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Poetry: Powerful Thoughts in Tiny Packages

Lucy Calkins inspired a poetry unit for our students in grades 1-3. Each week of her unit inspires children to consider a new “ingredient” or strategy. The unit began with experimenting with looking at ordinary things in a new way. Subsequent classes explored looking at patterns in poetry, music, line breaks and the use of Read More >>

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Twister on Tuesday

A small group of students read Twister on Tuesday, a Magic Tree House book about twisters. The  book club focused reading skills such as comprehension, compare and contrast, summarizing, predictions, moods of pictures and text, and relating character traits to yourself. They also worked on vocabulary, and literary elements. The students were assigned chapters of the book Read More >>

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Geometry

This math class focused of recognizing specific polygons. We started out learning that the number of sides and vertices a polygon has is what determines the polygon’s name. We also went over what congruent and symmetrical were and examples were shown as visual aids. Then we talked about parallel lines, parallel lines never cross so we Read More >>

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Pick A Poet

The eldest students were given an assignment that involved self-selecting three poets. After browsing through collections of poetry by Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll and more, they had to pick one poem from their selected anthology. After copying one poem from the collection, they had to illustrate Read More >>

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Seen and Heard: Field Trip to Art Rage

On Wednesday, October 11, 2017 the older children visited Art Rage, an amazing gallery which celebrates the use of art to raise awareness of social justice issues. The current exhibit, Seen and Heard, invited local women artists to submit artwork to commemorate the 100th anniversary of New York State signing women’s suffrage into law. These Read More >>

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Spanish with Amanda

Spanish this semester went so well! Ace, Ben, Greer, and Jonas were all such wonderful students ready for each class with great participation and questions! We started off the semester working with “Las Palabras del Día” (The words of the day) where we started basic vocabulary acquisition. At first, we learned about basic Spanish conversational Read More >>

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Math Table Spring 2017

Students in 5th, 6th and 7th grade participate weekly in a 50 minute math table that explores 5th, 6th and 7th grade math topics.  This spring, we have spent a lot of time on fractions.  Those pesky fractions have tested us with adding, subtracting, being mixed with whole numbers, divided, multiplied and more.  We’ve also Read More >>

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Dictation Class

In our dictation class this year students have been working with spelling patterns for long and short vowel sounds in one-syllable words. For example, the short vowel sound is typically spelled CVC (Consonant-Vowel-Consonant) and the long vowel sound for many words is spelled CVCe (silent e at the end) or CVVC (vowel team). The students Read More >>

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Fudge Book Club

Students who participated in the Fudge Book Club read Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, by Judy Blume. This is the first in a series of books featuring Fudge, a toddler, and his older brother, Peter. Fudge’s mischief-making always causes problems for Peter. Students prepared for each week’s book discussion by reading the assigned chapter Read More >>