The Rookery

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…

"Base times height" "One half base times height" These are the formulas for the area of a parallelogram and the area of a triangle respectively.  Even if you haven't bought carpet for a triangular room recently, they're probably rattling around in your brain somewhere.  What might not still be rattling…

"What do you mean we're done with Greece?!" This was the outcry when I congratulated the Herons on a job well done and began to talk about how we were going to reflect on our work.  Many students wanted to dig more deeply still and felt they still had a…

After a quick pep talk at Prairie Creek, the Heron's decided to enjoy their campout to its fullest even though it didn't include an overnight.  We had a very full day which included getting on the cross country skis for the first time, studying the effects of friction and gravity…

To say that there was a palpable sense of excitement in the Herons today would be a gross understatement.  This was a very big day — our trip to the Guthrie.  We had prepared by reading several versions of "A Christmas Carol," We compared them and talked about the decisions…

The very first thing the Herons did upon entering the room today was to look at the schedule and berate me, "Where is the play?"  "When are we doing the play?"   "Tomorrow?" I answered, meekly. That was not an acceptable answer for many and they asked permission to read…

Greece is hurtling forward at a pace that makes it difficult to stop and share what's been going on.  I apologize. First:  How have we been spending our days?  We began a month ago by receiving characters through whom we would experience the events between 520 and 320 BCE.  Students…