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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 >>

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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 >>

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Lyle the Crocodile

Students in kindergarten and first grade have been listening to stories by Bernard Wabber about Lyle the Crocodile.  As we read these stories, we discuss vocabulary such as: useful, desperately, toothsome, frightened, performing, permit and signal. Students are then asked to draw a picture and dictate words about Lyle and themselves.  This starts a conversation Read More >>

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Book Club: The Secret Soldier

This year 8 of the students at the New School worked with the student teacher, Amelia, during the book club for “The Secret Soldier”. This book was about a woman, Deborah, who lived in the colonies during the revolutionary war time period. Deborah wanted to have adventures, so she dressed up as a man and Read More >>

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Ten Blue Dots

Some of the youngest students listened to the book Ten Black Dots by Donald Crews. After listening to the book, counting dots and discussing each page, students worked hard on making their own Ten Blue Dots Book.   During each class, students get to work on a page or two by drawing their picture with the dots Read More >>

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Braille and Bridgeman Book Club

Students in our middle group of students this fall, have been reading a biography by Margaret Davidson titled Louis Braille: The Boy Who Invented Books for the Blind. At the same time we’ve slowly been reading the picture book Six Dots: The Story of Young Louis Braille by Jen Bryant in our class each week Read More >>

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From Blend it to Xerox

In mid November Kindergarteners moved on from constructing words with objects, for example a Comb, Apple and a Turtle means CAT to making them with their sound boards. A sound board allows the students to have a group of consonants and one vowel (a) to make words. They began by making two letter “words” like Read More >>

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Tuck Everlasting Book Club

In late October, early November we began reading a book called Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt. This is a book that essentially asks the question if you had the choice to live forever would you do it? This is how the book is introduced to the students, as they had been talking about immortality recently. Read More >>

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The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

This fall students read “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie. The book is about a kid, named Junior, who lives on the Indian reservation. He was born to Salish Indians, a Coeur d’Alene father and a Spokane mother. His intersectionality of identities caused him to feel like he didn’t fit Read More >>

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Follow Your Dreams Read Aloud

During the beginning stages of our transition from distance to in-person learning at the school, our K-3, in-person students, participated in a read-aloud series during snack that addressed and discussed the importance of children and young people following their dreams and aspirations. The titles from the series included Ada Twist Scientist, by Andrea Beaty, Drum Read More >>