Wordle Middle School Movie Reviews

Synergy Summer film club for middle school students. We are using wordle to review movies. The word clouds spark discussion and are sometimes used as the foundation for writing projects.

All images were created using Wordle @ http://www.wordle.net

What Are We Doing

I love schools. I thrive on the energy in the hallways and classrooms. I am delighted by the chatter on the play yard. I adore talking to children and watching excellent teachers work their magic. I believe in the possibilities. I'm an optimist. I buy that cheesy bromide "children are the future," and I know that educators have a tremendous opportunity to influence the future through guiding children. I admire most of my client schools and treasure every day I spend at Synergy but the truth is I fear that too often we fail to effectively reach children. I am sure that schools, all schools, need to change. Formal education, from elementary school through grad school, is in need of transformation.

Public schools will change last because state legislatures and federal mandates never drive authentic transformation; at best they follow the lead of others and more often, as Sir Kenneth Robinson says, they look to the past for direction. In theory independent and other private schools have the freedom to define their own metrics of success, try new teaching methods, take risks and tilt at windmills. Sadly exciting innovation and authentic educational reform is too rare in non-public schools but that's another post- hell that's an entire book!

Eighteen years ago John Taylor Gatto wrote,

A few years back one of the schools at Harvard, perhaps the School of Government, issued some advice to its students on planning a career in the new international economy it believed was arriving. It warned sharply that academic classes and professional credentials would count for less and less when measured against real world training. Ten qualities were offered as essential to successfully adapting to the rapidly changing world of work.

Here are the ten qualities Gatto attributed to Harvard:
1) The ability to define problems without a guide.
2) The ability to ask hard questions which challenge prevailing assumptions.
3) The ability to work in teams without guidance.
4) The ability to work absolutely alone.
5) The ability to persuade others that your course is the right one.
6) The ability to discuss issues and techniques in public with an eye to reaching decisions
about policy.
7) The ability to conceptualize and reorganize information into new patterns.
8) The ability to pull what you need quickly from masses of irrelevant data.
9) The ability to think inductively, deductively, and dialectically.
10) The ability to attack problems heuristically.

Are these the qualities that a well educated person needs for the 21st century? Think you can come up with a better list? Please share- I'd love to see it.

How would you answer any of the following questions?

What is the curriculum of necessity for the 21st century?

What should schools do to prepare today's students for their future?

What does a well educated 21st century person need to know and be able to do?

Thanks