October 15, 2013

In Upper Elementary, we spent the first month of school focusing on establishing our foundations – socially, emotionally and cognitively. In history, we began the study of Early Humans that leads us into our Ancient Civilizations focus for the school year. Explorations of the human family tree, technological and evolutionary changes, the dramatic climate and its effect on our ancestors, paleolithic cave art … all of these engaging, hands-on lessons helped the children transport themselves back in time one million years, and 100,000 years and 15, 000 years.

October brings our history studies into a focus on the first student projects of the year. Children will be selecting an intriguing topic that relates to early humans, researching it and writing a formal report about it. This month-long process will be the first time the Fourth Graders experience an in-depth Upper Elementary project and it’s going to be an exciting accomplishment for them.

As a community, we’ve been focusing on Communication in our Choices lessons. We’ve explored many different aspects of verbal and non-verbal communication – role-playing everything from tones of voice to facial expressions and posture. As October progresses, we will be turning our attention to the subject of Decision Making through our daily Choices lessons.

This Friday, October 18, we are excited to be hosting Goal-Setting Conferences. We take some time to reflect together – parent, teacher and child – about the child’s learning and how we can best set and support learning, social and emotional goals. This process is extremely important in an effective learning environment. We aim to help children understand themselves and gain the metacognition to make careful and deliberate decisions about their work, their lives and their relationships. Friday's Goal-setting Conferences are a major event for the children and involve some deep investigation. It is always a unique and fun opportunity for us to learn how your child thinks about him/herself and set supportable goals together.

As fall moves toward winter, we naturally look into ourselves with increasing self-awareness and we naturally draw our cozy community closer around ourselves. We are excited to see what October and November bring.