Audubon Trip Approaches

We will be visiting the Audubon Society Wed Feb 3!! Please send your child dressed in warm layers, with a top rain-protecting layer, and shoes that can get muddy. We will meet some rescued birds and hike around the Audubon section of Forest Park!

Week in Review

Last week, we were visited by a real turkey buzzard, redtail hawk and screech owl from the Oregon Zoo. Their handler told us their stories and we got to touch some cleaned and preserve bird artifacts, including talons and the wing of a great horned owl! We made our own raptors and decorated them after the real birds with feathers. Almost all of us have the Raptors Raptors poem memorized!

In math, we worked with symmetry, creating symmetrical monsters. We defined Mean, Median, Mode and Range, and are beginning to learn how to calculate them!

In writing, we began choosing poems to share that we enjoy and continued to draft and revise out work.

We are preparing to perform a students written letterland play for Mrs. Dunton's class. Parents may come watch our play on TUESDAY, FEB 2, at 12:00pm, if they wish.

WEEK IN REVIEW

We explored probability using dice, colorful spinners and toy bears. Those of us in the math book are progressing well.
We continued our study of poetry, reading The Red Wheelbarrow and writing our own versions.
In PE, we got good enough at using scooter boards to play scooter board tag.
Our raptors study has continued with our continuing to learn a raptor poem and creating raptor trading cards.
A naturalist teacher from the Lower Columbia Estuary project came to visit us. We played a game where we were all a part of the tree and looked at a real eagle skull.

PARENT HELP
 Our class could use help laminating reading folders and making handwriting books! Please let Miss Reed know if you have the time to help this week.
 Thanks Mrs. Bucher for making our LiD bulletin board!

Reveal Ceremony

The Reveal Ceremony for our Learning in Depth topics was a big success. Five Primary classes chose to participate in the Learning in Depth experiment to assign each child a randomly selected and unique topic of study. The topics were chosen from a list of very general subjects designed to for this purpose by educational theorist, Kieran Egan. The LiD topic will follow the child through the remainder of their education at Corbett, allowing them to build knowledge both broad and deep.
First the five primary classes arranged themselves before a big audience of friends and family. After a brief introduction to LiD by Mr. Dunton, the ceremony began. Class by class, students lined up to receive their topics, announced by Mr. Trani. The promise of new learning and a crackle of excitement went through the air with each child's reveal. When everyone had received his or her medallion and notebook, we took pictures and had cookies and juice together.

Goodluck Little Fry

Our trip to Dabney State Park, on a very windy day, was a success! We started our ceremonial trip by reading a fry poem together. Small groups of children performed skits and poetry they had written for the occasion. We were on our way back to school before we even got cold. After returning, we went to music class, then drank hot chocolate and drew pictures of our favorite fry memories.

Welcome Back

Dear Families,

I hope you had a wonderful break! This has been a fine week and we are all getting back into the swing of things. Here is our week in review:

We have been studying time, practicing counting by fives in order to read analog clocks quickly, learning about the history of clocks. We discussed why we need a standard time system and imagined what might happen if everyone had a different system of telling time.

We have been writing poems and songs for our Goodbye Fry ceremony at Dabny SP Thursday, Jan.7 from10-11:30am. We read a storybook in ABCB rhyme format and then wrote the a class poem to tell the fry how we feel.

In PE, we did relays, practicing our dribbling, skipping and running.

In gorge studies, we began organizing our Naturalist notebooks, decorating dividers for the salmon, plants, mammals, insects and birds sections, and putting the work we have done.

As for coming events, I hope to see many of you at our Learning in Depth Opening Ceremony, Tuesday, January 12th at 2:15 pm in the Corbett multipurpose building. Learning in depth is an Imaginative Education program. Each child is given a particular topic to learn about through her or his whole school career, in addition to the usual curriculum. Students will meet regularly with me to receive guidance, suggestions, and help as they build personal portfolios on their topics. The aim is that each child, by the end of her or his schooling, will have built genuine expertise about that topic. I am excited to launch this program alongside the charter school primary team and Mrs. Hanes.

Other notable dates include January 18, Martin Luther King Day, when we have no school, and January 22nd, which is a Friday school day.