, where kids try pretty hard and usually get some good stuff done, I started a "Plotting Technology" Project. I spent some time the other day digging a bunch of old junk out of some of the remaining filing cabinet drawers in the Tech Lab that the kids could draw in AutoCAD. I found two remote controls, a handy vac for keyboards, two old digital cameras, some printer stands, some computer mice, a micrometer, a joystick from an old videogame, stuff like that. Kids have to create a dimensioned sketch of their item and then plot the piece in AutoCAD.
The kids seem to be doing fairly well at the job, for the most part. At least it isn't doing problems out of the book.
In my 5th Period Tech II class and my 6th Period Tech class, which are both fairly advanced, I am hauling out a lesson plan that I developed last year. Kids divide into groups of two and must design a tower, using only three sheets of paper and five inches of tape. Then, the teams must use AutoCAD to create a dimensioned construction diagram and final model drawing. Teams will be judged on the height of their tower, the amount of paper left over and the quality of the AutoCAD drawings.
Kids must decide whether to go for a tall tower and use most of their materials or whether to just clear the minimum height required and have a bunch of materials left over. Some of the groups are doing very well, with two of them getting towers as high as 50 inches while only using 3/4 of a sheet of paper.
In 1st Period today, we had our Trade Show scheduled, where kids were going to have their booths set up to teach each other a number of different AutoCAD commands and so forth. I have been doing this in each class and it has worked well, for the most part. Today, the juniors were all out taking the PSAT test, so half of my class was unexpectedly missing. I split the class into boys and girls and we played AutoCAD Pictionary. Unlike the last time that I tried this activity, with 5th Period, this time it went well and was a lot of fun. The kids seemed to get into it and the guys were winning and cheering and doing the wave. It was nice to see some enthusiasm for a change.
Anyway, enough for now, I need to go make dinner.
Sorry.
I am trying not to let school run my life each and every day. Most days, it does, but not EVERY day. I only worked for about 2 hours over the weekend and I only stayed until 7:00 p.m. on Monday. Tuesday, I had to leave early to take care of some school business and today, I was out of school by 4:30 p.m.
Tomorrow, I stay late to do some grading.
In a couple of my AutoCAD classes, I have started doing some project work, which I vastly prefer to book stuff. In the 4th Period, where kids try pretty hard and usually get some good stuff done, I started a "Plotting Technology" Project. I spent some time the other day digging a bunch of old junk out of some of the remaining filing cabinet drawers in the Tech Lab that the kids could draw in AutoCAD. I found two remote controls, a handy vac for keyboards, two old digital cameras, some printer stands, some computer mice, a micrometer, a joystick from an old videogame, stuff like that. Kids have to create a dimensioned sketch of their item and then plot the piece in AutoCAD.
The kids seem to be doing fairly well at the job, for the most part. At least it isn't doing problems out of the book.
In my 5th Period Tech II class and my 6th Period Tech class, which are both fairly advanced, I am hauling out a lesson plan that I developed last year. Kids divide into groups of two and must design a tower, using only three sheets of paper and five inches of tape. Then, the teams must use AutoCAD to create a dimensioned construction diagram and final model drawing. Teams will be judged on the height of their tower, the amount of paper left over and the quality of the AutoCAD drawings.Kids must decide whether to go for a tall tower and use most of their materials or whether to just clear the minimum height required and have a bunch of materials left over. Some of the groups are doing very well, with two of them getting towers as high as 50 inches while only using 3/4 of a sheet of paper.
In 1st Period today, we had our Trade Show scheduled, where kids were going to have their booths set up to teach each other a number of different AutoCAD commands and so forth. I have been doing this in each class and it has worked well, for the most part. Today, the juniors were all out taking the PSAT test, so half of my class was unexpectedly missing. I split the class into boys and girls and we played AutoCAD Pictionary. Unlike the last time that I tried this activity, with 5th Period, this time it went well and was a lot of fun. The kids seemed to get into it and the guys were winning and cheering and doing the wave. It was nice to see some enthusiasm for a change.
Anyway, enough for now, I need to go make dinner.
posted by silverpenny at 6:17 PM
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