Representing the BOPDs

We are thankful for our classmate Santino and his time as our class representative. It is time to elect a new one for this semester. To do this, we repeated our routine of pairing up to compose speeches. This time around, it was clear that a representative of our class is someone who lives out our precept of helping each other. It is also an opportunity to share it with the entire elementary school community.

We refined our election process by creating a rubric that looks at three important categories: ideas, speech and dispositions. We created indicators to guide our thinking and will use that to decide on our next representative.

Reaching

We used the rays of our understanding map to qualify the last column on our class-created rubric. We made this connection because we know that we can show that we understand through different ways, and when we can, it means we have reached our goal. This symbol used to be in yellow but after we made the connection between this and our rubric, a group of us changed it into what it now means to us: The Blazing Orange Understanding Map.

Owning our understanding

This week we completed four entries in our reflection log about interactions. In planning this experience, we created a rubric to guide our performance.  We started out with three columns aligned with the levels of understanding that we use in our classroom. Red means "I tried but I'm confused", yellow means "I understand but I am not sure", and green means "I get it, I'm ready to go!" 

As we reflected about our entries in conference with Ms Montilla, some of us noticed that we went beyond "green" - this meant for example that we enhanced our performance by explaining the interaction on top of clearly describing it. Others found the same to be true in the other aspects and so we added the next level of understanding which we call, 'blazing orange". 

Our shared purpose is learning.

Reflection log and rubric

As a performance task on our current unit, we have been thinking about how our values and beliefs influence our actions. To do this, we have been keeping  a log of our interactions which we then reflect on. Using our traffic light assessment, we created a rubric to set guidelines for the learning experience. It has provided a chance for authentic dialogue and problem solving in our class. It has also given us a chance to share our ideas and to acknowledge that we control our actions. It's been a meaningful experience for us, one which we intend to practice throughout the year.

Rubrics

BOPD's came up with a simple rubric of qualities that they will use when they listen to the speeches for the student representative. They agreed that the person needs to safe, responsible and respectful, has focus, is happy, listens and has a reason for wanting to join.

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— TheBOPD's (@msmontilla) August 20, 2015