January

Oh January, you came and went without a blog post. You must have been full of many things...

Interspersed with the snow days, we had school! Students spent time reflecting on their goals from the fall, taking standardized tests, and responding to writing prompts. Students read, discussed and answered many questions while reading another literature circle book. Red Foxes read and summarized articles from the newspaper, Positive News, finished their investigation of Julius Caesar and Ancient Rome and finished math units on which they were working. We have had multiple lessons on Nonviolent Communication each week and have begun our first Trigger Project of the year. Students chose a behavior or feeling to interrupt, and I will choose their next trigger in some weeks after they gain familiarity with the practice. We tessellated, contemplated, and finished going through the scientific method in our Weather/Wildlife projects to name a few.

And now here is February...

End of December

Book groups met for the final time on Wednesday. Discussions became deeper as students consciously worked on their listening and sharing skills along with bringing high quality thoughts and questions to the meetings. Themes from the Wood Song discussion included the results of giving oneself over fully to something you love, the love and calmness we feel when we spend time with pets and an exploration of how we are like Gary at times when we want to continue an experience in order to learn more. Themes from The Phantom Tollbooth discussion included sharing an impossible task we will do in our lives, the pitfalls of ignorance (as represented by characters) and the tools of wisdom one can use to overcome ignorance, and finally the idea that boredom is something that one imposes on oneself. Both discussions were full of joy, creativity and life!

We are embarking on our investigation of Leonardo da Vinci's contributions to flight by first learning about Ancient Rome. Students have shown advanced knowledge of Roman Gods and Goddesses, and have begun learning about the rise of Rome, Rome's contributions to today (smooth roads, aqueduct, swimming pools etc.) and Julius Caesar. We will make our way toward the Renaissance in January and attempt to make our own ornithopters.

The Red Fox Clan spent time putting the final touches on the songs they learned for the amazing Solstice Celebration on Wednesday evening. Along with the other children, the Red Fox Clan displayed great levels of love, respect, compassion and leadership throughout the night. What an incredible group of children within an incredible community.

Have a joyful and restful holiday vacation!

Second post of December

The Red Fox Clan dove into the December busyness with a lot on their plate. They continued to practice preparing songs to be sung at next week's Solstice Celebration, as well as practice their technical writing skills in the form of writing directions for games to be played at Saturday's Holiday Fair.

We had most productive book group meetings where students shared their great enthusiasm for the books they are reading as well as their answers to higher level thinking questions. Students used both their answers and their own thoughts and questions as diving boards for discussion. The Wood Song group appreciated Paulsen's passion for learning from dogs and nature and made many connections to their own life experiences. The Phantom Tollbooth group was amused by Juster's writing and discussed how the book represents what lies just under the surface of the real world. The children are already displaying quite exceptional active listening skills, showing each other a great deal of respect and enjoying each other's ideas.

We continued to make our way closer to the last lessons of our first Singapore books in math. Students are enjoying topics ranging from constructing and filling in missing pieces of parallelograms to constructing and investigating the volume of cuboids. Tessellations and reviewing fractions are on deck.

The Beginning of December

The Red Fox Clan delved further into their Weather/Wildlife project, creating frequency tables, bar and line graphs to better represent data. Next week some students will complete pie charts before moving on to writing an analysis, discussion and conclusion.

We began book groups, with one group reading Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth and the other reading Gary Paulsen's Wood Song. Along with answering higher level thinking questions, students are continuing to maintain the practice of recording a thought or question for each section read. Now they are using this practice to start discussions with their peers. Students are practicing the skills of sharing, active listening and rhythm and other intricacies of holding a productive and enjoyable discussion.

To cap of our visit to Ancient Greece, we learned about the aeolipile. This hot water rocket engine, steam engine, and jet engine marked the start of engine invention. We will revisit engines in the world of flight in the spring.

We enjoyed our annual Hanukkah celebration on Friday morning. Latkes, dreidel and stories filled our tummies and hearts. This is a busy time of year! Students will continue with book groups, math, writing, science as well as preparing for the Holiday Fair.

11 and 12

Red Fox Clanners culminated their Athens/Sparta project with a performance at Big Circle. We finished filming our final scenes in the days before vacation and each travel show will be posted in short segments on the Red Fox Clan's facebook page soon.

Students continue to enthusiastically share their writing several times a week during Author's Share. Along with recording what they work on each day and sharing their drafting, students are adding weekly editing and collecting of misspelled words to their writing rhythm.

On Friday we were visited by Devin Franklin. Red Fox Clanners shared information from the large amount of Wildlife and Weather data recorded over the 6 weeks of Flying Deer. Devin offered students feedback on their presentations. To better represent their findings, students will formally document hypotheses, procedure, observations in the form of frequency tables, line graphs, bar graphs and pie graphs, and discuss their findings and new questions in a conclusion. We will aim to finish this project by mid December. Students have already voiced their plans to test their hypotheses about the relationship between weather and wildlife behavior next spring.

Empty Bowls was a great success, with students cutting vegetables and creating flags that made up the centerpieces. And that soup was delicious. Thank you all for contributing vegetables and your love to raise money to feed people. Enjoy the holiday!

Week 10

The main task of the week was the continuation of our Athens/Sparta Travel Show Project. Children split up the scenes they previously created and set to writing scripts. After writing in pairs, students collaborated with the other group members in the revision, editing and practicing of the scripts. Costume and props lists were made and students began memorizing their lines. Filming will start on Monday.

We spent two math sessions looking at the massive amount of data we collected over the 6 weeks of Flying Deer. Students created tables including the number of species seen each day, the number of animals seen each day, the number of animals before rainy days, the number of species seen on rainy days and many other variations. We will graph our data in an effort to learn more about how weather affects animals and specific species. On October 20th we saw 54 animals across 18 species!

The Red Fox Clan hopes to share several scenes from the Athens/Sparta Travel Show Project at next week's Big Circle. We hope you can come!

Eight and Nine

Many thanks go to Ellen Plageman for visiting us on the afternoon of Tuesday, the 26th. She brought many kites that she built over the years and told us of the inspirations that led her to start a kite making business. She sold many, many kites to the Smithsonian. We then walked down to Darrow School and flew several kites. Check out the pictures and Mountain Road's facebook page for video highlights.

The Red Foxes began their investigation of Greece by finding out our names without the many letters of the Alphabet that came from Ancient Greece. Students like JSS JCK RRSR and L FR SS loved their new names. We went on to read Homer's story of the Cyclops and Odysseus and dream up our own Olympic events. Students have now turned their attention to Athens and Sparta, comparing and contrasting the two city states with the aid of a Venn Diagram. Red Foxes have begun the process or writing the scripts of a travel show in which they will try to convince travelers to visit and live in their city. We will produce these shows and video tape them for your enjoyment.

Children have enjoyed moving their attention to free writing. They are practicing writing their own stories and have been doing short "author shares" to give the group a taste of their creation. We will begin weaving in peer revising and weekly editing of grammar and conventions. Real life DOL!

The Red Fox Clan has, over the past two weeks at Flying Deer, amazed me with their accomplishments. The children broke up into small groups on the 27th and put up tarps and created fires in the rain with no adult support. This is a challenge for naturalists of all ages. On the 3rd of November Red Fox Clanners built a 1 minute fire! They planned, organized, and then gathered and lit a match in under 60 seconds and then spent 10 minutes building it up into a roaring fire. Again, this accomplishment is most challenging. But they weren't finished. In the afternoon the other clans came to our site to find the hiding Red Foxes. The children hid, camouflaged with just a tiny bit of them showing, for 30 minutes without moving! Their concentration and passion is most commendable.