SIDNEY — Sidney City Schools said the district has had a great start to the school year and many exciting activities are taking place in classrooms.
“Our administrators have created a culture of accountability, balancing tough love with earned praise,” shares Denny Morrison, Family and Community Engagement Coordinator for Sidney City Schools. “Classroom teachers and aides are organized and prepared. They are adept at building relationships with their students. They have established a can-do climate for success.”
Morrison has been spending time visiting the schools and popping into classrooms to see firsthand the academic activities and learning taking place.
“I walked into a classroom at Sidney High School and found the teacher teaching kids how they learned best whether they learned visually, auditorally, or kinesthetically. They were learning and having fun.”
Morrison sat in on Mr. Jeff Webb’s Materials Science and Engineering class where he witnessed every student engaged and on task. The lesson was a hands-on experiment during which the students had to think, problem solve, apply what they had learned, and know the use of the materials in the real world.
Students observed the properties of the materials, made observations, came up with possible uses for the materials, made arguments based on logic and evidence, and told how they would sell these materials. The materials from the experiment did not behave like normal water and the result was a non-Newtonian Fluid.
Webb told the students that they had made dilatant material whose viscosity increased with stress. He told them about thixotropic materials whose viscosity decreased with stress. A discussion followed about the uses of these types of materials in the real world.
“It was wonderful to see students solving problems and expanding their minds,” Morrison said.
Morrison plans to keep visiting classrooms throughout the district to report on all the outstanding things Sidney City Schools teachers and students are doing.
