The Rookery

 If I'm lucky, you didn't hear about the complete debacle that was our maze lesson on Friday.  This summer when I read "How to create a labyrinth" I thought, "No way — it will just bring them to tears."  Enthusiasm got the better of me, however, and on Friday we…

Last night when I was at my chorus rehearsal a man looked over my shoulder, "Mazes?" he asked.  He seemed surprised, perhaps because the maze I was working on was a lot simpler than something that would normally captivate an adult. "Yeah, it's for my 4th and 5th graders —…

The past few days have been joyful in the Herons.  Students have settled in and found their place and have begun producing some beautiful work.  Our nature journals arrived from the Sketchy Artist on Tuesday and, instead of our planned math review, I decided that the blank pages were just…

 We began our first week of shared math on Monday.  This year, students will be working with the same group on foundational math skills for the first twenty minutes of our math block.  This is a time for students to solidify algorithms and number sense.  Many days will begin with…

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…