Gretchen Hollingsworth, English Teacher, Digital Coach, and SGT Chair at Barrow Arts & Sciences Academy, Winder, Georgia writes, “Today I officially introduced SIMOC to my 10th Honors Lit class. I’ve already been talking about it for a while, but we did our first official assignment within SIMOC today. I had them learn about the “setting” of Mars and then run some simulations. Tomorrow I’m going to have my students who are in our STEM pathway help me set things up on the tech side. The rest of the students will be doing some creative writing to show how setting affects events in a story (ex. the challenges characters may face while falling in love on Mars as opposed to on Earth, etc.).
This is still part of our “engage” phase. My plan is to then transition to some more technical writing as we conduct experiments, gather data, write up lab reports, etc. We can even revisit our creative writing after learning more through our experiments or take the knowledge they’ve gained about CO2 levels in the classroom to help them advocate for recess! 😄
I’ll take lots of pics and jot notes on the process. My process is always flexible, so I usually start with a plan but fully expect it to go in a million directions, which I’m always fine with. I’ll keep you posted!”
Gretchen has been incorporating SIMOC into her classroom experiences for over a year. Learn about her initial work and more about Gretchen at her website.
