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Place Value Fun

Seven 3rd and 4th graders have been working hard in a place value class that has also integrated multiplication.  We started with talking about skip counting on the 100s chart and what numbers would land us exactly on 100.  We learned that 100 has the factors of 1, 100, 2, 50, 4, 25, 5, 20 Read More >>

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Xerox – Learning to Read

To assist children learning how to read, we offer small group instruction that focuses on the six syllable types. Using Road to Reading, and Wilson Language,each week children receive instruction that meets them at their instructional level. Typically children meet in small groups with a teacher three or four times a week for 20 – Read More >>

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Writing Workshop with Dana

We are working on short story structure:  beginnings, middles, and ends. We have been discussing character motivation, dramatic conflict, and how to resolve things in an interesting and satisfying way.  It’s a challenge to structure imaginative worlds, and it takes a lot of focus to show a dramatic arc in a compressed form. Our goal Read More >>

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Cursive

Students in 3rd and 4th grades have been working on reviewing all of the lower case cursive letters from the clock climbers to the hills and valleys.  As we finish up our lower case letters, students have been challenged to write two words in cursive, switch with a partner and print what their partner has Read More >>

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Civil War Class Visits the Onondaga Historical Association

       The oldest group of students are taking part in a social studies unit looking at the causes and events leading up to the Civil War. This is a continuation of the Westward Expansion unit they completed last year. They have had remarkable discussions about what freedom is, what you can own and Read More >>

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Layers of the Earth

The youngest group of students has been learning about the layers of the earth.  We started off our unit by reading parts of Gail Gibbon’s bookPlanet Earth/Inside Out and How to Dig a Hole to the Otherside of the World by Faith McNulty.  As we learned about the many layers, we made small models out of clay and Read More >>

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Upper Case Printing

Working once a week with our youngest children, we have studied and learned how to form the capital letters A through E. While this sounds like a simple task, there are many things to consider. First of all where to start the letter? This is hard for some youngsters who are used to forming their Read More >>

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Native Americans and their Biomes

 We started our unit by studying physical maps of the United States. We also looked at and discussed maps that show climate, and precipitation. Then we studied the biomes of North America and compared their boundaries to the physical map.             After reading about each biome and sharing what each had to offer in terms Read More >>

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Highland Forest, October 2014

In many schools children are taken on camping field trips to celebrate the end of the year, as a reward you might say. At the New School we visit Highland Forest twice a year. The first time is scheduled near the start of school, and the second trip is within weeks of the end of Read More >>

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Westcott Cultural Fair

The Westcott Cultural Fair is always a festive way to begin our school year. This year, during Investigations, the children, expressing their love for books, created signs to carry . The titles of books they chose was wonderfully varied: Kensuke’s Kingdom, Private Peaceful, Cat Warriors, Blues Clues, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Diary of a Wimpy Read More >>