Jenny's E-Portfolio
I am an AdVENTURE (Adv) student at Herman Intermediate. This is my third year here, and everything has went by so quick. I cannot believe that I will soon graduate! But looking back, I realized that this experience has changed my thoughts on everything! AdVENTURE is a program which teaches STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). On a regular day for a student, they have to have 6 classes, PE, Science, History, Elective, Math, and English. Everyday in class, the student participates in hands-on activities, and they get to use interactive sites or technology in order to learn more things. Normally the Elective class would relate to STEM, so it would technologically induced. This year, my Elective was Globaloria. This is where students learn about ActionScript in order to code games. Althought this may seem daunting, moving to a new school, you will be spending the best 4 years of your life here. And I guarantee you that!
One aspect in AdVENTURE, as mentioned earlier, is collaboration. As a student, it is always hard for me to communicate and collaborate with people. So when I first came to Adv, this concept really freaked me out. But, because we got a lot of tips on collaboration, and we were encouraged to give feedback, doing this was really relaxing and fun. Almost every day, students do activities in which they work with teams or partners in order to complete it. Or they can give ideas or feedback on assignments. Almost all of the projects that we have involves us working with partners. And normally we would have to come up with some compromises in order to make it work. Most people work with their friends when we are told to work with other people. But in Adv, we have to work with many different people in our class, and this helps us communicate easier outside of the class. So this really helps with our collaboration skills. It is a skills that is really useful and important in AdVENTURE.
Another aspect in Adv, is technology. Adv is based upon project-based learning, while using technology, and in this school, the use of technology is very important. Unlike other schools, Adv doesn’t do many things on paper. Assignments, classwork, and projects are usually done on a computer, which helps students develop the skills they need for the future, which I am sure will be filled with new ground-breaking technology. By using technology on a daily basis, students are also able to develop new techniques of using technology, and can apply that to their life outside of school. For example, every week, our science teacher, gives an assignment, which is to write a blog post about what we have learned this week, and writing scientific connections, and things that we have done throughout the week. You can read my blog here. This really helps with our writing skills and gives us more opportunities to make scientific connections.
One thing to expect in Adventure is your change in point of view. At the end of the year, we always do this end of the year project, which normally has the theme of preserving the environment. And throughout the years, I have realized many of my habits, which can potentially harm the environment, and my perspective towards that has changed. As said before, Adventure is a project based learning (PBL) program. We always wrap up the end of a unit with a project, while accumulates most of our learning throughout the unit. We use many websites and software programs in order to make it easier and interactive for us. For example, we recently have been introduced to Trello, which is where we can make project “boards” to help us organize our progress.
But personally, it is really hard in order to move to a different school, and miss out on the elementary school that you have known for so long. When I first found out I got accepted into Adventure, I really was not excited. Because I did not want to leave such a familiar place, with many friendly faces, and go to an unfamiliar place, where I do not know anyone. I think a lot has changed throughout my years of Adventure so far. Over the years, I realized, that I would never trade my experience in Adventure, for anything else in the world. It may come off as cheesy, but, I don’t know what I would be like without Adventure. I have gotten to make a lot of close friendships with some of my classmates, after all, we have been together for 3 years. Many people in my class know this, and maybe some of my teachers, but, I really enjoy going to school, and I really love to learn something new, in fact, I don’t even want summer to come! But I didn’t enjoy to go to school at first. When I came to Adventure, I was so happy to see these learning principles that I have never tried before, and it really made me enjoy learning. So I hope that, whomever is reading this, whether it is a parent or a student, they should consider joining (or enrolling their child) into Adventure. It is an experience they will never forget soon!