Last week, two of the classes trekked it in the snow to read to our neighborhood preschool, Families Together. We try to do this about four times a year. I began reflecting on why we do this to help explain to our students and concluded this reflection after our experience. Here are some thoughts I…
This year, our whole school instructional theme is circles, and this month all class levels have been studying the circles of Solar System in science. Each class is doing some research, making a model of some form, and learning facts about the solar system’s objects and their movement, each in a developmentally appropriate way. In…
Every since we came back to school in January, my class has been thinking about writing stories. We started with a diagram Michael came up with, showing a story’s beginning, middle, and end as the food going into a duck, the food being digested, and the food coming out the other end. Everyone loved the…
My second grade students have been recently introduced to the concept of research, and began a preliminary process in both Writing and Science last week. In Writing, students are writing non-fiction information texts, or “All-About” books. In order to learn more about their topic, students have borrowed books from our classroom library and I have…
My K-1 class dove into learning about germs in the past couple of weeks in order to become “experts” and present their learning at Chicago Friends School community health day. Community health day is where each class teaches the others about some aspects of how to stay healthy. We began with an activity where, unbeknownst…
Our social-emotional curriculum, Second Step, teaches students about a series of steps (using the acronym S.T.E.P.) for solving problems (whether they be interpersonal, personal, or group problems). I have found that, after explicitly teaching about each of the steps, using these steps with the class has been helpful in solving problems together. With enough practice…