The Rookery

One of our visitors to Special Person's Day remarked, "This is my last Special Person's Day!  I'm really sad."  I was sad, too.  This was a family I've known for years.  She'd watched her granddaughter perform as a kindergartener — so excited to be on "the big stage" but a…

We had such an amazing week in the Herons.  On Tuesday, we were able to teach the rest of the school what we had learned during our pre-Revolutionary America theme.  And then, on Wednesday and Thursday, we were able to learn from new teachers. Susan Percy joined us for Forest…

The energy leading up to a culminating event is palpable and consuming.  One of the ironies of documenting the work of a classroom is that our very busiest moments when the most is going on are the hardest to capture.  In the lead up to a culminating event, every child…

  The open mic at our coffee house.    On Friday, the Herons celebrated the publication of our literary magazine, The Heron.  Every student Would you want to share a park bench with this bear? successfully published a piece of writing.  This is quite an accomplishment.  Students selected a piece and…

Today, the Herons were asked to brainstorm how we might teach our families and the rest of the school about our theme.  In the picture above, you can see what the conversation grew in to.  In about an hour, every single student added to the plans (a partial speaker's list…

Close Reading This week we read the last newspaper in our Pre-Revolutionary America theme.  The Battle of Lexington and Concord shifted the debate in the colonies and the rag-tag underground Sons of Liberty made way for Washington's Continental army and open rebellion.  Together, we read the first part of the…

The Herons' newest PE unit is cross country running.  We have a set course that we return to every day and each day we share techniques that help us be stronger runners.  Students have suggested such things as "when you feel like stopping, pick a nearby goal and run to…

In March of 1770, five colonists were killed by a group of nine British soldiers outside the custom house.  Some of the papers at the time reported it as the "Boston Massacre"…others called it the "Incident on King Street."  About six months after it happened, the soldiers were put on…

The Herons have settled into our Forest School routine.  Two weeks ago, we graphed a data set from the first junco sighting of the fall from 1952 to 1990 as recorded by Orwin Rustad, a naturalist in Rice County.  We found the latest, earliest and mode of our the set…

Looking back over this year's communication, I realized that I've written often about math and theme but haven't yet shared much about our work in reading.  Reading is woven into our daily routine in a way that is not as flashy as some of the other work in the Herons…