What Does Being Creative Mean To You? - Year 3, Week 27
This week we got creative, pondered questions about how we define life and even practiced debating skills! High School Learners continue on with their apprenticeships while also perfecting their comedy routines!
spark studio
What does creative writing mean to you? To children, creative writing develops creative thoughts, using their imaginations, suggesting alternatives, broadening their thought process and problem-solving abilities. It also allows the child to show their opinions and develop their voice. It also improves their logical skills. Think about when you visit an art museum. Do you walk quickly through or do you take your time and study each piece? This week we focused on studying different paintings to decide what story the artist is trying to bring to life. Through art we learn how to take our time, and control our thoughts and bodies. While observing the children we heard many children say, “there are no mistakes in art, just happy accidents”.
Learning to learn is the ability to pursue and persist in learning, to organize one's own learning, including through effective management of time and information, both individually and in groups. This is a process and a challenge that takes time, persistence and patience. We never give up!
A note from Miss Denise:
Thank you for all of the love and support. It takes a village.
PEACE: It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work, it means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.
elementary studio
What does it mean to be alive?
There is much more to living than having a heartbeat. There is much more to life than breathing and the blood flowing through your veins. But not everyone sees it this way. You may be living, but are you alive?
This week, elementary heroes have grappled with the idea of being alive and what that means. Is it breathing, having organs, being able to think? They were given a list of 5 items: earth, people, tree, artificial intelligence (that thinks it's alive), and a virus, and from this list had to rank them from most alive to least. The answers varied from the earth and people being most alive, to viruses and the artificial intelligence being least alive.
As we thought about what it means to be alive, we watched a clip from the movie “iRobot”, and got a chance to see an artificial being that is able to think and have feelings of their own. During this coding quest journey, heroes are learning the importance of what technology is capable of, what we have control over, and how we can impact and influence that technology. We are only moments away from technology that is integrated with humans, and our heroes are the generation that will lead that charge.
So, what does it mean to be alive?
middle school studio
This week, learners continued to explore electrical circuits. Through trial, error, and mathematical equations, they are learning how many volts, amps, and ohms they need in their circuits to accomplish certain tasks. Their role is similar to any electrical engineer: figuring out how to provide the exact amount of power (not too much and not too little) needed to operate a system.
In our Socratic Launches this week, we've honed our debate skills by practicing argumentation and persuasion. We also paused to reflect on the recent violent shooting spree in Atlanta, discussed racial prejudice, and continued our work in building the skills of learning to live together.
In Civilization, we explored the tensions between Marxist and Capitalist factions in Central and South America in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Our Storytelling work included proofreading practice as we continue to build the muscles of offering quality peer feedback on writing mechanics.
The session continues to fly by! In the next two week, we will prep for our Exhibition and finish up our Badge work for the session.
high school studio
Accept what is, let go of what was, and have faith and what will be.
With only two more weeks in the session, heroes continue to complete apprenticeships in addition to grinding out the remainder of their course work for the year. This week, heroes continue to build out their stand up comedy sets for exhibition. In addition, for civilization, heroes worked through a new model of what virtual learning could look like moving forward.
Next week, each hero will complete a check in with their running partner in addition to the guide. During this time they will map out after action reviews, the remainder of their badge plan, and planning for session 7.
We’d like to give a huge shoutout to one of our seniors, Maia, who has been accepted into 4 of her top schools! Your hard work has paid off!
-Onward
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