Laurel Creek visits The Maker Faire

Today Laurel Creek (K/1) went on a trip to the annual Maker's Faire down in San Mateo. This was a fantastic opportunity to see connect their current study of Simple Machines with the DIY creativity and ingenuity of folks out in the world. Word is the electronic giraffe was a big hit! Check out the great pictures below, courtesy of Sherry Hsi.

Making Learing Visible

We had three great presentations of student learning in the last 12 hours at TBS!

Last night the students in Strawberry Creek (4/5) shared their Famous American research projects with the community. Each student stood by his/her display and essay, and answered questions from parents and visitors. The room was alive with a joyful buzz. As a parent, I was thrilled to watch my child speak confidently to other adults about what she had learned, and the choices she made creating her project.

At the same time, the students and families in Wildcat Creek (6th grade) gathered for a class feast in the depot, where a student band performed.

Finally, this morning the students in Blackberry Creek held a publishing party. The event began with a class performance of "Octopus' Garden"; children and families then split up into groups, and each child presented and read from his/her "All About" book on a marine mammal. The event finished with a gallery walk of the great animal models that were hanging around the room.

All hail Julianne!

TBS K-5 Teaching Artist Julianne Hughes has done a pair of special projects with the K/1 students recently, in addition to the twice-weekly art classes she teaches those students. In Blackberry Creek, she helped students create a "button pillow" as a goodbye present for Shannon, while in Laurel Creek she helped students sew a soft quilt for Cate's soon-to-arrive baby. I feel so lucky that we have people like Julianne at TBS, who take the initiative, time and effort to care for each other so deeply! Enjoy the pictures below.

This week's field trips

We had some pretty darn cool field trips happening this week at TBS! In K/1, Blackberry Creek spent the day at the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos, as part of their emergent curriculum unit on flight.

In 4/5, Cerrito Creek spent a soggy day at the U.C. Botanical Gardens and Tilden Park, doing field work to extend their Lewis And Clark cultural studies work...

...while Strawberry Creek spent a sunny day in San Francisco at the Exploratorium, learning more about their current science studies of electricity and magnetism (as well as all the other fun exhibits, like cow's eye dissection).

Photos by Youval Dar, Katy Grannan, and Jeff Grether.

Kindergarten Readiness

A recent opinion post on CNN's School's of Thought blog by Donna McClintock offered a one-sided take on the question of when to start children in Kindergarten.

Her arguments in favor of starting almost all kids in Kindergarten at age five boiled down to two points: first, that the brain develops regardless of grade, and second, many reasons parents start children a year late have to do with their adult needs rather than the child's needs, such as peer choices, future sports success, or anxiety about separation. While she seems to have a good sense of what makes a good Kindergarten program, her view is best summed up in the line "If the program is not a true hands-on, positive, developmentally appropriate program, then perhaps redshirting is a good choice or choosing a different school might be an even better one."

For the sake of fairness, let's look at what she didn't acknowledge in her post:

-Many families don't have the financial or social capital to choose a different school other than the one their child is assigned to. Those that do are usually upper-middle class and white -- exactly the demographic that is often choosing to delay their child's start in order to try to maintain the academic and other advantages that come with white privilege.

-The curriculum in Kindergarten has been accelerated to become what First Grade used to be - a phenomenon well documented in both the academic literature and news media, including articles in Newsweek (2006),  The Washington Post (2007), and The Chicago Tribune (2010). So pushing children who may or may not be ready for Kindergarten into First Grade academics makes little sense.

-The research of the impact of redshirting is extremely mixed, despite her claims: some research suggests that boys and low-income students have significant benefits to waiting a year, and that starting Kindergarten too soon can have significant negative effects.

-Brain development is not only regardless of age, it is also unique to every child. Simply because a child is five does not mean s/he is neurologically ready for the work of Kindergarten. And simply because five year old child spends a year in a preschool or bridge-K program does not mean that it is a wasted year for neurological, academic, intellectual, social, and/or emotional development.

That these and other important factors were left out of the piece is predictable; what truly annoyed me was the style of the piece. I'm all for substantive conversations that encompass differing opinions on important topics, but let's be honest about how we are approaching the discussion. Although initially positioned as an objective perspective, starting with the "Kindergarten redshirting different for each child" title for the post, the piece is in fact an unstinting push to get age 5 children into Kindergarten, right up to the very last line that tells readers who choose to take another year for their child "While it may be too late to get him into the original kindergarten program you wanted to, do not allow him to waste this critical year of opportunity." I'm glad that Mrs. McClintock recognizes the characteristics of a good Kindergarten, but I wish she could have been more transparent and direct about her views at the outset of the article.

At TBS, we believe that age is not the determining factor in Kindergarten readiness, and that's why we have a Transitional K program at our Early Childhood Center. We recognize that Kindergarten readiness means ready child, ready family, and ready school - a chronologically young child may thrive in Kindergarten, while a chronologically old child may do better in the TK program. Our "cut off" date is September 1, and we work closely with each family of a child with a fall birthday to determine whether the Explorers program or our Kindergarten will be a better fit.

Laurel Creek Maternity Sub planning

Here's the letter I sent to families in the Laurel Creek (K/1) classroom yesterday about our process for hiring a long-term substitute while Cate is out on maternity leave. If you know any qualified candidates, please let me know or encourage them to contact me!

Inside a K/1 Math Workshop

This morning I was leading an admissions tour (yes, they've already started), and during the 10 minutes we spent in Blackberry Creek (K/1), we observed students playing a variety of math games in a Math Workshop period.


Roll and Record is played exactly as it sounds: a student rolls two dice, adds the showing faces together, and colors in a square in the appropriate column of the tracking form (which has columns numbered 2-12). This activity provides a structured way to practice simple addition of numbers one though six, and introduces the concept of gathering and tracking data.


Start At/Get To provides another avenue into addition. Students are given a number line with all the numbers identified except two - one that is the "start at" number, and another that is the "get to" number. The student begins by using the surrounding numbers on the number line to fill in the missing numbers. Next, the student counts from the "start at" number to the "get to" number. Finally, the student uses those numbers to create an equation, in the form of "Start At + Counted Number = Get To" (such as 12 + 3 = 15). This activity introduces the concept of counting on (which is more efficient than counting all), as well as the tools of number lines and equations.


Compare at Home can be played alone or with multiple players. Two (or more) cards are flipped over from among a deck, and the card with the higher number is identified. Double Compare combines the concepts of addition and comparison. Two cards are drawn and added together to create a sum; then another pair of cards is drawn and added together to create a second sum; and then the student identifies which pair of cards has a greater sum (or if they are equal). Besides the explicit practice in addition and comparison, this activity helps students realize that while one pair may have the single largest number (10 + 2), another pair may have a larger total (7 + 7), thereby reinforcing the student's underlying understanding of number sense.


If you're interested in seeing more of games in the TERC: Investigations curriculum, you can check out quite a few of them online.


Bonus feature: The following blurb was written by Sima Misra, the TBS Differentiated Curriculum Instructor who is focused on math this year. Sima is continuing the 4th/5th math club she launched last year (based on her experience launching a similar program in the 6th grade the prior year), and shared this blurb with the 4/5 teachers for their blogs:
  
The 13 students in 4th/5th grade Math Club today were very engaged with a new problem, game, and puzzle today.  Some of the boys in particular enjoyed the new game Intersections, trying to make lines intersect as many other lines as possible.  Many girls and boys pondered the Growing Staircases problem, a classic pattern-finding activity where students try to derive an algebraic function to predict the number of blocks necessary to build staircases, by drawing pictures, using color tiles, and writing expressions.  Some kids were intrigued to find out what an "nth stair" is!  A few students worked on Puzzles, including figuring out how many different shapes one can make with 4 regular hexagons.  How many do you think there are?

Friday Morning Fun

I love Friday mornings at The Berkeley School. Each K-5 grade level has a unique tradition that engages students in their intellectual learning linked to important social learning as well. In the K/1 classrooms,  parents and family members are invited in for Free Friday, a chance to explore materials, collaborate on reading, writing, and math activities, play games and puzzles, and put the child in the role of expert and guide to demonstrate (and thereby consolidate) his/her learning.  

In the 2/3 classrooms, parents and family members join students during a Reader's Workshop period. Children without family members present often spontaneously gather together in groups and simultaneously read and share a variety of (often non-fiction) texts.

Friday mornings at the 4/5 level usually begin with a "Cerritoberry" period, in which all students and teachers from both classrooms come together to do an activity (or play a game) that promotes communication and collaboration. For today's activity, students were broken up into groups of 5 or 6 and given the following survival situation (drawn from secondary Scouting curriculum, which uses it for the purposes of teaching content, whereas for TBS it was used for teaching critical thinking, communication, and collaboration):

You and your companions have just survived the crash of a small plane.  Both the pilot and co-pilot were killed in the crash.  It is mid-January , and you are in Northern Canada.  The daily temperature is 25 below zero, and the night time temperature is 40 below zero.  There is snow on the ground, and the countryside is wooded with several creeks criss-crossing the area. The nearest town is 20 miles away. You are all dressed in city clothes appropriate for a business meeting. Given a group of items you’ve recovered from the wreck (a small ax, a can of Crisco, newspapers, a lighter, etc), create a list of the items in order of importance for your survival, followed by the uses of each item and the reason why you have it in the order you’ve chosen.

Site/Garden Day Thank You!

Many thanks to the awesome parents and kids who showed up today to help weed and prune the K/1 playscape: Megan, Abby and Myles, Steen, Evie and Will, Lauren and Daniel, Jon and Elliot, Jeanine and Liza, and Jean.

Scenes from Step-Up Day

Today was our annual Step-Up Day, when students at each level "step up" to the next level for the morning to experience what life will be like in the next grade: ECC to K, 1st to 2nd, 3rd to 4th, 5th to 6th, and 6th to 7th (the 8th grade spent the morning working on their graduation projects). This event helps children engage in the transition to a new role, whether moving to a new classroom or, for current K, 2nd, and 4th graders, experiencing what it will be like to be the elders in a  classroom with a younger cohort joining them. Here are some photos from the event.

Blackberry (K/1): During an open work period, children were at the listening station, painting with watercolors, doing needlepoint, and in the block area.

 

 

Laurel Creek (K/1): During an open work period, children were playing games, in the block area, in the dress-up, doing logic games on the computer, making flags, and working at the creation station.

 

Sweet Briar (2/3): During math period, children played the game "Skunk"

 

 

 


Temescal (2/3): During an open work period, children were using the Montessori maps, the Montessori bells, using geometric cubes to do multiplication, and drawing three dimensional shapes on 3D graph paper.

 

 


Cerrito and Strawberry (4/5): During a math workshop, children were in pairs and table groups playing games including Close to 100, Boxed In, Top Sums, Concentration, and Find That Number.