The Rookery

  February and early March are notorious in the elementary classroom.  We all get a bit of cabin fever.  We all are comfortable enough with each other to get grumpy.  And, as the spring approaches, many students begin to look toward their next transition whether it's to a new school…

Hooray!  The turtle has survived over a week in the Herons and seems to be thriving.  It has a hearty appetite (which we are recording data about) and the class has worked to create a lovely habitat (about which we are also recording data).  In their spare time, the Herons…

This week has been a marvel at Prairie Creek.  Every time I walked through the school, new art greeted me.  This afternoon, coming in from recess, I stopped dead when I saw the pressed metal work Angie had put up while we were outside.  She has worked tirelessly to fill…

Today, the Herons were late getting back from math with Cathy.  They burst out of her classroom in the midst of a heated debate.  I caught snippets as the children filed back into the room, "It has to be the first spinner!"  "No, it said 'OR'"  Cathy followed, a broad…

Today I went through the box of "future gifts" I have in a closet.  I'm guessing most of you have a similar collection.  Most of the items are things that I've picked up because they're cool and I'm sure they'll make a great gift sometime soon.  What I realized was…

    On Friday, the Herons benefited from the expertise of Jana Hirsch (K.S.'s mom) who is a dance and theater teacher.  We have got the rough blocking of the play finished and were ready to work out some details (like how to carry a body off stage.)  Jana taught…

After watching Race to the Top last week, my colleagues and I had an impromptu discussion about homework at Prairie Creek.  I realized that while I have talked to the students about the expectation they read 30 minutes a night I had not talked a lot about the many forms…

The Herons asked me to upload their play so that they could study lines at home if they forgot their scripts at school.  Here it is:   Download Tall Tale Romeo.

                  After school today, two Prairie Creek alumni (Devyn Gardner and Maggie Miland) came back to work with some fifth graders on their honors projects.  As they talked with the students, guiding them through a process they'd gone through seven years ago,…

The afternoon took a funny turn today when I began what I thought would be a brief reminder to keep games in perspective.  A post-lunch game had ended in argument two days in a row, an indication that students were struggling to keep competition in check.  This is something that…