The Rookery

The first day always flashes by.  About two and a half hours into the morning, a child asked me how long we'd been at school.  I told him.  His eyes got big, "Gosh, it feels like 10 minutes!"  Every moment is precious and begins to create our community.  Who are we going to be?

8:15 – we position ourselves at the top of the stairs to welcome the new year.  We are invited in first…the Herons are crafty.

8:20 – we read independently, enjoying books and sharing the best bits with our friends.  At the end of reading we enjoy "dessert" books, heads bent over books together, giggling and building a culture of reading…the Herons love books.

9:00 – we meet, reading our daily message, sharing stories from our summer and playing a silly game…the Herons know each other and laugh together.

9:30 – we tour the school and talk a lot about the responsibilities we have when we are away from the classroom.  I expect any Heron working in a space or moving around the school to be completely on task…the Herons are role models.

10:00 – We develop a "forced choice" survey question and collect data about our classmates which we wil
l later graph.  I call this our math time and 4th grader child (who has expressed a dislike of math in the past) is confused, "This is math?!"  "Yes, of course it is.  We're using numbers to understand more about our world – that's what math is."  She grinned in response…the Herons are open to new things (and they do a lot of math)

11:15 – We play octopus tag together and explore some friendly trash talking.  How do you know when someone is playing along with you?  How do you know when you need to dial it back?  How does friendly competition enhance a game?  When is it too much? … the Herons are leaders and ready to learn new things.

12:15 – learning how to clean the tables … the Herons gotta do what the Herons gotta do.

12:25 – Reading Welsandia.  Our read aloud about a boy who constructs his own civilization unfolded in multiple directions – "What's the name of the Mayan game where you put the ball through a stone hoop?" "Did you know there used to be more letters in the alphabet, like "thorn" stood for "th" "A staple crop is the main crop you eat, like rice in a lot of countries." Every page seemed to hold the potential for a new theme…the Herons are unquenchably curious.

12:40 – Habits of Mind Magazine – In less than an hour, we put together a mini-magazine about the Habits of Mind and some other Heron ways…the Herons are workers.

1:30 – Math facts.  We began our discussion of math facts and why we learn them.  I was careful to explain that being fast with math facts is not, in fact, being good at math.  However, it does allow one to focus on more interesting things than adding, subtracting, or multiplying simple numbers.  Once we understand what we are doing when we multiply, we can work to make the facts automatic, freeing up brain space for more interesting explorations.  The students seemed to especially understand how nice it was that they knew how to spell their names and didn't have to sound it out each time…the Herons strive for accuracy.

2:00 – Natural History Share – a student shared the petrified wood she got in South Dakota.  The room filled with questions.  "What does "petrified" mean?"  "Why doe Harry Potter use it?"  "Can something become petrified now?  Is all petrified stuff old?"  "Can humans be petrified?" "Do you always need a volcanic lake to petrify something?"  "Why are bones the fossils we have usually and not skin?"  "How can you tell if something is a petrified bone or petrified wood?"…the Herons ask a lot of questions.

And that was our day.  Along the way we joked a lot and I shared a lot of stories.  I find myself taking a deep breath as I say goodbye.  Each class of Herons is so different from the one before it…and so the same.