The Rookery

There is a provocative article in Sunday's New York Times by Elisabeth Rosenthal about her children's experience being tested in at the Beijing International School.  In part it looks at the different approaches to testing in the U.S. and China arguing that more frequent but perhaps less "high stakes" testing…

Today was a special day upstairs in the Big Bird classrooms.  The students received their blue books, the books in which we do almost all of our work for the year.  After a very loud and spirited drum roll, the children got down to the work of numbering pages (240!),…

We had a wonderful first day as the Herons.  From the first moments out on the plaza, we work carefully to create a classroom community that supports the kind of learning we need to do.  The fifth graders greeted the new students enthusiastically and effortlessly took them under their wings.…

One would think that, eventually, they would stop.  But no, here it is the few days before school and I've woken up more than once, drenched in sweat, shaking away the shreds of a dream in which I'm standing in front of the class, staring, without a clue as to…

Tomorrow night, the Prairie Creek school board is going to decide on our school schedule for next year.  As many of you know, Northfield schools are going to have a late start on Wednesday mornings.  Teachers will meet in small "PLC" groups to study student data and make instructional decisions…

Tomorrow, we begin Village! Please check out the Village blog for posts from Amy, Michelle, Elizabeth and myself. You might also want to look at the archives to get a sense of past villages. This year, we will have two villages. We anticipate even more excitement than usual; two villages mean the…

Today we celebrated May Day at Prairie Creek. It is a cherished tradition at our school. We began with a song (in Spanish; we combined May Day with Cinco de Mayo this year), then we went off on our parade through Castle Rock. Upon our return, the fifth graders did…

We hope that an honors project marks both an end and a beginning for our students.  In many ways, it is the culmination of their academic careers here at Prairie Creek.  We know from alumni that it often serves as a model and a benchmark for their future "big projects."…

 It's Honoring Week here at Prairie Creek, my favorite week of the year.  I love watching our students shine and share what they know.  I love watching them teach.  The ironic juxtaposition of honoring week and MCAs has been remarked upon before so I won't spend much time here talking…

When I started this engineering theme with the Herons, I had an idea of how it would probably progress: sawhorse towers, best bridge designs, ending with some bridge designing and building (perhaps creating a bridge over our creek!)  The Herons, however, took this theme in a rather different direction.  After…