Session 1, Week 1, 2022
The first week of school at our school is about building bonds, teamwork, and establishing their community. We completed many team and relationship building activities this week!
What would it be like to work in the most inspiring place in the world? This type of community requires making promises to each other! Over the next 5 weeks, Elementary and Middle School Eagles will be drafting and creating a contract of promises to each other.
As of now, their starting provisional promises are:
Treat the studio like a sacred place
Speak only with kindness, encouragement, and truth.
Never distract yourself or others.
Be safe.
Little Eagles in our Early Learning Studio have 3 Simple Promises:
Be Nice.
Be Safe.
Cleanup.
The technology launch is where students completed challenges in order to earn access to their Chrome books.
Eagles learned their way around their software quickly, logging in and exploring each of their learning programs; older Eagles were challenged with tasks such as learning to compose and send a properly formatted email.
This process involved lots of group collaboration, google searches, YouTube research, etc…
Our lip dub is led by the Eagles and is shown at our first public exhibition.
This process involves learning lyrics, practicing dance moves, choreography, story boarding, designing costumes, props, directing, etc..
World class examples were viewed and they created a rubric of what they thought was important to include as to how they would know if it was “excellent work”.
The process of revising work through multiple drafts was discussed and they are currently on their 8th draft of filming and continue to revise through group critique and feedback.
Leading a production such as this is not without it's drama. How will you work with difficult people? Speaking with kindness and encouragement is one of their promises. Is it easier to follow the promises yourself, or it is easier to ask others to follow them or tell them when they don't?
Our little Eagles occasionally become upset with one another, but one of the ways conflicts are resolved is with the conflict resolution tool.
“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”
–Frederick Douglas
We believe that reading sets you free in your learning and on your journey, and so we make time every week where everyone reads. It’s a time for the Eagles to be alone with your thoughts and experiences.
Story time with little eagles is where a guide reads a story, but occasionally an older Eagle reading buddy reads a book to them!
Identifying if you are in your comfort zone, your challenge zone, or your panic zone gives Eagles vocabulary/tools to describe their goals and how they are feeling. It also gave us an opportunity to celebrate the end of our first week with Donuts during Fun Friday Time!
