Technically, it's an English lesson, but as students in Casey Echelmeier's fourth grade class worked to master verbs Tuesday morning, they could be found battling lava monsters, stretched out on the floor drawing pictures and composing music.
According to Echelmeier, there is a method to the madness as she utilizes technology and creative thinking to achieve McIntire Elementary's goal to turn its students into 21st century learners.
"We're a classroom all about inquiry," she said. "I want them to take control. Let me start the conversation, and you go out there and you learn, you go out and get the information."
A big part of that strategy is utilizing technology. Every student in Echelmeier's classroom has a Chromebook, something she takes advantage of by doing things like flipping math lessons - Echelmeier makes a short video covering the basics of the lesson that students can watch at home the night before. Then, class time is devoted to covering student questions about the concepts and spending more time on in-depth problems.
Students also use the chromebooks to seek out answers to their own questions and further explore lessons and information Echelmeier gives in the classroom.
"I'm very aware technology is just a tool, but it's such an awesome tool when used effectively," she said. "They're engaged, they can really optimize their learning experience - they're not dependent on me for the answers anymore. I wish I'd learned this way."
Echelmeier also has her students create personal learning projects. The students create their own plans for special projects to go more in-depth on particular concepts. They sign contracts with Echelmeier committing to completing their projects.
"My students go to work based off of their passions - they create a learning contract on how they're going to learn (in this case about verbs) and how they're going to help their classmates learn," Echelmeier said. "Education is changing, and the way students learn now is not the way we learned. It's my job to make them 21st century learners - I want to teach them how to think and how to be a learner."
On Tuesday those learning projects involved students working on everything from board games to video games to help reinforce lessons about linking, action and helping verbs.
Brodey Harter was working Tuesday to create a video game where players match the verb to a picture.
Harter said he enjoys the freedom of the personal learning projects, which he said, "lets us have time, and that time's for us to make something we want as long as it's on the lessons."
He said he learns more when working on these projects.
"There's two kinds of ways I'm learning," Harter said. "I get to learn about verbs, and you're learning about whatever you're doing with it."
Classmate Elijah Miller was working on creating a video game in which the player shoots water at verbs to earn points. He and classmate Corey Glenn were also collaborating on a similar game involving shooting lava and spikes at lava monsters while working on multiplication skills.
Miller said he likes working on personal learning projects like this because he wants to be a video game creator when he grows up and, "it's easier to learn it now than later."
Glenn was also working on a video game in which a player's avatar runs and has to shoot all of the verbs.
"There's a screen at the end that tells how many you got right and how many you got wrong and what you missed," Glenn said.
Classmate Jesse Coffer was taking a less technological approach to the assignment, working to create a board game featuring the characters of "Guardians of the Galaxy" making their way around a board similar in style to Monopoly. Players pull action, helping and linking verb cards depending on the square they land on and have to write a sentence using them.
Across the classroom, Janie Oglesby was using her Chromebook to compose a song.
"I'm getting the tune right now, and then I have some words I'm going to try to put in to make it sound good," Oglesby said, noting she had already created 17 seconds of music.
Like Harter, Oglesby said she enjoys working on the personal learning projects because "it's fun to do what you want" and because it helps her learn better.
"You learn it better because you make it and you don't have to memorize or study it to get it right on a test," Oglesby said.