Author: Marisa Palmer

E-Ship: Image Challenge

This week marked week 2 of the E-ship quest where the heroes explored image and brand. First they explored and reflected upon world-class examples of logos, advertisements and slogans. They were then challenged to create their own! They have named their company, and developed a catchy slogan.

Throughout this Quest, the heroes earn “studio bucks” by completing quest challenges that they can then use to purchase materials and supplies for their business. This week they investing in swag! They decorated t-shirts and wristbands with their company logo and slogan.

Communications Challenge: Six-Word Memoir

The children considered Ernest Hemingway’s six-word story: “Baby shoes, for sale, never worn.” What does it mean? What part of the story is most impactful?

They are now working on their own six-word memoir. First they explored the idea of mind mapping and brainstorming. Then they brainstormed subject words, verbs, direct objects, adjectives and adverbs, to utilize in their memoirs. Next week they will begin to put them all together in their first draft.

Core Skills / Standardized Testing

This week during core skills, the children worked on their IOWA assessments for ~one hour per day over three to four days. While we are not huge fans of standardized tests here at Acton, we allowed parents to opt in or opt out, and feel the data will be useful for parents to track their child’s academic growth over time. It also allows us as a school to communicate with prospective families that yes, our learning design is highly effective.

We conduct the tests in as low-stakes way as we can. On the first day, the children had some nerves acclimating to test-taking. However, by the second and third day, they had acclimated and were working without trepidation or concern. They were more interested in either getting it finished so they could move on to more interesting work, or enjoying the feeling of exploring the questions and having the answers.

In that sense, it’s good practice for them since the world requires tests, and it’s just one more life-skills with which to gain practice.

As for the tests themselves, they assess two kinds of intelligences: math and verbal, but ignore other dimensions of intelligence. So in that sense, they are limited in their usefulness. Because we do so much project work and collaboration, we see the hero’s incredible skills in building, spatial reasoning, empathy, teamwork, etc.

Math Power Hour

We kicked off the first “math power hour” this Friday. This is a time for the children to engage in math games. A couple children played Battleship (graphing and matrices) while the other children gravitated towards Monopoly which requires a good amount of mental math and learning about investing and returns. For the younger children who haven’t mastered mental math, they have the option to use Montessori manipulatives to help them do the math. Next week we will break out some fractions card games!

Community Projects

One option we posed to the children this session were community projects. Two in particular, have captured the children’s interest. One was to plan next week’s Halloween party. Two heroes took the lead. They were given a $20 budget and planned an all-school celebration with activities, games and prizes.

The other most popular community project option was to create a new badge wall using the bulletin board in our hallway. Each hero decorated his or her own “badge banner.” The next step is for them to decorate the bulletin board where they will hang the banners.

Physical Education

This week the children continued to explore, and prepare for, the Acton Winter Olympics, which they will plan and host in December. They had a blast playing hockey and snowboarding by balancing on pillows. What a fun way to explore balance and the proprioceptive system!

Last week, Miss Kathryn worked with the children to set-up movement stations and challenges within Fellowship Hall. The heroes can use this area when they need movement breaks throughout the day. The children are learning how short breaks – snack breaks, stretch breaks, breath breaks, movement breaks – can help them focus and stay in flow.

Tranquility Thursdays

Speaking of which, we have been using morning launches once a week to learn about mindfulness. So far, we’ve practiced belly breathing, color breathing, box breathing, mountain meditation, and a raisin meditation! The raisin meditation received mixed reviews: “that was the weirdest!” to “I love savoring my food!” Overall, the children are beginning to appreciate these launches more and more as a way to explore what it means to just “be.”

E-Ship Quest Kick-Off

We started the new session by kicking off the highly collaborative E-Ship (entrepreneurship) Quest! This week’s challenge was the company formation challenge where the children explored their job roles (e.g. bookkeeper, customer service, lawyer, etc.). The wrote their mission statement and determined how they would make decisions together.

Over the course of the next five weeks, the heroes will form, start and operate a lemonade stand. The end goal is a friendly competition between the Discovery and Spark studios at the Exhibition “Lemonade Stand-Off” where they will invite parents, friends and community members to purchase lemonade and snacks. The teams’ combined profits will go to purchase the winning team’s choice of fun item for the school. Some ideas so far are an inflatable gaga pit for indoor winter fun and large Anji play blocks.C

Communications Challenge: Conflict Resolution

The heroes also kicked off a new communications challenge: conflict resolution. They learned a script for talking about they feel when another’s actions affect them, and also mirroring back the other person’s feelings. They also role-played conflict resolution in partners a few times this week in partners. Their challenge for the week is to engage in at least three real conflict resolutions at the peace table this week.

A few of the heroes really embraced the conflict resolution process while a couple very much resisted it. The challenge is intended to help them see the benefits of the process for solving issues with friends!

Civilization

We also kicked-off Civilization this week. The children learned about Julius Caesar and explored via Socratic discussion what it means to be a good leader. They compared Julius Caesar who expended Rome and subverted the Senate to name become King, vs. Cincinnatus, who ruled Rome in a time of need, and then returned power to the Senate. They are also working on illustrated an timeline of notable ancient events and people, in order to refresh what they learned last year.

Personal Goals

Towards the end of each session, the children engage in “full-circle feedback,” aka 360 peer reviews. They learn to give warm, cool, warm feedback in the form of “two stars and a wish.” This week, the children used that feedback to set a personal goal that they will track for the next five weeks. One hero’s goal is “I will stay in my seat during discussion more than half the time,” or “I will not distract myself.” Two heroes are challenging themselves to bring needed ideas and solutions to Town Meetings in order to strengthen the community.

Applying Math in the Real World: Cooking

Several of the heroes are learning fractions, so the guides are looking for ways to apply fractions in the real world. To that end, this Friday’s celebration was making “caramel” apples from a date-mixture. The heroes were challenged to convert and increase the recipe by 1.5x.

While the older heroes worked on the converting the recipe, some younger heroes were mesmerized by the gears in an old-style hand mixer. They enjoyed figuring out how it worked!

Halloween Festivities

Finally, the children have been preparing for Halloween festivities. They painted pumpkins, decorated skulls with acrylic pens together, and stamped Halloween treat bags. They are excited for the holiday and for our school Halloween party approaching!

The Discovery heroes were hard at work this week preparing for this session’s Exhibition of Learning! The focus of this session’s exhibition was sharing with parents more about core skills, Acton systems and processes, hero boards, and collaborative artwork the heroes created together.

Core Skills

The heroes had a core skills “open house” where they were able to show respective parent(s) all they are doing in core skills. This included a tour of the applications they use, the challenge books they have chosen, and a walkthrough of their badge plan either in their badge binder or on Journey Tracker, Acton’s bespoke learning management system. In preparation for the exhibition, the learners developed a checklist for themselves so they would remember everything they want to show off!

Hero Boards

During the session, the each learner created a “hero board” to answer the questions: who am I? and who am I becoming? Their boards included family photos, artwork and inspirational quotes. Hero boards are quickly becoming a favorite annual tradition that the children enjoy immensely.

Contract Signing

One of the things that makes this session’s exhibition so special and significant, is the contract-signing ceremony. The children have spent the last five weeks developing and workshopping their promises to each other. The contract includes promises like, “I will speak with kindness and respect,” “There is no ‘I can’t,’ only ‘I can’t yet,” or “I will do my best work in the studio.” The contract signing represents a public commitment by the heroes to uphold their promises to each other.

The children also signed the “Rules of Engagement” they developed for Socratic discussions.

The contract signing was followed by a toast of sparkling water to celebrate!

Artwork

Finally, the heroes were thrilled to share their collaborative pieces with their families. They worked on a large recycled art project as well as a collaborative stitching project. They also presented their individual hero art!

Looking Forward

After a the upcoming break, the heroes will embark on the E-ship Quest. E-ship is short for, “entrepreneurship.” During this quest, the children will run a start-up lemonade and snack stand. They will also explore a number of communications challenges, including conflict resolution, how to write an apology, and write their own six-word memoir.

This week in Discovery, the heroes focused a lot on core skills. They gained more familiarity with their badge plans, and with the Guide, set year-end goals. Then they broke those year-end goals down into two-session goals, and further broke those down into a weekly work plan. We are also lengthening the amount of time spent on core skills everyday as the children build focus and endurance. They have also learned about how to earn points and how those points determine their session “freedom level.”

Next week we will introduce some beginning-of-the week goal setting, and end-of-the-week reflection. Next session, we will incorporate a collaborative core skills time to support peer-to-peer learning. And we will experiment with a “math power hour” on Fridays to use games to support math learning and fluency. 

Speaking of which, ask your child about this week’s math scavenger hunt. What was the silliest challenge?

The children are preparing for next week’s exhibition as well. They are finalizing their studio contract, the rules of engagement for Socratic discussions, and their hero boards. The hero boards are quickly becoming a favorite annual tradition here at Acton Academy Madison West as a way for each child to celebrate their individual journey.

This week was a week of coming together. It’s sweet to watch the Spark and Discovery heroes play together. The Discovery heroes are serving as mentors and guides (e.g. getting to and from the playground as buddies, serving as “Creek Leaders” and “Crossing Guards.”) Meanwhile, the Sparks are also finding their voices to talk with the older heroes and share what they need (e.g. this week’s Town Meeting about cleaning the free time area and a couple of Peace Table sessions to iron out misunderstandings). 

This week, in one of the studio questions, Discovery heroes considered the question: what helps you grow most on your hero’s journey? traveling on your own? or being part of a community? Acton’s multi-age studios are inspired by Maria Montessori, and are a key part of forming a tight-knit learning community where children and guides support each other to become their best selves.

Letting the Children Lead – Studio Maintenance Example

Last year, at times it was a challenge to convince children to engage in studio maintenance each day. So, the guides created a system of X’s and checks to encourage participation, and we created binders with checklists of tasks to encourage diligence. It generally worked, but not always with enthusiasm from the heroes. This year, after having provided a model of studio maintenance system last year, we challenged the Discovery heroes to create their own from scratch with one parameter: each “job” must have at least one fun task (there are multiple tasks in a job). 

It was a great lesson for the adults that sometimes it’s best for us to get out of the way and let the heroes lead. For instance, most adults would never have thought mopping and vacuuming are fun, but the heroes do. These items are now in their tasks lists and make studio maintenance fun for them. Similarly, we had only asked them to create a system for their studio. Yet, they went above and beyond, and saw a need to address other spaces. They made themselves responsible for also cleaning up the free time area and library everyday.

Talk with your Discovery hero about their week at Acton:

• What’s a Town Meeting? What did you talk about this week?
• What’s the peace table? Have you used it yet? How did it go?
• What’s a hero board?
• What’s been the most challenging part of core skills this week?
• Was it fun planting an herb garden this week? Where will you keep it? Can you bring some herbs home for us this winter? 🙂