I finally figured out how to take email addresses from a spreadsheet and drop them into an email. Sorry it took so long to figure out how to send mass emails. Thank you Krista Kramer for putting the spreadsheet together.
I wanted to formally invite each family to the Gr8 Night April 12th. It's a night to celebrate some of our great accomplishments in Community Led Learning by displaying CLL student work and a few student produced performances. There should also be a light fare meal, music and a silent auction. The money raised will go towards funding fieldwork trips. Getting students out of the school and expanding our expeditions into the community is really important to our learning. As a teacher it's hard to plan trips without knowing how to pay for it, so this fundraiser will give our teachers an opportunity to open up the play book.
"Open up the play book" is an idiom, which we are learning about in class right now. The goal is to not teach students how to write idioms, the goal is to help students with their reading, and how to understand that idioms are used to make a point with in a story. If you visit the school soon, look for our idiom wall. A wall of pictures depicting some of the most famous idioms like, "when pigs fly."
April is really shaping up to be a busy month. We are working on getting our Nez Perce Exhibits done in two weeks with our individual projects on artifacts, models and replicas. Students chose their topic area: transportation, food gathering, fashion, architecture, music/dance, and art. They were given an opportunity to select jobs, but in the end Mr. Ellsworth had to assign them either the job of leader, writer, editor or designer. Each student is still responsible for the writing and editing, but it was important to have someone making sure it all got done. I went to the store yesterday and purchased the supplies for the exhibit boards. We should be able to do mock-ups of our designs today and begin to work on the copy and imagery. Your student has picked something to make on their own for their exhibit. The architecture group selected different types of houses to make models of. Kirsten and I are currently working on getting involved in the Regional Pow-Wow April 23. Look for more information on that. We also have an opportunity to work with Keith Haley from Palouse Ridge Adventures. He has asked if we would be willing to help him construct a tipi on the top of the ridge. Thank you Andrea Adler for that awesome idea. Rachel Caudill also put us in contact with Albert, the great grand son of the late Chief Joseph, and he may be able to make a visit later this month. Thank you Rachel! So as you can see, we have a lot of stuff on the horizon.
Moscow Walk of the Planets has been moving through the City's committees, I was able to present the project to the Paradise Path Task Force and the Parks and Rec. Department. Both gave the green light. Nils Peterson and Dwight Curtis Parks and Rec. Commissioner have been guiding me through the works. Ms. Sherie made a great presentation to the Palouse Astronomical Society and gained their full support behind the project. Jason Barnes, astronomer at UI, wrote us a nice grant proposal and we are hoping to get that pushed through in the next few weeks. The last committee to get an OK from is the Chipman Trail, their answer should be any day. On April 18th we will be presenting to the City Council for final approval. Hopefully if we get all of our ducks in a row, we should be able to install our Walk of the Planets Model sometime in May. As for the pictures that will be on the signs, we are currently using our art time to revise our planet drawings from last fall. The committees wanted to see more consistency in the drawings, so we will be finishing these by the end of this week. The pictures will be presented to the school, students will get a chance to vote on the pictures. Names will be removed to make it as fair as possible.
The blog has fallen behind the last two weeks, and I hope to fix that this week. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Progress Reports are headed home today. I am happy with every one's improvement.
Jacob Ellsworth
Of all the things that might be true about experiential education, the one thing that is unassailably true is that you can't find out by defining it.
- John Huie
Pictures from the last few weeks!
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