Session 1 Week 5 in Review

Elementary Studio

Session One has come to an end! Let's walk through what the final week of every session looks like at The Forest School Online. While learners put their final touches on any Quest, Civilization, and Story Arts challenges, they also participate in a number of activities that require them to reflect on every aspect of the session. We refer to it as retrospectives week! The learners kicked off the week by reflecting on their work and finding one corresponding challenge for the selected Mastery credit. This session, the Mastery credit was collaborate. Learners reviewed Quest, Civilization, and Story Arts challenges to find the one work that demonstrated their personal best collaboration. The next day, they participated in reflection journaling! During this time, learners were given 30 minutes to go to their special journaling location to write down anything that came to mind regarding Session One. After 30 minutes passed, learners were able to share what inspired their journal topic along with what they learned about themselves during the journal reflection activity. On the third day, they gave feedback to themselves, both running partners, and their guide! We call it 360 feedback. They also had the option to provide feedback for any other peers of their choice. To conclude our retrospectives week, the learners participated in an end of the session celebration! During the celebration, they gave shout outs to their peers, had the opportunity to be acknowledged for any badges they received for this session, and some studio fun!

Middle School Studio

That’s a wrap on Session 1! It’s hard to believe it’s over, but I can’t say enough how impressed and proud I am of the learners in the Middle School Studio. They have done a marvelous job adapting to new things and running with them!This week we wrapped up Quest with an amazing Exhibition that highlighted each learner’s unique wayfinding journey. It was so wonderful to see such a great turnout of parents, dream teams, and even learners from other studios supporting our MS learners! Learners also wrapped up their final Civilization and Story Arts challenges this week by creating awesome maps in Civ and editing their final podcast episode; we can’t wait to share our Podcast Collection with you in Session 2!Before moving on to our next session, we spent our morning launches this week reflecting on the incredible experiences we had in Session 1, as well as the things that were hard, disappointing, and areas for improvement. We chose superlative work for our efforts in collaboration, reflected on Exhibition feedback, journaled about our experience thus far, and provided each other with 360 feedback. We are now poised and ready to jump into Session 2 with resilience and zest! Have a great break, and we’ll see you back for another epic session!

High School Studio

And just like that, Session 1 of the High School Studio is complete! These past four weeks have flown by, thanks to the welcoming and supportive community that learners have worked to foster in our studio. We spent our Morning Launches reflecting on the session in a variety of ways: through journaling, choosing a superlative work that indicated progress toward the “creativity” Mastery Credit, and peer-to-peer feedback.We wrapped up our Orientation Quest with our first Exhibition of the year. Learners presented their badge plans for Session 1-4, along with their VIA Character Strengths and YouScience career rankings. The exhibition provided learners with valuable feedback, as well as public speaking and presentation skills practice. We were happy to see such a great turnout and are very thankful for those who took the time to join us for our exhibition.The last week of Civilization and Story Arts provided learners with work time to complete their assignments on Human Trafficking, and finish recording and editing their podcast episodes. We’re looking forward to sharing our podcasts with everyone at the beginning of Session 2, in preparation for the Live Podcasting Event on Friday, September 16th, with expert Christy Todd.The studio finished out the week with a celebration, in which learners took the time to give one another specific praise and shout outs for jobs well done in Session 1. We awarded Taina with the Session 1 “Learn to Learn” award, and wrapped up the session on a high note. I’m looking forward to seeing where the learners can take the studio in Session 2; I’m anticipating even more deep learning and collaboration.