April at GAP School!

Yellow Mushrooms with Emily and Virginia

Yellow Mushrooms working together on a dictionary scavenger hunt.

In ELA, the Yellow Mushrooms have been diving into research! As we entered our spring unit, Ingredients for Growth, we discussed the importance of pollinators! Our flock's big question is: How do we have a Yellow Mushroom spelling bee? As we generate questions and explore materials from mystery boxes, we learn more facts about bees! Our Learners have also received special gifts from Rachel, a real life beekeeper! She has shared her story with us through video and artifacts right from her beehives at home. Learners have also been working hard on a class word wall! Each Learner has contributed a sight word within a honeycomb piece of their own design. Digraph and letter blend honeycomb walls are also in progress! As we reach the end of the year, the Yellow mushrooms will decide how to put on their very own spelling bee using the tools they’ve created. Nature journals and sentence building puzzles continue to assist the Learners as they learn to form sentences. The Learners deepen their reading fluency during DEAR time by reading BOB Books before exploring other books of their choosing. Learners have also been introduced to dictionaries! In that lesson we talked about vocabulary words, definitions, and alphabetical order through fun scavenger hunts in small groups. Another class favorite lesson was opinion writing! Learners put their preferences to the test as they tasted popcorn and potato chips. The big question was: which is better? Students were guided in stating their opinion by using adjectives to plead their case. The Zoey and Sassafras series continues to take us into a world of experiments and fantasy as we review the parts of a story.

In math, we have been exploring coins! The Yellow Mushrooms have been hard at work learning what each coin looks like, feels like, and is worth, and each person that is featured on each coin! We were very excited to learn that Monticello, the building at the back of the nickel, is right down the street from GAP School! We have also been hard at work developing our “Yellow Mushroom Creative Craft Store” for Community Day! 

In science, we have used the coming of spring to explore the life cycles of plants and animals. We began with plants, and explored how plants are able to make new seeds (thanks to our pollinators!). There have been many caterpillars around GAP School, so we took the opportunity to explore the life cycles of butterflies and moths as well. We are so excited to notice more butterflies and chrysalises around GAP School in the coming weeks! 

Red Hamsters With Lauren

Creating treehouses in a design challenge turned into the Hamsters designing their own houses through the lens of various indigenous cultures within America. We highlighted the available resources in the geographic regions where the Powhattan, Pueblo, and the Lakota peoples lived. We’re beginning to gather materials to represent the available resources from each region so the students can construct their own models of a home in these diverse climates. We also held discussions around how one or more of the available resources being expensive might create design limitations and how that is applicable in real life when buildings are constructed. 

In English Language Arts, the Red Hamsters have worked hard to flesh out details of their books from stories they’ve written this year. They are designing a front and back cover, table of contents, index, headings, illustrations, etc. They have worked to identify the who, what, when, where, why, and how of their stories in addition to specifically noting the main idea, conflict resolution, characters, and setting. We’ve been using this same story framework in math to generate ideas for the students as they’ve been writing their own word problems! These word problems have also given the Red Hamsters great perspectives about what information is essential to the math problems and what information makes them fun and enjoyable to read. The Hamsters have also been working to create their own joke book, inspired by their work with Homophones. 

In Math, the Red Hamsters have been learning about the associations between measurements, patterning, and music. We’ve been exploring various beats and some basic music theory in our study. They’ve loved it! Converting various measurements of volume has been our main exploration as the students have ordered a plethora of measuring utensils and tested their math "on paper" against their experimental results. They used one cup of water to test equivalencies and ratios in many forms. We are continuing conversations about estimated versus actual measurement and are beginning to work with measuring weight. The Hamsters are becoming more familiar with the units of measurement and their (sometimes less intuitive- pounds, “lbs”) abbreviations. Measuring temperature, humidity, and time continues to be part of our daily work as we track weather trends and note dramatic differences. 

Silver Serpents with Furn and Elijah

Here at GAP School, the wonders of the season are in full swing! Our school garden is bursting with sprouts, the trees are fully leafed out (and growing still), flowers continue to carpet our paths, and bird migration is nearing its peak. Every morning, we hear dozens of bird calls, especially from the variety of colorful warblers flitting about in the canopy as we start our Morning Meetings. What an amazing time to be learning in the woods together! And just like the flourishing life around us, the Silver Serpents have all leveled up, up, up in their learning. 

          In SEL, the Silvers are learning about problems. What is a problem? What do we do with a problem? In fact, together we’ve read the story What Do You Do With a Problem?, by Kobi Yamada, to reflect on how inside of our problems, there are opportunities. What are problems that you face on the day-to-day? How can you rise to the occasion and meet the opportunity hiding inside the problem? As we grow, we strive to shift and expand our mindsets. Why DO we chant “I can do hard things! When I struggle, I grow! I get stronger every day!” EVERY DAY, at our end of day meetings? The Silvers—our little philosophers—continue to reflect and engage in meaningful conversation with their peers about the nature of problems and what they can do to grow with them. Moreover, as we prepare for our final month of school, we are collectively completing a capstone version of our popular “Compliment Wall” activity. Keep your eyes peeled for some exciting end-of-year take-home projects from our SEL time together!

          In ELA, the Silver Serpents have been celebrating April’s National Poetry Month by diving into the world of poems! Together, we’ve read poems from beloved children’s poets like Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky. If you haven’t already, read “Sick” by Silverstein and “Bleezer’s Ice Cream” by Prelutsky—two fan favorites of the Silvers. We’ve explored concepts like figurative language, the structure of poems, rhyme, speakers vs poets, and how we analyze poems using the SMILE Method—Structure, Message, Imagery, Language, and Emotion! After practicing identifying and generating figurative language examples together, we went on a springtime "Haiku Hike" to investigate the form of a specific poem and then write our own. How do we write a Haiku? What do they usually include? How do poets pre-write differently than storytellers? These are the skills we need to expand our abilities as authors and readers! Make sure to check out our poems this Community Day!

          In Math, the Serpents tackled geometry—Scalene, Equilateral, Isosceles, oh my! By describing triangles through their side lengths and angles, the Silvers grew their foundations for understanding shapes, angles, and measurements. To extend our work, we also explored angles and lines by searching for and measuring them in our natural and man-made environments. The world is filled with lines, angles, and shapes, and the more we understand how they work, the better we get at creating—especially during Maker Day. Speaking of Maker Day, shout out to one of our Learner’s family for donating an awesome chop saw to help cut cardboard and make some outstanding lines and angles!

In Silver Science, we started off April by discussing inherited and environmental traits in organisms. We focused mainly on recognizing and sorting these differences. Silvers were introduced to the concepts of genetics and heredity. We modeled genetic variation through a “Monster Mash” activity, where we flipped a coin to choose genes in Monster offspring. We started to discuss heredity and traits as they relate to our previously learned topic, adaptations. What traits are adaptations, and how do we develop adaptations over time? Silvers were introduced to the advanced topic of Natural Selection. Just like Charles Darwin, we studied natural selection through noticing which “bird beaks” (clothes pins, straws, binder clips, etc.) were most successful in gathering different food types (beads, fabric strips, tasssles, etc.) on 3 distinct habitats. Successful birds multiplied, while unsuccessful birds did not, leading to different species inhabiting different environments and specializing in certain foods. We learned the definitions of words like “fitness”, “mutation”, and “species”. We got creative in nature journals focusing on inventing mutations that would increase a GAP School critter’s fitness. 

We paused our natural selection exploration to spend some time in the GAP School forest identifying and aweing at ephemeral spring plants, before diving into independent work. Silvers are practicing reading and following written instructions, and they are doing great with this! Our independent work surrounded using evidence to suggest the parents of a mixed breed puppy, as well as completing reading comprehension reviews of passages about the Galapagos Islands. Silvers nature journaled trait differences and fitness advantages of nearby species, before learning about our FINAL final project of the year! Silvers are working hard to adapt a “common ancestor” to three different environments, focusing on environmental pressures of these locations and how organisms would adapt accordingly. We are looking forward to sharing these organisms in their environments with you on Community Day!

Emerald Elk with Corrie and Luke

April was a month of transformations for both the natural environment at GAP School and the Emerald Elk! Each Learner has continued to blossom in their own unique way, and in every subject area. We have investigated wild edibles in Knowledge Seekers, learned about equine care at Serenity Farms, and observed odd animal behaviors in our own classroom (who’d have thought snakes can climb trees?).

This April, the Emerald Elk fifth graders have been exploring geometry through the lens of nature. They've learned to classify triangles by their sides and angles, and compare quadrilaterals based on their properties. Key vocabulary, like parallel, perpendicular, intersecting, obtuse, acute, and right, has helped them describe and analyze polygons. Our days have included "Geometry Bingo" and building triangles and quadrilaterals with sticks, stones, string, and craft materials. Using protractors and their nature journals, the Emerald Elk have been identifying angles in branches, sketching polygon shapes in leaves, and applying geometry to observations around school. As we wrap up the year, we’ll review all that we’ve learned so far and add in some practical work with liquid measurements.

While the fifth-grade Elk have been exploring the basics of geometry, our middle schoolers have been practicing more advanced concepts. They've been working on determining the area of 2D shapes like kites, trapezoids, and polygons with multiple sides. Learners have also been practicing ways to find missing angles in triangles, sharpening their understanding of angle relationships and the properties of different triangles. Another major focus has been learning about scale factors—how shapes grow or shrink proportionally.

In ELA, the “Titanium Turtles” and “Capybarooz” observed national poetry month by concluding their Poetry March Madness tournament, in which Kobe Bryant won yet another championship with his poem “Dear Basketball.” For our final big idea of “Ingredients for Growth,” we turned our attention to character development by analyzing different types of conflicts, and how they drive growth. Additionally, we have begun discussing oral presentations by using TED talks and stories from "The Moth" to investigate not only characters’ arcs, but the ways in which stories are shared aloud.

The “Crazy Crows” group has also turned their attentions toward character development by studying "The Hero’s Journey", a different way of viewing plot structure than they have seen in the past. They are currently tracking and recording the various steps of this structure in self-selected novel study books. Additionally, they are studying George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and are formulating their own model of “The Villain’s Journey” by tracking the character arc of Napoleon the pig.

The Eldest Elk have been working on creating their own business. They've come up with ideas, written business plans, are creating budgets, and are not building websites. They are excited to show off their creative ideas at our next Community Event.

Social Emotional Learning with Janelle

In SEL, the Emerald Alpacas continue to work in small groups on project based learning through the creation of clay emotion faces. They will use these as supports in their class environment and share as a school project. Another small group has chosen to work on planning, creating, and sharing an escape room with their class. The eldest are completing independent projects on impulse control, executive functioning, and self regulation (topics they selected). They will be responsible for creating a lesson plan to present and lead with their SEL group.

The Silver Serpents have been exploring the concept of inclusiveness. They have been investigating traits that make true friends, what it means to be a friend, and how to show care and respect to all friends. They participated in a toxic swamp teamwork challenge after learning a story about a blind man and a man without arms working together to build a forest out of a wasteland. We are also navigating the concept of acts of inclusiveness beginning within ourselves and understanding that sometimes we have to take the first step to be more inclusive. The Serpents have been enthusiastic and active participants in small group discussion towards growing these skills.

The Red Hamsters have been focused on inclusiveness and mindfulness. We are leaning into gaining a greater understanding of what their bodies need when they are feeling overwhelmed, frustrated, misunderstood, or confused.  They are also applying and working through the equation of "CARE + SHARE = FAIR" with regards to inclusiveness. 

The Yellow Mushrooms are exploring the topics of responsibility and courage.  They are developing responsibility for their environment through games of charades and creation of signs with safety reminders to hang throughout the school campus.  They have been leaning into creating new versions of tag, including caterpillar tag and emotion tag, and are enthusiastic about playing catch the kindness ball games to increase their positive communication skills.

Projects and Knowledge Seekers with Max and Ryan

It was April showers kicking off our month in Projects and Knowledge Seekers. We returned from spring break and were greeted with heavy rains on our first Monday back. So, as all weather is an opportunity at GAP School we did a design challenge! Learners were asked to create rain catchment systems based on specific design parameters that limited types of materials and size. As the week progressed we refined our designs and then did a "stress test" by putting our rain catchers out in a storm (garden hose) to see how much water could be collected. Each group measured the volume of water that was collected and we made observations about design strategies. This design challenge was also an opportunity to discuss the concept of surface area and conservation of water. When we were not building our rain catchers, Learners rotated through opportunities to go on foraging walks and continue to work on our school garden. Learners foraged for wild edibles, resulting in everyone having the opportunity to try some dandelion fritters along with continuing to build our plant ID skills during our hikes. We were very productive planting more garden seeds and collaborating on several garden projects such as planting potato starts and thinning the garden beds.

The second half of April began our final project in Knowledge Seekers asking students to focus on how they have grown as human beings during this year of school and connecting those ideas to creating garden themed sculptures. Learners discussed the idea of metaphor, created lists of plant growth as metaphor for growing in our learning and began to design their final piece for our "garden of growth" that will be on display for the final Community Day. Yellow and Red flocks are creating 2D garden plants, animals and objects that will be amongst the actual plants in our garden and included references to their growth this year. Our Silver flock are creating "found object" sculptures of garden items combined with narratives about their growth. Finally, the Emerald flock are taking inspiration from the sculptor Louise Nevelson to create found object "assemblages" as metaphors for their growth.