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Friendship Bracelets and Boondoggle fun

Johnna, our student teacher, enjoyed sharing her interest in arts and crafts activities during investigations. She choose to teach the students how to make friendship bracelets. Each student was given the chance to make a friendship bracelet to then give to a good friend. Boondoggle was another way Johnna engaged her students in conversations. This activity also gave some Read More >>

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Data and Graphing

This fall the younger group of students in 2nd and 3rd  grades began a data class with Johnna our student teacher. Throughout this class the students demonstrated the ability to collect numerical data, represent class data in a variety of ways and develop language used to interpret data. Johnna modeled each step before the students Read More >>

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Immigration Videos from 2012-2013

Last year at The New School, as part of our social studies unit on Immigration, each student interviewed one of their ancestors who had immigrated to America. The students took on that role and were interviewed telling their story. Click on the link below to watch the videos.  https://cloud.ensemblevideo.com/app/sites/index.aspx?destinationID=7cVkGrwsNkmOpAJdy5uwFA 

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Math Problem Solving

We value giving children the opportunity to problem solve and think critically.  A group of 2ndgraders met once a week to tackle problems such as: “How many feet would there be in our room if all the people living in your houses came to our class at the same time.” Or “If I found 50 Read More >>

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Poetry with Kenneth Koch

Inspired by Kenneth Koch’s book, Rose, Where Did You Get That Red? the older students spent 6 weeks studying the poems of Wallace Stevens’ Thirteen Ways to Look at a Blackbird; John Ashbery’s Into the Dusk-Charged Air: Arthur Rimbaud’s  Voyelles; William Blake’s Tyger Tyger, Rivers, Kenneth Koch’s prompts for children are both motivating and creative Read More >>

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Mesopotamia – The Cradle of Civilization

For the oldest students (grades 4 and above), our study of “Mesopotamia” – the land between two rivers – began with a discussion of “How do we know what we know?” How can we possibly know about a civilization that existed over 5,000 years ago? The children displayed a solid understanding of this concept listing Read More >>

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Bugsocopter Science

To start the year, the oldest students were challenged to learn as much as they could about bugscopters – a t-shaped, paper, helicopter-like creation of Larry Schafer, formerly professor of Science Teaching at SU. After exploring the characteristics of the bugsocopters, by dropping them from on high, we discussed the need to limit variables when Read More >>

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Green Eyed Monster

This mini unit explored the connections between visual art and language arts, and how both are used to creatively tell stories and express emotions. After listening to the picture book, Go Away Big Green Monster by Ed Emberley children were introduced to adjectives as descriptive words. The students then brainstormed adjectives they could use for Read More >>

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Motel of the Mysteries

The oldest students listened to a book at read aloud this fall called Motel of the Mysteries by David Macaulay. In this book, it is the year 4022 and all of the ancient country of Usa has been buried under many feet of junk mail from a catastrophe that occurred back in 1985.  The students thoroughly enjoyed how Read More >>

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Seeds

In science class, students in Kindergarten and First Grade have been exploring seeds.  We started our unit by reading a book called A Fruit is a Suitcase for a Seed by Jean Richards.  We then had fun predicting the number of seeds (one, a few or a lot) in fruits and vegetables.  Once we opened the “suitcases” Read More >>