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Artavist

Each week, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth graders learned about how various art forms can be used as a form of activism. In the beginning, students learned about the term, artavists, meaning individuals that use art to be an activist. After learning about artavists, we read the book,  Artavist by Nikkolas Smith. While reading, Read More >>

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Pixie

Pixie is a language arts and reasoning program that focuses on “sharpening” the thinking skills of children. It does this by giving them scenarios and asking them how they would react in that situation, or what does this truly mean. We read Pixie during snack once a week. We read the episode and then discuss Read More >>

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Banned Books

As banning books became much more common throughout the country we began a discussion with older students based on reading aloud a book called  The Day the Book Was Arrested by Nat Hentoff.   In the book, a parent objected to the reading of Huckleberry Finn due to both the racist language used to call Read More >>

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Four Voices

A group of older students studied speech writing in a 5-session, online class. We listened to speeches written by Abraham Lincoln, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, and watched Martin Luther King deliver his “I have a dream” speech. We also discussed techniques for making writing for spoken voice more effective, and analyzed three videos delivered Read More >>

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Four Voices

A group of older students studied speech writing in a 5-session, online class. We listened to speeches written by Abraham Lincoln, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, and watched Martin Luther King deliver his “I have a dream” speech. We also discussed techniques for making writing for spoken voice more effective, and analyzed three videos delivered Read More >>

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Systemic Racism

Our children, our students, live in a world that has developed all kinds of media and ways to transmit information, disinformation, ideas, and images.  They hear the media, adults, other peers talking about events and opinions as they move through their days.  Some of these ideas are exciting and innovative, others are darker and disturbing.  Read More >>

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Teaching and Learning through Games

Why do we play games?  What do they accomplish for teaching and learning? We have games for math, language arts, social studies, science and strategy.  We have games for inside and outside. We have cooperative and competitive games.  We have games we buy and we have many more games teachers and children have made. As Read More >>

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Rigamajig

A part of every afternoon at The New School is a time called Investigations.  During this hour children can choose between several activities:  art studio, construction materials, strategy games, or work on individually designed projects. For several years we have used Rigamajig, designed by Cas Holman of RISDE and represented by KABOOM, as a major Read More >>

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Highland Forest Fall 2018

Twice a year, for the past 20+ years, teachers have taken students camping to Highland Forest. These two days in the fall and spring are so important to building community. There is something magical that happens to groups of children when you provide them with the opportunity to play outdoors and engage with each other Read More >>

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Words as Boomerangs

Every year, and more than once a year, we facilitate discussions at school to help children understand the power of the words they use. Last week we asked children to consider the following quote. This discussion involved the entire school and had children in all grades participating. Words are alive. They shoot out like boomerangs Read More >>