Math Fact Fluency

Although this isn’t a favorite topic of the students in the class, it’s a necessary one.  This year it will be important for all students to master their addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts.  Currently we are working on long division and although the students are learning several strategies to solve computation problems, it’s time [...]

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Chinese Poetry: Calligraphy as an Art

 In Ancient China, scholars believed in the Three Perfections: painting, poetry, and calligraphy.  Steven’s lesson today introduced the children to calligraphy as an art.  Steven has visited China where he has met calligraphers dedicated to keeping old traditions alive, and hung a beautiful scroll made by Hu Fengquan. The picture above shows Mr. Hu in [...]

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Chinese Poetry: You Are the Author of Your Own Life

Note: Poetry written by the class is posted in link at top of page. 
On Steven Ratiner’s third classroom visit, he started the lesson by talking with the children about how they are the author and narrator of their own lives, but when you listen to a singer, for example, the lyrics belong to someone else, [...]

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Mathematical Lanterns Light the Way

We are very fortunate to have a Math Specialist in every elementary building this year.  Today, Laurie Link, our math specialist visited our classroom to work with the class on an interesting activity: creating Chinese paper lanterns to learn the associative and distributive properties of multiplication.  After carefully cutting out the lantern from construction paper, [...]

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Confucius and Leaves

This morning as the rain poured down on our roof, our classroom was alive with activity as the children worked to create their own leaf identification field guide.  After discovering the best artistic technique, each student used scientifically accurate leaf rubbing plates to make impressions of leaves from 10 native trees.  Tomorrow we will finish [...]

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Chinese Poetry: Dreaming About a Perfect Place

When Steven Ratiner visited our classroom on Thursday, he started the session with a lesson about the art of revision.  After looking at a short poem about a horse “going” along the beach, the class brainstormed a list of new verbs to replace the word “going,” and examined how each new verb changed the [...]

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Nature Journaling at the River’s Edge

We are beginning to see some progress on the river walk which has been very exciting.  It will be wonderful to visit the river throughout the year and observe the changes in the forest as well.  Although we typically visit the Town Forest in the spring, our ecosystem unit actually ties-in beautifully with what we [...]

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