The Weekly Newsletter
Week 25, March 27-31
Welcome back! We had an awesome week getting ready to wrap up the session and prepare for the exhibition of learning. As we wrapped up projects and the students set big goals for themselves and their peers, the week turned out to be a super successful (and fun) one. Lots of work got done during core skills and project time, and everyone is getting really excited to show their hard work to you next Tuesday.
We started the week with a contract signing ceremony with the foundation studio. Some of our foundation Eagles decided they wanted to recommit to their contract and edit/add things they felt it could use. After much thoughtful reflection on this important document, we got to celebrate by watching them sign it!
Project time was a blast this week! The foundation Eagles finished their offline games!
They look so good! All of the kids are very excited to show you their games and watch you play against each other 🙂 They have now started using Gamestar Mechanic to create their online games.
The navigators are nearly finished with their final data quest projects! This week they created their display boards representing the countries they have chosen to move themselves and their family to based on the heavy and thorough data research
they have done on each country. This week was all about finishing their final drafts of their conclusion papers and display boards. Now they just have the mock trial to finalize and any finishing touches to go over, and then they will be ready to go for the exhibition of learning!
Writing workshop in the foundation studio was all about story writing for their first Mad Lib. Last week we went over the basic parts of speech, like nouns, verbs, and adjectives. This week they wrote their short stories and starting building their mad libs.
The navigators are almost finished with their realistic fiction pieces! They just have some last finishing touches to do from their final peer and guide edits. They have worked so hard on these stories and have been so receptive to the warm and cool feedback they’ve gotten. Pieces like
these are not easy….tackling
both heavy research and creative writing all at once is a real challenge. We are so proud of them for taking on this project and creating beautiful works of writing.
This week for art, the Eagles learned about Haiku and Japanese straw painting. This is a really fun and addicting style of painting that originated in Japan. The artist gets a very small amount of black ink mixed with water, then drops it on their canvas and uses a straw to blow the ink and make line designs with it. It was so
awesome how their haikus and paintings were representations of each other… they are going to make our walls looks very beautiful!
We can’t wait for next week when the Eagles get to showcase all of their work. This exhibition is such an important part of our year, as it is the main outlet the students get to transcribe their growth and their education into real life representation. This is their chance to put their projects and new knowledge into action and tie it all together, for the world and for themselves to see!
We will see you next week…have a good weekend!