The Rookery

Wolf Ridge and Fourth Grade Week are central in our calendar – often it feels like we are doing a lot "before Wolf Ridge" and a lot "after Wolf Ridge."  Fourth grade week and Wolf Ridge stand alone – busy, to be sure, but a different kind of busy.  It's…

Some recent conversations with students have gotten me thinking.  One shared that a video they'd watched in spanish was 2 1/2 minutes long.  "So I started doing the math and figured out that 8.3% of our class was the video…I think," she said.  Another shared that he'd been bored on…

January is off to a great and very busy start.  We are reflecting on the year so far, launching the opera, learning cursive, coding, starting our personal projects, and braving the cold.  January's schedule lends itself to shorter work blocks than the more expansive theme blocks of fall and early…

Working on a pattern of modified Truchet tiles. This break was short.  Very short.  I'm taking a deep breath as I write this, preparing myself for re-entry tomorrow morning.  The one thing that is easing that transition a bit is the warm glow I get thinking about the Herons' work…

I stepped away from the Robin's culminating event for a few moments toward the end and, when I came around the corner on my return I was greeted by ten Herons and Kestrels who had finished up in the gym and were entering their Greek theme work.  "THERE you are!…

Greece Our joint theme with the Kestrels is in full swing.  On Wednesday, we read a paper from 444 BCE, the height of Athenian arts and culture.  Some of the Spartans grumbled that all of the news was about Athens.  We pushed them to think about it, was Athens getting…

The Herons after sharing our tree research with Michael Viola, one of our landlords. He said that our research had matched the work of the arborist he'd talked too — and we even had some information the arborist didn't have! It seems that about once a month, my "to write"…

Tomorrow we're beginning our study of Ancient Greece.  Some of the Herons were very excited.  They love ancient Greece they told me because they had studied it in the Egrets.  My heart sank.  How could I have missed that fact?  We keep a careful record of all of our themes in…

Seven years ago I taught the series of pentomino lessons that I am currently teaching during exploration math.  It's a great series of lessons and it was created by Sara Currier, my co-teacher at the time.  We define what an -ominoe is (a series of tiles on a plane that…

Sorry for the pun…it had to happen eventually during this theme.  On Wednesday, the Herons got the opportunity to teach the school some of what we had learned during our tree theme.  Culminating events are a lot of fun but they also serve multiple (sometimes hidden) purposes. Review of Content…