Can you teach creativity?

Racing to my office to show me a finished book or a robotic claw, smelling the spring flowers, building a rocket or a wind turbine, or enjoying dinner on the 8th grade Philadelphia trip, Parker students are always up to something interesting!

Can creativity be taught and assessed?  According to Grant Wiggins and Andrew Miller, it can!  Here's how... On Assessing Creativity  and  Yes, You Can.

Have a fractionous Friday!

Giving students ample opportunities to develop sound investigative skills at an early age is essential to nurturing their ability to think critically and mathematically as they get older.

Here is a great blog post by second grade math teacher, Jennifer Gresens.  She describes the depth of learning that happens when students write fraction books to demonstrate their understanding. 

Assessment at Parker

2-3 students give each other feedback about their Ganges River poems in a critique session. This form of peer-assessment gives students practice in critical thinking.

We had a great time at this morning's Coffee with Meg sponsored by Parent Council.  The topic was Parker Assessment vs Common Core Assessment.  One of our parents made this podcast of the conversation.  If you couldn't be there - take a listen!  https://archive.org/details/CoffeeWithMegCommonCore

How do we motivate kids?

A preschooler explores the properties and movement of water and air.

A sixth grader designs his own project for the 3D printer with Google Sketch Up.

A K-1 team uses their knowledge of force and motion to move a ball with a LEGO robot.

An eighth grader leads her mother and grandfather through her portfolio and goals at her student-led conference.

How do we motivate kids at Parker?  Motivation has been a big topic in the education news lately and here are some great articles about what elements you need in school to create it.

How to Foster Students' Mindsets and What Keeps Students Motivated to Learn? both in MindShift.

These articles could have been written about Parker, along with another, Moving Towards Inquiry about Project Based Learning (PBL), that urges schools to use PBL as effectively as we do.

The methods and mindsets described by these prominent educators tell the story of how we teach at Parker. They are not just buzzwords and they really do motivate students.  Here are a few of the elements we weave into the life of the school. The pictures above show some of them in action.

• Inquiry
• Deep learning
• Student-centered culture
• Collaborative teams
• Integrated projects
• Hands on learning
• Topics relevant to students
• Self and peer evaluation
• Learning from failure
• Belonging to an academic community

These elements describe the tenets of the progressive movement in education. They are inherent in our mission.  We do them really well - and they work.  The education mainstream is finally catching on - and urging schools to be more like Parker.

Kids need adventure

All right - we won't go quite as far as creating The Land as described in The Atlantic's article The Overprotected Kid.  But our Planet Parker Summer Program has elements of crazy - and that's why kids love it.  The new brochure is here.  Sign your kids up today for some old fashioned adventures!

 

When "failure" is a good thing

Giving students experience with "failure" is a crucial piece of creating a culture of innovation.  As Thomas Edison said, "I have not failed 10,000 times. I have successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work."  The Power of Failing in the Atlantic, tells the story in corporate terms; why failure is the driving force behind genius. 

Now translate the concept into teaching 5 and 6-year-olds.  In K-1 science class, students explored force and motion. The way the learning situation was designed supported students' natural drive to learn. It sparked innovation. Failing in the traditional sense did not enter in, but failing in the sense of persevering to succeed offered great reward. 

Here is a full description of the science activity from K-1 teacher, Liliana DeGiorgio's blog:

This week students concluded their exploration of force and motion. The children worked diligently on making predictions, designing, and constructing a Marble Escape Course Design. During this study the children were mainly challenged to determine what changes a ball's motion.  Kate Perry, our science teacher, explains: "The children performed lots of experimentation with pushes, pulls, drops, bounces, ramps, sizes, and shapes.  The K-1's hypothesized, tested and analyzed their results for how surface materials, applied forces, height, ramp angles, curved paths and surface texture make a difference with how a ball moves. Collaborating in small groups to construct a 6' path for their marble, the K-1's eagerly applied appropriate skills, learning, and force and motion concepts to help their marble make it through."

Planet Parker

Due to a bit of technical difficulty we couldn't show this little slide show during the Planet Parker coffee this morning.  Here it is in all its glory!  Click on the link at the bottom for a full view.



Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app

Haiku Deck

I'm experimenting with a new way to put together a slide show.  I tried my first with the Parker Mission statement.  Let's see how it works.  To see the full picture, click on the link at the bottom that says Haiku Deck.


Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app

Exchange trip to Barcelona

How wonderful to be reunited with old friends!  Nine Parker kids and two teachers arrived in Barcelona, Spain on February 16th for a week with host families while attending St. Peter's School.  Their exchange visit is part of our partnership with St. Peter's that includes pen pals, projects and a visit from St. Peter's students to Parker last year.   

Parker students kept a blog and St. Peters School posted a video of the trip.  Parker kids got back on Sunday full of stories of a truly fantastic time learning language, trying new foods, exploring a different culture and living with another family - a week that they will never forget.  We are so proud of our Parker ambassadors!

The partnership has inspired our whole school to become better at Spanish, and prompted new elements to our Integrated Spanish curriculum including a bi-lingual preschool program and becoming founding members of the Global Language and Culture Institute (students teaching students language). 

The world is so large - and so small - at the same time.  What a joyful way to experience it!

Science pond

Every day in this cold, cold weather, the excavators and the big dump trucks are working away.  We have all watched with fascination as the new science pond takes shape!

The pond will be a great feature of our outdoor-based science program and a centerpiece for exploring water ecosystems, clean water advocacy, and STEM.

It is being dug at the site of what we believe was the former farm pond.  When it is done, it will be about a half-acre in size, with gently graduated sides and a depth of 8 feet in the center.  We’ll put some split-rail fencing with mesh at crucial spots around the perimeter and plan to add a deck and a pond shed for storing buckets and nets and all the other equipment needed for pond exploration.

The strategic idea for a science pond came about at forums and discussions with trustees, parents and teachers about how to maximize the natural science features at Parker.  The streams, woods, meadows and wetlands are all wonderful elements of discovery and analysis for our students, so creating our very own pond seemed to be the natural next step.  With the generous initial funding of a special donor and the guidance of the school’s Planet Parker Committee, coordinated by Jamie Crouse, we were able to get started this winter.

One of the biggest questions for the Planet Parker Committee was “Where do we put the fill?”  Take a look at the east side of our parking lot and you will see the natural solution to our parking issues when we have big events: an expanded parking area!  We will keep it grassy and it will be great for parking overflow.

The next phase of the project is watching the pond fill with water from the water table.  I am sure there will be mud!  But then the native plants will fill in on the banks and the meadow will seed itself again.  Students have been charting the man-made changes to the site and now they will have the opportunity to see how the land restores itself and what wildlife and plants make their new home at the Parker pond!