Framing Perspective Through Journaling

Framing Perspective Through Journaling

This year grades K through 4 began their journey in science class by creating their own nature journals. To make them, all of the students used brown paper bags, white copy paper, colored card stock, pipe cleaners, glue, and what quickly became known as "The Mighty Mighty Hole Punch."

Students from each grade group put their  fine motor skills to the test while barreling through the challenge of not only overcoming how to properly use the hole punch but also figuring out why their holes didn't line up. The challenge was met with many verbal cues of struggle such as "Ouch, I can't do this! Can you do this for me? Help! and finally, I give up". Many hugs and words of encouragement were provided all the way through to the completion of what has become our students' most respected tool for reflection in nature, their nature journals. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Thus far, our students have used their nature journals to reflect upon memorable moments they spent interacting with nature over the summer. During science class, our students also took a nature walk through part of the AFS arboretum on the first day of fall and journaled about the current view of the environment. They will take a series of nature walks through our campus in the future and reflect upon how the environment changes as the seasons change.

To our young scientists I would like to say, "Be proud of your bravery through the struggle. For you have gained the skill of using two new tools, "The Mighty Mighty Hole Punch" and your beautiful nature journals!

Building Community in Kindergarten

Making new friends

  

Mixing "food" for a Gruffalo hunt

Transitioning from the long days of summer to kindergarten can be a big change for students as they encounter and navigate new spaces, faces and expectations.  Each child comes to school with a variety of needs, experiences, skills and hopes. Before the hard and important work of reading, writing and math can ensue, each student must feel safe, valued, heard and known. A strong classroom community fosters this sense of belonging and begins to build the foundation of our year together.

Indoor and outdoor informal play such as dramatic play and block building, and structured play opportunities such as collaborative group work, naturally draw pairs or small groups of children together as they share common interests and ideas. All of these are certainly important for individual growth, yet how can we connect as a larger whole class? How can each student been known throughout the class and not by just a few close individuals? How can we intentionally build community? 

Collaborative pattern block work

Sharing a common interest of drawing

One way for our kindergarten class to connect more deeply is through our daily morning meeting times as we share a different greeting each day, making everyone feel welcomed and included. While practicing looking at each other, using names and a friendly voice, the students build up necessary social skills. Next, we dig a little deeper in making classroom connections by posing a "sharing" time or question that has us learning more about each other's likes and magnifying common interests such as treasured books, weekend experiences or a favorite food. We might share around the circle, individually or use a partner share to connect. Our morning meeting then proceeds to a game or group activity that has us moving, laughing and creating a repertoire of common shared experiences. Ask your child which game is their favorite so far:  Be Still As a Rock, Busy Bees, When the Warm Wind Blows or Fruit Salad? Our intentional morning meetings set the tone for the school day while providing the place and space for building bridges and strengthening our community.

Book sharing and learning how to be an audience member and a public speaker!

Creating something together as a whole group also helps each community member to feel included and important, a part of the bigger picture. Each student created a self portrait to include in our larger kindergarten portrait. This visual representation of our class emphasizes how each individual is valued and appreciated and how we are here to take care of one another. We will be friends, learners, teachers, readers, writers, scientists, mathematicians, athletes and artists side by side, supporting and cheering each other on as we move through this wonderful experience of kindergarten together.

Being a member of a community also entails some important responsibilities. To help the students understand the effect our words and actions have on those around us, we read several books about kindness and care for others. A classroom favorite is Have You Filled a Bucket Today? The students quickly understood the metaphors about bucket filling and how your kindness fills someone else's (and your own) bucket. On the other hand, unkind words and actions can cause one to be a bucket dipper. Our class eagerly declared they wanted to be bucket fillers! 

Kid writing: A kindergarten friend's
wish for the year,
"I hope to be a bucket filler."

 
As a classroom community, we discussed why we go to school and our hopes and dreams for the kindergarten year. Ideas ranged from playing with new friends, learning more about drawing, wishing to be a bucket filler, going on field trips and learning how to write more words. We then asked the class several clarifying questions:

Can you reach your hopes and dreams on your own? Will you need help? Who can help you?

What will we need for us all to be able to attain our hopes and dreams?

What will our classroom need to look like for us to all feel safe, ready to try new things, take some risks and face challenges?

How can we have a joyful kindergarten year together?


 Their brainstorm started off with all the things the children thought we should not do at school: no hitting, no running, no mean words, etc. Intent on putting a positive spin to this very long and growing list of "should-nots," we turned the conversation to all of the things we could do at school: be kind, share, make friends, help one another. This list grew even longer and the children began to see all of the connections between their ideas. As a community, we whittled the "could and should" do list down to a short and sweet list that encompassed all the positives, making it much easier to remember! Thus, our classroom community care contract was created. The students took their community responsibilities very seriously as they signed the classroom contract, promising to work together so that everyone can reach and attain their kindergarten hopes and dreams, and so much more.

Our Community Care Contract

Each student had a hand in creating the way we envision our classroom, and it is our hope that this ownership will help each member of our community work hard to honor these shared ideals. Our community building work will continue throughout the year as the kindergartners grow together as a class and as individuals. We look forward to the joyful journey ahead as a community of friends and learners working together.

Monarch Mysteries in First Grade

The mysteries of the monarch butterfly have come to first grade!  Nearly two weeks ago, a package arrived filled with small containers that were each housing two or three tiny monarch caterpillars.  The students examined the tiny creatures with magnifying glasses and began asking questions.  "What is that green goop?"  "Why are they so tiny?" "Why do they have so many antennae?" And their research was underway. The questions and wonderings continue and are recorded. We also made a list of the things that the students 'knew' about monarchs after the caterpillars first arrived. We are discovering some answers and new information already!

Each day the students observe the changes taking place, writing about what they see and drawing detailed pictures that will become pages in a book at the conclusion of our study.  These recordings provide opportunities for the students to fully engage in the growth and development of the monarchs first hand.  They use kid writing to record their thoughts and they are fine tuning their observational skills as they draw what they see.

Learning that the caterpillars only eat milkweed, we went on a search to find some on the campus in order to satisfy the appetites of these rapidly growing larvae.  We were fortunate to find some common milkweed near the short stable by the Meeting House. Watch this video on the importance of the milkweed.

After collecting the milkweed for the caterpillars we had a chance to dissect some milkweed pods and see what was hidden inside.  Do you know what was there?  Seeds! Lots of seeds!  The students were thrilled to take their seeds home in hopes of planting them and growing more milkweed for the monarchs!

The changes taking place are magical and every morning the students arrive and go right to the boxes to see what is happening with the caterpillars and are thrilled and excited to see that many have gone into the j-stage and then become beautiful green chrysalises.  Check out this site to see the miracles that the students are witnessing.

We can't wait to see what's ahead!! Stay tuned and enjoy our slideshow!

Slideshow design personalized with Smilebox

Fourth Grade Explores Life of the Lenape

The fourth grade has been studying the indigenous people of Pennsylvania known as the Lenape. We traveled on a field trip to Churchville Nature Center this week to learn from skilled guides while traveling through a series of interpretive stations that focused on horticulture, family life, hunting skills, fire making, pottery, food and cooking, and cordage (the making of strings and ropes from natural materials) to learn how the Lenape lived. The students had the opportunity to experience first-hand a little of what is was like to live in our area as a Native American, just before contact with European settlers. The students had a chance to reflect on their visit and offered up some of the following thoughts.

“I think it must have been difficult to keep people alive because they wouldn’t know what was bad and they didn't have good medicines like we have today.”  -Clellan

“I think the men and women had really hard jobs. It would be hard for men hunting and also doing what the women say. For the women I think it would be hard to tell the men what to do and planting gardens and watching children.” -Grace

“The most interesting thing was hunting and string making. They made string out of deer tendons!” -Matthew

“I was surprised how the boy, before he went hunting, had to sit and sweat in a sweat lodge” -Brian

“Building a fire was interesting because if you are ever hiking in winter time you’ll know how to make a fire.” -Luca

examining a bear skull

mixing water to crushed cornmeal

trying on a beer skin

learning how a dugout canoe was made

making clay beads

dressing as a Lenape girl

Building Classroom Community in Third Grade

     There are a number of ways that we build community at the beginning of the year in third grade.  We play getting to know you games, establish and practice classroom routines, create 'personality portraits' to share about ourselves, and we spend time reviewing playground norms to make recess a fun and safe experience. We talk about our hopes and dreams for the year, and then we use those hopes and dreams to create classroom rules.


     Working as a group to create classroom rules helps students' to feel that the rules are relevant to them and they are more invested in following them. To begin this process, we started with a brainstorm of possible rules, which included specific rules such as one person talking at a time to more general rules like, "never give up."  We then worked together to sort the list of rules into four categories that encompassed all of the ideas.  Condensing the rules into just four was important so that they clear are easy to remember.  In our class, the rules we settled on are:

• Be in control of yourself
• Help and respect others
• Take care of classroom materials
• Try your hardest and do your best work

      Our hope is that by having rules that are fairly general, they will help students to make good choices about how they treat others and the classroom materials without feeling that they have to remember a huge amount of specific rules.  So far these have worked well as a guide for all of us as we line up for recess, play math games with a partner or have a class wide discussion during morning meeting or social studies.

Second Graders Create Teddy Bears!

The second grade tradition of creating hand-sewn teddy bears began more than 20 years ago! The inspiration comes from our first chapter book read aloud, The Teddy Bear Tree by Barbara Dillon. This project is a wonderful way to begin the year as we get to know our students and their families.

Just last week, the second grade created their bears!  First, students chose the color felt they wanted to use to make their new friend.  Then came the job of tracing and cutting the bear shape and choosing buttons for eyes and a nose. 


On Monday and Wednesday mornings, family members and resource teachers joined us to help with the sewing and stuffing of the bears.  Throughout the process, there have been animated conversations between children and adults about potential names and possible activities with their new stuffed friends, including “I’m going to give my bear to my baby when I grow up!”  

Later this week, the bears will go home for a weekend visit! Their owners will record the adventures they have together in words and pictures, which will lead to a more extensive writing project in the coming days.  Be on the lookout for the bears to make an appearance soon outside the library! 

Stop!, Look!, Listen!-Third Grade Explores Ensemble Work

Stop, Look, Listen!

Our third grade musicians are learning about playing different musical parts in an ensemble. We began by learning a simple chant that teaches about street safety:

Stop!, Look!, Listen!

Before you cross the street

use your eyes, use your ears

and then use your feet!

Students repeated this chant several times while walking to the beat around the room as I played the steady beat on the temple blocks. 

Next, they learned about ostinato. An ostinato is a repetitive musical figure that accompanies the main melody or rhythm. In this case, we learned about rhythmic ostinati (plural:) that accompanied our original chant (which is also a rhymic pattern)

The first ostinato they learned is below:

Ostinato 1:

Crosswalk

I'm in a crosswalk

Crosswalk

I'm in a crosswalk

Students were then broken into two groups-one that chanted the main chant and the other, the first ostinato. We continued layering ostinati until we had five different parts all going at once!

Here are the others:

Ostinato 2:

Wait, don't walk

Wait, don't walk

Ostinato 3:

Here comes the train

Look out!

Here comes the train

Look out!

Ostinato 4:

Woo-hoo!

Woo-hoo!

Students then transferred these parts onto untuned percussion instruments, including drums, guiros (scraping instrument), woodblocks, shekere's (gourd instrument from West Africa) and various other percussion instruments. 

Finally, they were put into groups to work out their own arrangement of the piece. They could start and end any way they liked, They could incorporate movement. Here are two groups preparing their arrangements and performing for the class. 

Enjoy!

Group #1-Work-In-Progress

Group #1-FINAL

Group #2-Work-in-Progress

Group #2-FINAL

Take A Closer Look, Think More Deeply

Our third grade has started the year contemplating the difference between looking and seeing. We often look out into our world, but how often do we take the time to really see and think about what surrounds us, be it natural or digital? One of the fun ways we explored this idea was to look at images that could be interpreted more than one way. Students really enjoyed peering into the pictures to see what they could find and what others might have missed.

 

We spent quite a bit of time discussing the images and how important it is to take the time to think about what we are seeing.

We then moved onto thinking harder about what we read. Using various quotations, students worked in groups to decipher meaning and then attempted to rephrase the quotations in their own words.  Below is an example of a quote we pondered.

Found September 21, 2017: https://www.askideas.com/a-bad-attitude-is-like-a-flat-tire-you-cant-go-anywhere-until-you-change-it/

Students were able to relate the quote back to themselves, find examples to help explain it and share this with their friends. We discovered trying to put the quote in our words really tested how well we understood the quotation. The students checked their own words against the ideas of their friends. It was a lively, fun exploration.

Next up for third grade is researching a topic of their choice on PebbleGo. Students will work on how to take notes, which means writing the essence of the topic in their own words. They have started this process and are tackling the challenge with gusto.

Reading Aloud Inspires and Engages Students

Books are being read aloud in all classrooms throughout Lower School. Teachers select read-aloud books for a variety of reasons. Some books are targeted to delight, surprise, engage or inspire. Students might interact while listening to a book read aloud by repeating phrases, acting out emotions, turning and talking to a partner about a query, sharing their thinking with the larger group, or by envisioning (imagining) a section of the story.  At a later point, they may write about their thinking.

At the beginning of reading workshop in first through fourth grade, the book read aloud is targeted for the reading strategy that we are focusing on during that reading session. In the fall, first grade students are learning how to talk and write about a part of the book they want to remember. They also focus on making connections between the story and their own lives or to other books they have read and think deeply about the characters in the text.
Second through fourth graders are immediately making connections and thinking about the character traits that are reflected in the actions and thoughts of the characters in the book and are sharing their ideas with other students and their teachers. Students are able to apply these strategies to their own reading. This is all in the first weeks of school!

The power of reading aloud can be felt at home also as your children listen to books that are your favorite ones to read and reread. This shared reading deepens thinking skills, increases vocabulary and shows the importance and connection of reading at home and at school.

Below are a few of the books that are being read aloud this month in Lower School.

First Meeting of Lower School Book Club for Adults

Lili De Jong by Janet Benton is the first book to be read and discussed by our Lower School Book Club for adults. Join us Friday morning October 13 from 8-9am to not only discuss this wonderful book but to meet the author. Janet Benton will be joining us for this book group discussion. A light breakfast will be served.

RSVP: Ann Botel-Barnard abotel-barnard@abingtonfriends.net You are welcome to bring adult friends and relatives that are interested in discussing this book. We also welcome adults from the other divisions in the school that would like to join us. 

The schedule for this year 2017-18 is:
Lilli De Jong by Janet Benton Friday October 13, 2017

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman Friday November 17, 2017

Into the Water by Paula Hawkins Friday January 19, 2018

Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue Friday February 23, 2018

To be determined: Friday April 20, 2018

To be determined: Friday May 25, 2018

Our second full week!

School is well underway!  We welcomed many families for Back to School Night on Tuesday.  It was truly a joy to share about the ways in which we help students learn and grow academically, socially and emotionally. If you were unable to attend, please reach out to your child's teacher for any information that may have been handed out.

This week, students have begun engaging deeply in their work. A visit to fourth grade showed students conducting research about the Lenape people in the 1500's and digging into multi-digit math problems.  Third grade students have been diligently working on mini books about what they love and learning how to structure a piece of writing. Second grade book groups have begun in earnest and listening into their conversations about the text has been a treat.  First graders have been working on intensely detailed observational drawings and recording what they see happening as their monarch caterpillars grow. Kindergarten has begun to learn about the various ways the five senses help us to take in the world.  Our friends in early childhood have been working on journaling and joyful number exploration with lots of opportunities for making comparisons between what they know and what is new to them.

Today we gathered as a Lower School for an assembly in honor of the Autumnal Equinox.  Fourth grade guided us in the welcome song for the first time this year. We shared a song in Español about trees and then listened to a lovely tale about a small fox experiencing his first autumn. We concluded with music from Keisha and Raji.

Next week various teachers will begin blogging about classroom and community experiences.  We look forward to sharing our continued learning adventures!