Middle School Session Five -Biology Quest -2024
This session, the Middle School Eagles are going to have their first session (of two) in Biology. Each week they will be learning about cells, plants, animals, humans, and biospheres. Each week it will be a combination of deep learning and summer camp-style activities that will make all the learning a lot of fun. At the end of each week, they are going to have a Biology Bee that will test their knowledge of Biology and give them an opportunity to get an advantage in the exhibition.
At the exhibition, you will see the Eagles present each of the topics of biology that they covered (cells, plants, animals, humans, and biospheres) and they will have a live Biology Bee for parents to see how much they have learned.
Writers Workshop on Statistical Analytics
For this session's Writers Workshop, the Eagles will be developing the skill of statistical analytics! Though statistics consist of a significant amount of numerical data, these are nothing more than numbers without context behind them, and the context behind statistical data can often tell a story!
The Eagles will be given a set of raw data from an Austin-based organization. Then they will learn different skills and techniques to give meaning to said data, and finally, write detailed reports on their analytical findings that would help benefit the future of the organization!
Joey & Tyler HS/MS Guides
Elementary Session Five - Gardening Quest - 2024
During this spring session, the Eagles will plan, build, and harvest from their own Community Gardens! They will explore the science behind seeds, soil, and pollination while also garden design, site preparation, planting, and maintenance. They will practice the scientific method and record their findings in experiments about photosynthesis, capillary action, and. organic matter decomposition. Through further exploration of farming and agriculture in the United States, they will research and learn about the effects of GMOs, climate change, organic farming, pesticides, and pollution on the environment, and they will explore the pros and cons of each side through Socratic Discussions. In this quest, they will experience the patience it takes for physical growth in the garden while they also dig deep into growth within themselves and their community.
Ms. Maya & Ms. Cat - Elementary Guides
Elementary Session Four - Entrepreneurship Quest -2024
Welcome to Session Four, the annual Entrepreneurship Quest!
For the (elementary) Entrepreneurship quest (often referred to as E-Ship), the Eagles are split into six "companies," and are in the beginning stages of creating profitable businesses. Together they will assign roles (CEO, Lawyer, Accountant, COO, PR Director), conduct market research, study ethics, marketing, pricing, and advertising tactics. They will create their brand, a solid business plan, and strong budgets to make their business a success.
This year, we emphasize the skills needed to work with a group. Just like in the real world, they must first look within themselves to discover the gifts, talents, strengths, and weaknesses they have to offer their company. They will use these discoveries to bring their best selves to the group.
Once a company forms, business ideas will emerge in the form of a subscription box product, filled with their hand-picked and curated ideas. The culmination of this Quest will be that of a "trade show" where guests will watch as our young Entrepreneurs present their ideas!
Each year, one of the highlights of E-Ship is exploring real-life businesses through research and a series of guest speakers and local business owners. As always, this annual quest helps promote business ideas and inspiration leading into the spring Business Fair on May 4th! See you at the exhibition!
ES Guides - Ms. Maya & Ms. Cat
Middle & High School Session Four - Architecture Quest - 2024
This semester, both the High School and Middle School will temporarily shift focus from Entrepreneurship to explore the fascinating subject of Architecture. Architecture is a rich blend of Art, History, and STEM topics, offering practical real-world applications. Eagles will delve into various aspects, including learning to draw floor plans, working with CAD software, utilizing 3D printing, and even creating 3D Model Virtual Tours. Fun tools such as CAD Software and 3D printing will be introduced, adding an element of creativity to their learning experience. Not to worry, Entrepreneurship will resume next year.
As part of their exploration, Eagles will research architectural history, studying styles such as Classical, Romanesque, Victorian, Art Deco, and more. Additionally, they will gain insights into the work of renowned architects like Vitruvius, Filippo Brunelleschi, and Frank Lloyd Wright.
During this session, Eagles will form project teams and tackle scenarios where they must design buildings for clients with specific style preferences and functional needs. They will grapple with the classic "form vs function" dilemma to create outstanding designs. After devising creative solutions, they will model their designs in 3D and present them during the exhibition for families to see.
The High School curriculum will encompass all of the above, with an additional focus on Structural Architecture. Eagles will learn fundamental principles of shear, compression, and tension forces and their impact on structures. To test their knowledge, an exciting bridge-building competition will be held during the exhibition to determine whose bridge can withstand the most weight.
In Writer's Workshop, the Middle School will explore Copywriting. Students will craft engaging content that encourages readers to continue reading and takes them towards a specific call to action. They will also work on their apprenticeship emails, collaborating to send them out to prospects. The session will culminate in a celebratory "sending their email party," where all Eagles will send their emails simultaneously.
Meanwhile, the High School will focus on crafting their NGA Pitch. This involves sharing their personal stories, expressing passion or interest in a specific subject. At the end of their presentation, they will make an "ask" or a promise. The "ask" may involve seeking an introduction to someone in a particular industry or field for an interview, mentorship, or apprenticeship. If they choose to make a promise, they will outline a clear plan for deliberate practice and industry study. The final product will be a video sent out to the Acton West community.
Hope to see you at the exhibitions!
Joey & Tyler - MS/HS Guides
High School Session Three - Professionalism Quest - 2023
The Professionalism mini-quest is designed to equip Eagles with the essential skills and attributes necessary for success in the professional world. This quest focuses on developing interpersonal skills, effective communication, and personal branding, enabling Eagles to navigate professional environments with confidence and professionalism.
Quest Objectives
To enable Eagles to understand the appropriate rules of professional situations.
To practice professional communication skills such as:
Interviewing
Emailing & Digital Messaging
Conflict Resolution
Workplace Feedback & Conduct
Exhibition
The Eagles will select a position in an area of interest that they will be interviewed for in the near future (apprenticeship, college admissions etc), for the exhibition they will role play the interview to show off their new found skills.
HS Guides - Joey & Tyler
Middle School Session Three - The Art of Negotiation Quest - 2023
The Great Elf Strike of 2023
In this session, for the quest, the Middle School will be developing the skill and practicing the delicate art of negotiation. The Eagles will be put in a hypothetical employee/employer situation in which they will need to negotiate the terms of a contract. This will be similar to union worker negotiations such as the Screen Actors Guild, or the United Auto Workers strikes. However, the quest will have a fun Christmas-themed twist to it where the union workers will be elves, and the executives will be Santa!
Writers Workshop Letter of Gratitude:
As for the Writers Workshop, they will be practicing gratitude, with handwritten letters of gratitude that will be sent to the people whom they are grateful for. Not only is this a simple and kind act to do for others, but also there is overwhelming evidence that practicing gratitude consistently correlates positively to overall happiness and mental well-being.
Joey & Tyler - MS Guides
Elementary Session Three - Ancient Athens Quest - 2023
This session, the Elementary Eagles will be exploring Ancient Athens! Through a series of games and hands-on activities, we will begin by learning about and creating our own ancient Olympic Games. We will also be discussing Socrates and diving deeper into the socratic discussion. In the second and third week, we will be learning more about everyday life in early Greece while also having the opportunity to create different materials from this time.
We are looking forward to lots of fun this session followed by a much-deserved holiday break!
Maya, Sara, & Catherine - Elementary Guides
Spark Quest Session Three - The Cosmic Universe - 2023
Montessori focuses on Cosmic Education, where children get to experience the interconnectedness of all things – especially living things. In this way, children learn about the past, the present, nature, ethics, other cultures, and their connection with all these things.
We saw the winter months as a perfect opportunity to promote the latter. This session Sparks will be learning about the practices animals follow to survive the cold temperatures (migration, hibernation, and adaptation). We will be reading stories, conducting fun experiments, and fabricating some creative crafts. They will also be learning about winter holidays around the world and through different cultures by adding stamps to their “passports” and fun facts about the country or culture we “visit” that day.
We know each Spark finds joy in observing nature and they’re already looking out for those squirrels gathering their last acorns.
Spark Guides - Sarah & Callie
Elementary, Middle & High School Session Two - Music Quest (2023)
This session, our Elementary, Middle, and High School studios will be exploring the world of Music. They will start off by getting introductory lessons on the guitar, ukulele, keyboard, and drums. We are doing this to expose them to several instruments to help them know what they might be interested in and allow them to see a different perspective on each role of the band and on music in general. They will then form bands and pick from some simple songs to play and re-write the lyrics to. They will make recordings of their music and review the recordings to help them make improvements, and perform their songs for other bands to give each other feedback.
Along the way, Eagles will be doing experiments to learn more about the anatomy of the ear, how sound waves work etc. They will also learn about musical heroes ranging from Beethoven, B.B. King, The Beatles and so many more.
The High School and Middle School are going to take a deeper dive into music theory such as:
Why do we use a framework of 12 notes? How do Rhythm, Tempo, & Time Signatures relate? And many other major music theory questions. As the quest goes on, they will be working with production tools to help them put together music.
For the exhibition, Eagles will take a trip to record their songs in a recording studio. Parents and Eagles will watch the videos of their Eagles performing their songs on the big screen at the theater, and we will get an early screening of Trolls 3 for ES and the Elf movie for MS/HS.
-Acton West Team
High School Session One - Community Building & Negotiation Quest (2023)
1st half of of this quest: Team Building, Lip Dub, Contract Creation
The Eagles spent the first few weeks practicing team building exercises, including their lip dub music video, and creating their Student Contract and Rules of Engagement Contract, as well as setting themselves up for success for the school year through Journey Tracker and our core skills programs.
2nd half of this Quest: Negotiation
“Negotiate in their world. Persuasion is not about how bright or smooth or forceful you are. It’s about the other party convincing themselves that the solution you want is their own idea. So don’t beat them with logic or brute force. Ask them questions that open paths to your goals. It’s not about you.”
― Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It
In this session, the High School Eagles will be participating in simulations from the Harvard Business School, Acton Business School and Chris Voss (former FBI negotiator) to learn the art of negotiation. They will learn to understand their counterpart’s perspective, how to mirror their counterpart to make them feel at ease, use their words and observations of feeling to neutralize negative emotion, and much more.
They will become familiar with terms such as Tactical Empathy, Mirroring, Anchoring, Labeling, Bargaining, Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA), and Worst Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement (WATNA). They are going to read the Harvard Business Review’s Top 10 Articles: On Negotiation. They will use the topics covered in these articles and work through simulations and play games to practice negotiation tactics.
Then, to put these into a more real world scenario, the Eagles will all be a part of the Acton Auto Company. Some will be a part of the Management, and some will be a part of the Union. They will use their new tools and negotiate a strike that is currently going on at the Acton Auto Company. It is a full case, where the union is demanding higher wages, better benefits, better working conditions, etc.
The exhibition will have each team presenting to families how their side “won” and their lessons learned from the process. Families will get to vote on each side and eventually there will be a winner of the negotiation (not based on the side they would be on, but on which side was able to walk away with a better deal).
For Writer’s Workshop, our High Schoolers are learning and writing reflections on the Next Great Adventure, NGA, Process. The Eagles will go through exploring who they are through assessments, feedback from friends and family, and reflection on personal traits. They are using this information to narrow down their gifts/strengths, jobs/careers they are interested in, and where they would like to work (company/location). They will then pick between several badge options this year to help them navigate their next steps. The tools in these badges will be priceless in their journey through High School, and even more valuable after their high school experience. The badges include:
Stars & Stepping Stones Interviews
Mentorships
NGA Freelancing (Job)
Deliberate Practice
NGA Credential
Apprenticeships
Acton Academy West High School Guides - Joey & Tyler
Middle School Session One - Community Building and Becoming a Conversationalist Quest (2023)
1st half of of this quest: Team Building, Lip Dub, Contract Creation
The Eagles spent the first few weeks practicing team building exercises, including their lip dub music video, and creating their Student Contract and Rules of Engagement Contract, as well as setting themselves up for success for the school year through Journey Tracker and our core skills programs.
2nd half of this Quest: Becoming a Conversationalist
The art of conversation is an important skill - making it easier to try new activities, meet new people, make new friends, and help put others at ease. Deep conversation and sharing, moves heroes from self centeredness -- believing that; this quest is all about each individual’s personal path to become a servant leader, who finds completion not through competition and winning, but by serving others in relationship and community, on the great journey of life.
During this quest the Eagles will examine the tools and traits of what it means to create and hold a great conversation as well as practice the skill of networking.
The exhibition will have each Eagle conduct several conversation with a parent who they are not familiar with in a networking convention style set up. They will then be given feedback in the form of a rating on their conversation skills. The highest rated conversationalists will win.
For Writer’s Workshop, our Middle Schoolers are learning the art of interviewing. This will coincide with their conversationalist quest with the intention of learning more about a heroic figure in their lives. They will research and reach out to several heroic figures in order to schedule an interview. Using prewritten questions they will conduct the interview, take notes, then use that interview to write a reflective summary of said heroic figure in order to use what they have learned as guiding light throughout their heroes journey.
Acton Academy West MS Guides - Joey & Tyler
Elementary Session One - The Call To Adventure Quest (2023)
The first session of every year is one that is wondrous! As we navigate the beginning of a new year we have opportunities to strengthen new and old habits, relationships, and answer a brand new call to adventure.
On the Hero's Journey, the Call to Adventure is the moment when a hero is called to a life challenge. When the Hero answers that call, the journey begins. Every year, the Call to Adventure looks a little different, both for Eagles working from home and in-studio. Our first quest, The Call to Adventure, will focus on the allies and helpers along the way, the mentors who help support, and the ways we can build helpful habits and skills to last a lifetime.
Per Acton tradition, Eagles are putting their big-picture thinking, project management skills, and team building into practice by planning and organizing a Lip Dub (plus, it's lots of fun)! The Lip Dub is a full-length music video, with a well-known song "dubbed over." Eagles are responsible for 100% of the process. They plan choreography, filming, editing & publishing.
The Eagles are also creating new student contracts and rules of engagement this session. The Eagles have been able to have many productive conversations about what rules need to be put into place and why they are important for their studio environment.
For the exhibition in October, we will be presenting a gallery of "Hero's Handbooks" and screening the Lip Dub that will exhibit Eagle's work and self-reflection from this session. We are so honored you've trusted and chosen Acton Academy West for your young heroes. We know this will be our best year yet!
Elementary Guides - Ms. Cat & Ms. Maya
All Studios Session Seven - Multi-Art Quest and MS/HS WW Podcasts! 2023
The quest for this last session is focused around multiple forms of art! The Eagles will be introduced to and experiment with several different forms of art (depending on their studio) including drawing, painting, sculpting, origami, art recreation, photography, sewing, and design/3d printing. After they have experimented with 3 art forms they are then free to select the one or more that they were most interested in, or select an entirely new art form that they will present at their Art Gallery exhibition!
As for the MS/HS Writer’s Workshop this session the Eagles will be creating their very own podcasts! They will be learning how to outline, record, edit, publish even monetize podcast all on a web based platform!
We look forward to seeing you at the art gallery exhibition!
-AAWest Team
Middle & High School Session Six - Classical Physics Olympics Quest (2023)
This session the Middle and High School Eagles will be competing in the Acton Physics Olympics! They will be competing in the following events:
Powerlifting - During this event, the Eagles will be learning about simple machines to gain mechanical advantage. They will be specifically using pulleys to see which group can lift the most weight. They will also be covering:
Work
Power
Mechanical Advantage
Car Racing - The Eagles will be making CO2 cars and they will be racing each other to see who the overall winners are going to be. They will be exploring the following to understand how their cars are moving and how they can modify their cars, using physics principles to make their cars go faster.
Friction
Velocity
Acceleration
Inertia
Potential, Kinetic, Vs Conservation Of Energy
Newton’s Laws Of Motion
Shot Put - The Eagles will be making Trebuchets, and the group that can launch the projectile the farthest will win the competition. In this event they will learn more about:
Projectile Motion
Gravity
Moment Of Inertia
Archery (High School Only) - The High School is going to learn about springs and torque, and how they are used with potential and kinetic energy to predict the translation of energy in a bow transitions to an arrow.
Hooke’s Law
Free Body Diagrams
Torque
There will also be an opportunity for High School Eagles to get an Honors Physics credit by doing additional assignments.
For Writer’s Workshop, the MS Eagles (and most of the HS Eagles) will be doing lab reports where they will be using the scientific method to hypothesize, document, record, and present results of each of their events. In addition, Juniors will have the chance to work on their college essays (for fall applications) and Seniors will be writing their graduation speeches.
Joey & Tyler - Middle & High School Guides
Elementary Session Six - Hydrology Quest (2023)
In this session, the ES Eagles will dive into the world of hydrology! The session's guiding question will be, "How does hydrology affect our lives?" This quest uses hands-on projects and experiments to explore the powerful ways that water shapes the world in which we live. The Eagles will also be introduced to basic principles of scientific inquiry using the Scientific Method through a series of experiments. Eagles will look for signs that water has shaped the land at Acton Academy West, in Austin, and around the world. The quest introduces the fundamentals of hydrology, including the water cycle, landscapes and erosion, the world's water supply, and hydroelectricity. We are very excited and hopeful to be in the process of putting together visits and field trips with various organizations and Austin city departments pertaining to our local water systems. Last year we partnered with Dr. Staci Loewy from UT's Jackson School of Geosciences for a fantastic day of field trips and learning from experts; we have been working with Dr. Loewy in hopes of planning something similar this year.
- ES Guides
MS/HS Session Five - Physics Electricity & Magnetism + Writers Workshop 2023
This session the Middle School and High School Eagles will be working in their own studios and not in conjunction on this quest. They will be building model neighborhoods that will have a fully functioning power grid. In the process of their build they will explore:
AC & DC Voltage
Current
Resistance
Circuits
In Series & Parallel
Electrical Fields
Electrical Motors
Power Generation
Ohm’s Law
In the process of learning these topics, the Eagles will get hands-on experience with wire-strippers, multimeters, jumper wires, resistors, capacitors, switches, etc. They will also be building actual generators from scratch and get hands-on with magnetic fields. While they are building their neighborhood, they will need to stand in the shoes of a mayor or city planner, balance the wants and needs of different residents, and ultimately build a great city. As usual, throughout the quest, they’ll be challenged to function as effective teams - setting goals, dividing work, and managing projects in the face of uncertainty and aggressive deadlines.
For the High School, they will do all of the above, plus learn about...
Kirchhoff's Law (Voltage)
Advanced Circuit Calculations
Coulomb's Law
There will also be an opportunity for High School Eagles to get an Honors Physics credit by doing additional assignments and projects.
For Writer's Workshop, the HS & MS Eagles will be working to put together their own blogs. They will explore the basics on how to put together their own websites that will include reflections on the "day in a life" of an Acton student. They will do this through a series of writing and videos.
Joey & Tyler - MS/HS Guides
Elementary Session Five - Computer Science/Coding Quest 2023
As technology becomes more integrated into our daily lives, the need for computer science skills becomes increasingly important. So, the ES Eagles will learn about problem-solving and how it relates to computer science.
Our quest begins with an introduction to the problem-solving process. Eagles will be presented with puzzles, challenges, and real-world scenarios that require problem-solving skills. They will learn to break down problems into smaller parts, identify patterns and relationships, and develop creative solutions. This skill set is essential for success not only in computer science but in many other fields as well.
After mastering the problem-solving process, Eagles will learn how computers input, output, store, and process information. They will be introduced to programming concepts and learn how to write simple code. This knowledge will help them understand how computers can help humans solve problems.
Finally, the quest concludes with a project in which we will design an application that solves a problem of their choosing. This is where all the skills they have learned will come together. They will work collaboratively with their pod and apply the problem-solving process to create a helpful solution.
Overall, this quest is a highly interactive and collaborative introduction to computer science. Eagles will gain problem-solving skills, programming knowledge, and experience working on a group project. These are all valuable skills that will serve them well at Acton West, and beyond! We can’t wait to showcase our new skills at the Exhibition.
Ashley & Kelsey - Elementary Guides