Category Archives: Galileo Trial

What would you change about Acton Academy?

Collaboration, Galileo Trial, Ranch trip, Uncategorized

Today, I asked in group: “What would you change about Acton Academy?”

The answer below, but first a few glimpses of our Eagles hard at work, making the final push on Core Skills, Portfolios, Apprenticeships, Learning Badges and the Salem Witch Trial (tomorrow.)

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Q: “What would you change about Acton Academy?”

The first response: “I wish we could spend more time at school, because there’s so much to do.” The next four students agreed, each adding their own reasons for wanting more time at Acton.

Where did the time go?

Exhibition, Galileo Trial, Math, Quests,

With gravitas and quiet excitement, the Eagles welcomed parents and grandparents into their classroom this morning to share their hard work from the past five weeks.  Students led their parents on math tours of Khan Academy, talked them through the scientific paradigm shift timeline they built together, and shared writing and art.  They demonstrated their rules of engagement and how they hold one another accountable for keeping the classroom a terrific learning environment.  The Eagles regrouped after a brief critique session with their running partners, and with the honesty, candor and courage they regularly show during discussion mode, shared their thoughts and opinions in front of a captive parent audience.

More courage about public speaking followed after lunch when the Eagles recreated the Trial of Galileo.  The Pope and his allies presented their case to a panel of judges, then Galileo and his allies presented their well-reasearched defense.  As in the real world, judges were faced with hard decisions- not just about the facts of the case but about their own ethics as well.  Would they let their opinions be bought for the price of gold?  Your Eagles can talk you through the outcome.

Congratulations to a remarkable group of young men and women on the first leg of their Hero’s Journeys at Acton.  Enjoy a well-earned week of down time!  See you on the 15th for our groundbreaking ceremony at the new campus (then back to Riverside campus for our launch of the next session).

Pitching your film idea

Communications, Core Skills, Film, Galileo Trial, Hero Story, Math, Quests, Signalling

Core Skills time featured lots of work on Khan Academy, as well as the Eagles  pitching their script ideas to the class. Later in the day, the Eagles voted to turn Charlie, James and Mason’s scripts into real films over the next few months

Later in the afternoon, Ms Anna continued to work with the Pope, Galileo’s team and our panel of judges to prepare for Friday’s trial, and Jasper’s dad David Herman came to give his Hero’s story about working in Hollywood, as well as sharing some tips on acting and directing.

We also implemented Pace’s idea of signalling what mode the class was in: Red for discussion time, with all Rules of Engagement in force; Yellow for collaborative time when students can mill around freely, as long as no one who is focused on work is being disturbed; and Green for free time.  Interestingly, we calculated that in the average day Eagles spend 1-1.5 hours in Red (discussion) mode; 1.5 hours in Green (free) mode (including the 30 minutes before class officially starts); and 4-4.5 hours in Yellow (collaborative) mode.

Spending 5.5 to 6 hours intensely “on task” every day is the reason we can pack so much discovery and learning into a single day.

Striving for Excellence and Galileo Galilei’s Trial

Art, Communications, Eagle Buck-Pts, Excellence-Best You Can Do, Film, Galileo Trial, Math

Our Eagles love learning and being with each other.  Now it’s time to aspire to excellence.

Inspired by Po Bronson and Ashley Merriman’s NutureShock and Ron Berman’s An Ethic of Excellence, we are turning over even more responsibility for managing the learning environment to the three member Council and the Eagles themselves, but providing them with language to hold each other accountable (see below):

We also introduced a new accountability system run completely by the students themselves:

In Core Skills, students began planning and executing their Khan Academy lessons for the next nine weeks, by which time we expect every AA MS student to have demonstrated mastery in arithmetic and the other AA Elementary School Math skills (many students already have accelerated past this.) Ms Abigail continued guiding students in writing the storyline for their the “Past/Future” film project.

Ms Zoey continued the self portrait project in Art.

Ms Anna introduce the Galileo Trial debate, where over the next several days Eagles will research and assume roles to recreate Galileo’s dilemma of whether to advance or abandon his heliocentric paradigm, with real world consequences for all – either lost freedom for Galileo and his friends (lost free time) or lost riches for the Church (a loss of chocolate coins.)

Researching the trial of Galileo.