Lots of high fives in the room during core skills today!  As students sprint towards Thanksgiving break, enthusiasm for acquiring math skills is running high.  Several members of the class have passed the 100 skills mark on Khan Academy, putting them ahead of schedule for the class requirement of 107 skills by the end of 2012.

Diving into their Independent Learner Badge pamphlets, Eagles are looking to one another for suggestions about engaging yet challenging books to add to their to-read Shelfari shelves, testing their typing skills, and gearing up for the other missions they’ll have to accomplish to earn this very important milestone.

In art, more work on dragons while listening to stories of mythological beasts (today: Theseus and the Minotaur ).

MyHJ brought a lively discussion about flow- what is it? How do you know you’re in it?  Can you get into it at will?
A very special presentation followed the MyHJ work session:  one of the students chose to contact as a potential guide a former financier who lives on the other side of the world and retired from his illustrious career to dedicate his life to helping the less powerful – animals, children, the poor.  Ana gave an amazing, inspiring presentation, and even incorporated Socratic discussion techniques.  After a heartfelt round of applause, students commented that they felt as if they’d been in the live audience for a TED talk!

In project time,  Ms. Anna introduced Pavlovian behavior theory with a hilarious (and memorable) clip from the series “The Office”, followed by a brief intro to some of Dan Ariely’s work on behavioral economics.  Students were then unleashed to learn about tree diagraming and the principles of Bayesian probability.

Pairing up to play (and chart the results of)  Rock, Paper, Scissors provided a practice in calculating percentages, a chance to create and analyze tree diagrams, and a visceral introduction to Bayes’ theory. The debriefing session afterwards yielded opinions about whether or not one can “win” at R,P,S using probability and logic.  Jack explained the Bayesian theory beautifully, based on his own interpretation of his tree diagram results.