​This week in Morado was the culmination of our month-long exploration of migration. Seedfolks on Tuesday was an amazing one-woman portrayal of 22 characters in a Cleveland neighborhood who found connections with each other despite coming from widely differing places. We saw Jacob Lawrence’s 60 -panel story of The Great Migration which his parents were a part of. We discussed biographies and wrote our own versions.
 
Children learned about the parts of a leaf this week. Many did follow-up work for remembering prepositions or other parts of speech. Many read daily to a teacher. Fractions were a popular choice. The material for making a bar graph was also used a lot. Several people wrote stories. Some of the children turned dishwashing into an Olympic sport—those dishes were clean! 
 
We also had a good discussion about respecting personal boundaries and keeping private parts private. We defined “safe” and “unsafe” touch. We asked the children to name several adults they could talk to if they ever feel uncomfortable with another person’s behavior. This is an important conversation to have with children regularly to help keep them safe.
 
We hope you have a fun Spring Break and come back refreshed.
 
Ben, Mary, and Ali

Hi Folks,

Thanks for everyone who came to make this year's Math Day so successful.  The students have been focused mostly this week to prepare for Math Day.  They practiced with other students and even got lessons from the upper elementary and practiced with them.  Also this week, students have been having lessons on different suffixes and many have been interested in doing works that has them build compound words.  Students also finished reading their biographies for their literature circles.

Next week, we have 2 field trips on Tuesday and Thursday.  So we will need car seats on those days, if needed.  We still have spots for drivers for the SAM field trip on Thursday.  Please reply to this email or sign-up on Bloomz if you are interested.  Also next week, we will have Passion Project parent meeting on Wednesday from 4-5pm.  If you are unable to come that day, especially if this is your first year with us, we may need to schedule a second meeting to let you know more about our annual final projects. 

Remember that spring break is after next week and we have an Early Bird Event on April 14 from 9-10am.

Have a good weekend,
Ben, Mary, & Ali

Hi Folks,

This week we focused a lot on migration.  We started by looking at how animals and people move throughout their lives.  We brought a personal dimension to it by writing poems about home or moving.  Friday, we talked about how slavery brought an entire group of people to this country against their will, but they became free. They brought their old traditions here and started some new ones so that our country changed too. Next week, we will tell about Jacob Lawrence's desire to tell the story of the Great Migration in paintings.

Students finished their group projects on simple machines, migration, and amphibians.  They got to present their research to the class at the end of the week. Other highlights this week were lessons on the stem of a plant and learning about prepositions where students went under, on, and over a bridge.  

In our peace circles this week, we talked about ways to communicate our thoughts and feelings.  We talked about the importance of eye contact and how it feels when you communicate non-verbally with different faces.  We also talked about how tone of voice and body posture also effect people communication.

This week, students had their first weekly gardening time with Ms. Katherine.  We will continue gardening Tuesday and Friday afternoons.  We also had a very successful Hop-A-Thon on Friday.  Students from both elementary classes teamed up to count each other's hops and the all the 2nd-years helped the younger classrooms count their hops.

This week, please remember that we will not be having school on Thursday and Friday.

Have a good weekend,

Ben, Mary, & Ali