The Rookery

This week has afforded the Herons a chance to try our hand at some geometry, logic, and network math.  (See Cathy's great blog about the network exploration).  We're beginning a unit on fractions as soon as we return from Wolf Ridge and Space.  This will dovetail nicely with our work…

For the next several weeks, the Big Birds will be rotating through a series of three engineering workshops with Cathy, Amy, Rachel and myself.  Rachel and I are working with the kids in chemical engineering. Engineers need to understand the materials they work with.  This is a key point in…

Build an Atom The Elements (by They Might Be Giants) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/lasalle/buoybasics.html http://www.spartechsoftware.com/reeko/experiments/floating.htm http://boatsafe.com/kids/021598kidsques.htm http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/lasalle/buoyancy.html  

Looking On-Line – Tips and Reminders Search safely – spelling things correctly and use a kid friendly search engine. If you look at a website for more than 3 minutes and don’t find something new, go to a new site. Check to see who wrote the information – an author…

So, as I right this, Prairie Creek's two student teachers are at my board, coloring in squiggly designs.  Why?  As soon as we got back from Babe (which was a lot of fun), I settled the Herons down for some more discrete math work.  This Friday, at our faculty professional…

Every year I am struck by the power of Arts for Martin.  It is so moving to see a community come together and celebrate the victories that have been hard won and commit to the challenges that are still before us.  Our students began the night by singing for liberty…

For our engineering unit, Amy, Cathy, Rachel (our student teacher) and I decided to push a little bit.  Our kids are very used to working in groups and they've become very good at it.  Usually, teachers structure groups that will ensure success — a mix of experience and inexperience, leader…

The personal project season has begun in the Herons.  The fifth graders are well underway (topics chosen, questions pondered, resources gathered) and the fourth graders have just begun.  Each fourth grader met with his or her fifth grade mentor on Friday to solidify their topic and start developing questions.  The…

On Friday, the Herons worked on some more topics in discrete math — knot and map theory.  I stumbled across an amazing video of mathematical doodling, did some research and shared what I'd learned so far with the Herons.  I don't intend for them to master this math — indeed,…

A recent discussion among the teachers regarding the Pledge of Allegiance lead me to reflect on how we prepare kids to be citizens at Prairie Creek.  I realized that it might not be obvious to someone who didn't spend every day in the classroom how much time we spend on…