Author Archives: David Sutton

About David Sutton

I find my passion for K-12 education comes from my intense interest both in the content we teach and learn, and in how we teach and learn. I would call this content and process. Crucial to our success as educators is our ability to deliver engaging material, both in content and in presentation. For example, engaging a child with a creative physical manipulative in mathematics, or utilizing captivating images in teaching the concept of compare and contrast enhances both teacher delivery and also engagement on the part of the learners themselves. We nurture students’ independence, creativity, and self-confidence as we teach. This promotes risk taking, the confidence to be wrong, and the ability to try again. The ideal environment favors structured and supportive, yet challenging and innovative, learning. How can we take these ideas further? What learning do you bring to the topic? Are you passionate about this topic? What are you passionate about? I welcome feedback on my ideas concerning education. I am always eager to investigate new ideas for creative, groundbreaking work in the field of K-12 education. David Sutton B.Comm, B.B.A., M.B.A., Ms Ed, Advanced Certificate in Gifted Education, Ed.M

posted on May 3, 2016

The Boulder Center for Interactive Learning at Dawson (BCILD) is building models for how schools can fully integrate themselves into their local communities. All sections of society benefit when K-12 schools think of themselves as an integral part of their local community, communities embrace schools, and students understand that their learning has real world relevance.

STEM in school HERE

Photos of student projects HERE

posted on March 17, 2016

Boulder Center for Interactive Learning at Dawson (BCILD), in collaboration with Dawson School, has just completed a comprehensive Design Thinking project. To those K-12 educators interested in using Design Thinking in schools, we hope that you find this report interesting and useful.

posted on January 21, 2016

Design Thinking, Critical Thinking and other forms of collaborative group work have become popular methods of inquiry in many classrooms. Vital to the success of this work is the ability and willingness of students to: share ideas freely, be open to compromise, be willing to let a strongly held belief go in order to further group progress and consensus, and to realize that different inputs lead invariably to different results.

Using the INTOOBA Construction Kit, I have created a largely non verbal classroom exercise where these topics can be investigated. Establishing non verbal parameters dramatically illustrate how students can communicate the abovementioned concepts through thought and action.

Click HERE for INTOOBA Construction Kit

Overview:

The purpose of this exercise is to show young learners how they can develop collaborative skills for group project work. Students learn:

• how to appreciate the input of others
• how to give up firmly held ideas to reach consensus
• that different inputs/circumstances/variables lead to different outcomes

Teachers can see how students actively tackle ideas through group manipulative work.

Exercise:

This exercise is done in three non verbal stages, followed by a discussion of the process and outcomes.

The teacher gives students, in groups of 2-6, a task to complete. Using the INTOOBA Construction Kit, students can build a spacecraft, a chair, a bridge. The teacher puts the manipulative material in front of the students, and explains that this process occurs in three non verbal steps.

Step 1: Student starts by picking up a manipulative and adding a piece to it; it is then passed to the next student in rotation until the task is complete. Students may only add one piece to the construction. Upon completion, a visual image of the product is captured for future comparison.

Step 2: The same process is repeated. Only this time, the student may take a turn either by adding a manipulative to, or taking one off, the construction. Capture image.

Step 3: In this final round, students may do either or both adding and subtracting a piece. Capture image.

Class discussion to follow:

• What did it feel like not to be able to communicate verbally?
• What did it feel like if your item was removed by a subsequent participant?
• What did it feel like to remove a piece?
• Discuss how the three outcomes varied and why.

posted on January 4, 2016

Explorers are taking to the high seas again in two new Kon Tiki rafts. This represents a wonderful learning opportunity for K-12 students in the areas of science, travel, exploration, rafts, history!

Click HERE for Kon Tiki 2!

posted on

6th grade students at Dawson School in Lafayette, CO collaborated with Western Disposal, a local business, in a community problem solving by design exercise to find an actionable solution to trash management: Click HERE for article.

This effort illustrates how school students can partner with local businesses to try to find solutions to local community challenges. BCILD is committed to helping schools integrate critical thinking, design thinking, and other problem solving techniques into classrooms through increased interactions with local community members.