For the latest news, check out Amy's Student Teaching Blog (to the right and down for the link...).

Treasure Book Form Due Thursday!

I hope that your Tree Swallow has told you all about our collaborative treasure book. This year we are publishing our poems in two voices created with our high school buddies. To illustrate the autobiographical poems, the Tree Swallow and high school buddies drew each others portrait. This is a moving collection.
Your Tree Swallow brought the information/order form home last week. Please take the time to sign and complete this form, even if you are not planning on ordering a copy of the book. Forms are due THURSDAY, MARCH 5, 2009. Please let us know if you did not receive a form. Thanks for your support.

Wednesday, 3/4/09 5:30-6:30

Our “Celebrations of Learning” open house is this Wednesday, March 4th, 5:30-6:30 p.m. Beverages will be served - please bring your own mug and, if you wish, cookies or another snack to share. This month's open house will highlight our school's sustainability efforts, art projects with a 'green' theme, student projects and a slideshow about our place-based program. The open house is a great time for prospective students and their families to visit the school – please invite anyone you think may be interested in learning more about us.

March 2-6

Today we read our favorite books, welcomed guest readers who shared their favorite books, performed readers’ theater rhymes, spent time with our Peace Buddies (level 2 and 3) and met our collaborators for a spring play/musical (level 3). And if that was not exciting enough, we shared our knowledge about forest, habitats and ecosystems to provide the foundation for our new unit of study. The Tree Swallows learned that they will be creating a documentary of the next four weeks’ exploration of forest (ecosystems, habitat and characteristics). The students were given the task of thinking of a name for the documentary and will begin recording and discussing ideas Tuesday.
Thursday, the Tree Swallows will visit Tom McCall forest and investigate living and nonliving components by closely observing a small section of earth (a hula-hoop sized circle) and documenting findings. This will provide a context for examining relationships among components and later comparisons to forests elsewhere.
This unit was designed and will be led by our wonderful student teacher, Amy, during her four weeks of lead teaching. Check out more about the unit and her experiences on her blog (see below and to the right for a link).