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James Pass Arboretum and our tree unit

The older students (ages 9 to 12) have embarked on a tree exploration. They started out looking at how trees grow – by observing their rings. We soon learned that not only can you tell how old a tree is by its rings, but you can also determine whether it was a “good” growing year Read More >>

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Multiplication and Division

Students in the middle grades have been working on division and multiplication using our TERC series of Investigations books.  We’ve explored the number chart with skip counting, played games like Tricky Triangles, written riddles for our classmates to solve and completed worksheets on arrays.  We even read and solved riddles from the book Each Orange Read More >>

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Glimpses of After School at The New School

APRIL We studied branches cut from a great variety of shrubs and trees, making drawings and labeling them as we thought about how they were different and how they were the same. In the following days we created nests, weaving the beautiful curly willow, red osier dogwood and other slim strands, wondering how the birds Read More >>

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Poetry: Powerful Thoughts in Tiny Packages,

Inspired by Lucy Calkins’ Poetry: Powerful Thoughts in Tiny Packages, the youngest children explored writing poetry. The unit starts with a poetry museum, which asks children to write about objects that have been collected. As each object is observed children are encouraged to see with poet’s eyes, to see the unusual in ordinary objects. As Read More >>

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Socrates Trial

Socrates was found innocent! At his trial at The New School, our children rewrote history. The re-enactment of the trial of Socrates marked the culmination of three months studying Ancient Greece by the entire school. To set the stage, children created a set showing the hills of Athens and the Parthenon set against Corinthian columns. Read More >>

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Lewis and Clark

Our Lewis and Clark unit began with a Visual Thinking Strategy (VTS) exercise using a map showing the Louisiana Purchase. Then we discussed President Thomas Jefferson’s instructions to Lewis & Clark before they set off on their mission. Students had to take on the role of Meriwether Lewis or William Clark and write a letter Read More >>

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Mesopotamia

This fall, the middle group of students studied Mesopotamia. They began their study by looking at the differences between settled and nomadic people. Outdoors, they participated in a role play scenario in which they were nomadic Sumerians hunting and gathering food, creating shelter, and making clothes, tools and weapons. In small groups they read “If Read More >>

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Bugsocopters

Muta, Mae, Syris, Greer, Noah, Lola and Moebius took part in the Bugsocopters science unit. Bugscopters are a t-shaped, paper, helicopter-like creation of Larry Schafer, formerly professor of Science Teaching at SU. The students completed six experiments in which they compared their standard bugsocopter to another that varied in just one way. Each experiment consisted Read More >>

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Ancient Greece: Daily Life

This Fall the youngest group of students took part in the school wide study of Ancient Greece. They focused on the daily life of children and compared their own schooling, clothing, homes, food, games and pots to those of Ancient Greece. Each student created a book documenting their comparisons of each topic.  They colored maps Read More >>

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Building Number Sense and Mathematical Thinking

             Five of our youngest children took part in a TERC Investigations math unit on Building Number Sense and Mathematical Thinking. An integral part of this unit is having students explain their mathematical strategies that they did by drawing pictures, using numbers, words and manipulatives and counting in their head or on their fingers. Each Read More >>