The Weekly Newsletter
Week 30, May 8-12
Welcome back! We had such a fun week. It was filled with lots of experiments, role playing in writing, virtual reality, spirit animal drawing, fun and relaxing beach time, and as always, invaluable hard work and effort put into big goals as the end of the year quickly approaches. Read on for more details on the week and what the Eagles did!
This week in the personal finance quest, the navigators were faced with some BIG important things to think about. Their first assignment was all about their first automobile…what type of car they will buy, how much fuel for it will cost, insurance, and repairs. Their next challenge was to make a decision about college. First, whether or not they will go and if they need schooling for their profession, and then which college is best for the field they are going into and all of the costs that will go into putting themselves through school. Finally, they delved into the world of taxes and what that will look like for them once they start earning an income.
In physics the foundation studio learned all about simple machines! They put their new knowledge into action both in the studios and at the park at the end of the week. At school they built catapults and at our beach day on Friday they went to the park and studied the physics involved with playground equipment. It was excellent (and fun!) practice for their own playground pieces they’ll be building later in the quest.
The navigator students practiced being witnesses and investigators in the journalism quest this week. As partners, they were given interviewer and interviewee positions and an event to write about. The challenge was to each write separate personal accounts on the same event and to reveal these accounts at the end of the week. Each student went through the editing process on their pieces throughout the week and walked away with some excellent journalism!
The biography quest with the foundation studio was great this week. This quest is very carefully breaking down the pieces of great writing. Each week, we have been studying and practicing different parts of researching, character development, and organization. While it is tempting to just dive into a paper (especially when you are writing about somebody who is a hero to you), we have taken on the challenge of slowly and carefully outlining, note taking, and building a strong bibliography so that the foundation is put in place for an excellent biography piece. The students are having a great time with this which is always wonderful to see!
In Developing Your Web Presence, the students got to learn all about Virtual Reality equipment! They got to test and play with the equipment and learn what it takes to create a VR experience and how VR is different from other videos. They had a blast!
The navigator studio studied the tensions between powers in the US, Vietnam, and France in the 60s that would eventually lead to the Vietnam war. This included the riots in Paris, president Lindon B. Johnson, and president Charles De Gaulle. And in history for foundation this week, they read all about the end of WW1, specifically Gandhi and the Treaty of Versailles
In art this week the students worked on and finished their drawings of their spirit animals! It has been such a cool experience learning how to draw using grids…as it gets you out of your head and helps you bite off small chunks at a time of a drawing rather than trying to draw the whole thing at once. Once they have finished their drawings, the class will move onto the next stage which involves screen printing! Oh! And there was also some awesome crafting happening for a certain special holiday coming up on Sunday 🙂
We ended the week with our first beach day of the year! This was an awesome day- not only did the Eagles get to play in the water, play beach volleyball and frisbee, as well as lots of other fun games, they also took their projects with them. The foundation studio learned about playground physics at the park and the navigators had their history socratic discussion and journalism read-aloud’s. It was a great way to end the week!
See you Monday!
