The Rookery

It's very hard to say goodbye.   We really are like a family when we come to the end of two years together — we've learned together, laughed together, gotten exasperated with each other,  worked really hard, and even shed a tear or two.  It's one of the greatest joys…

My first year teaching, my colleagues shook their heads in disbelief.  I decided to run Village straight through to the last day of school.  All of them had plunked their kids in front of videos for the last weeks of school so that they could pack (we had to be…

As I participated in conferences today, I was struck by the impressive work the children were doing.  I don't mean that in the most obvious sense.  Yes, it's fun to watch the students open their bulging blue books and flip through it to find what they wish to share, passing by…

The text I use for the play scripts. About a week ago, a group of fifth graders asked if we could read a Shakespeare play as a reading group.  I had copies of an abridged but faithful version of Taming of the Shrew so we sat down to read, each…

We took a break from testing on Tuesday afternoon to do some testing of our own.  Our final challenge for our rocketry theme was to land a rocket on a platform (I embellished with a story of horible, fatal lava surrounding a plateau on the center of which was the…

Our trip to Riverbend was wonderful and left the Herons wishing we had a lot more time to explore.  We took readings on the temperature, dissolved oxygen levels, pH and turbidity of the water in the Straight River and then compared our data to those collected by the Robins at…

This week we will take time out of our curriculum to prepare and take the reading MCAs or Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments.  We make every effort to help students feel comfortable when taking a standardized test.  We also make every effot to keep the test in what we feel is a…

I took a breather from our busy honoring week to read about a PCCS alumna, Devyn Gardner, in the Northfield News.  I taught Devyn many years ago and she came back to PCCS this year to volunteer with our Girl Scouts and honors project students.   What caught my attention…

This is an exciting week to be at Prairie Creek.  Kids are bustling about, posters, props and notecards in hand, anxiously awaiting the chance to teach us about their passions.   Today I ran into a fifth grade parent who had stayed after her child's honors project to watch a…

Last week was a special one at Prairie Creek.  No one on staff could remember the last time that new sand had been delivered to the sand box.  In fact, until last year, no one on staff really knew there was a sandbox.  The pile of scruffy dirt by the forts…