The Rookery

One of my favorite part of honoring week is listening to the questions students ask after the presentations. There are times when the question and answer period is longer than the presentation itself.  Students' build off of one another's questions and their enthusiasm snowballs.  They are curious about everything. The…

This is a piece that Simon wrote for his newsletter but I found the it really captured a lot of what I've been thinking about.  I suppose that's not too surprising – we talk a lot as a staff and this is a topic we feel passionate about. Simon writes:…

One of the questions we were asked when we presented our honors project process to a (very receptive) Northfield School Board was "How do you know what the children have learned?" (I'm paraphrasing but that was the gist.)  We responded politely and shared our rubric with them — but the answer…

Cristian Ilies Vasile and Martin Krzywinski created this image by connecting each of the digits of pi to the next digit using an assigned color for each digit. We celebrated Pi Day last Friday — a day early as it was 3/13/15 not 3/14/15.  We had a lot of fun,…

Parading the puppets was only part of the fun.  Here are the herons in action creating their masks and giant puppets for the doves, egrets and our own class.  You'll be able to see the puppets up close at the auction and, we hope, in the library.

I think this is the first time in my career that we have been simultaneously working on four themes – none of them small.  The room is crackling with energy and enthusiasm.  It's a lot of fun. Heart of the Beast – our puppets have come out beautifully.  We were…

As many links to as many mammals from the March Mammal Madness Brackets as we could find.  Remember – you’re looking for information on size, habitat (the higher seed is in its “home court” until the elite eight), and adaptations for defense, offense, and attracting a mate. Play by Play…

Last Friday we gathered as a community to create over 1,000 items for local non-profit organizations.  It felt great to work together and accomplish so much in a single night, but service at Prairie Creek did not begin with the evening nor will it end there.  I feel so lucky…

Today the Herons used the Makey Makey to further their understanding of circuits and conductors.  The Makey Makey is an ingenious little device that lets you create a circuit board that controls certain key board controls (which can then control computer programs).  The best part is that you are part of…

As of this weekend, the first round of research for honors project wraps up for most students.  I say "first round" because almost all researchers come across gaps in research that they need to fill in as they write.  We discovered this with James right away. Each child is different…