-

|

Book Club: Henry and Mudge/Mr. Putter and Tabby

In January we started reading Henry and Mudge and the Snowman plan, looking at the story elements of this story. Before they started reading we had a class about what story elements are and students had a good understanding of characters, setting and events in stories. They learned when figuring out the characters you ask Read More >>

|

Civil War

Our unit started with learning about the Triangle Trade route, and locating and identifying the countries and goods involved. We then studied how Africans brought to the New World were forced to participate in this trade through the Middle Passage. Students studied images of slave auctions using the Visual Thinking Strategies: What’s going on in Read More >>

|

Cubist Portraits

This project started in February with a slide show of Pablo Picasso’s cubist portraits. As always the children had amazing observations about color, geometric shapes and unusual perspectives. Each student then created his/her own cubist portrait, which was attached to their Valentine Bags.

|

Inventions

In January 2023 we started an Invention unit, inspired in part by the many inventions we learned about during our study of the Industrial Revolution. We started this unit by watching a few videos. Bill Nye always offers interesting and humorous videos on science topics. Then we watched videos that documented two recent real world Read More >>

|

Poetry

Inspired by the teaching of Kenneth Koch, and his brilliant books “Rose, Where did you get that Red” and “Wishes, Lies and Dreams,” our oldest students explored their poetic talents, some for the very first time. Each class began with a mini-lesson, which included reading and discussing poems written by other children on the topic. Read More >>

|

Alphabet Books

Doug Dubois, father of Cyrus, introduced us to the fascinating work of MacArthur Fellow, Wendy Ewald who began fostering literacy via photography and storytelling with children in the 1970s. Together we decided to create an alphabet book, randomly assigning each child a letter of the alphabet. Doug and Leah came to our school multiple times Read More >>

|

Industrial Revolution Essay

As a culminating activity for our year long study of the Industrial Revolution, all the students were asked to develop an essay evaluating its positive and negative effects. Many historical documents, photos, journal entries, cartoons, were studied and discussed. The class sorted these documents into positive and negative piles, and of course some didn’t belong Read More >>

|

Industrial Revolution

To start this unit, students were asked to analyze a Lewis Hine photograph of children working in factories using the Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS). This led to a discussion of child labor. Each student was assigned to read and present an historical fiction novel about child labor at the turn of the century. In their Read More >>

|

Grammar: Nouns and Verbs

Starting in late September, this grammar class learned about nouns and verbs. This class took place either during morning meetings or during snack time. During the first two lessons, students learned about possessive nouns, specifically where apostrophes and “s” are placed depending on the word being singular, plural, or plural with an “s” already at Read More >>

|

Mississippi Bridge

Starting in September, we read a book called Mississippi Bridge by Mildred D. Taylor. Due to the dark content and usage of derogatory words, the group of students had to have a mature mindset to read this book. This book gave students insight into the unjust segregation and racism from the time period. In addition, Read More >>