Outdoor Adventures and Farewell to Ms. Stephanie
/Every week our Otter community is filled with joyful explorations and new games, discoveries and creations. This week in our outdoor classroom we spent time watching our mason bees and discovered other interesting insects in the meadow. Some students engaged in dramatic play adventures involving a makeshift stump kitchen while others created an exciting obstacle course. Yet another group of Otters and Sea Lions organized a game of two hand touch football on campus. The game was put on pause when players wanted to pet an adorable Miniature Australian Shepard puppy.
In our indoor classroom this week we started researching our wetland animals. This wetland riddle project involves students working collaboratively with an assigned partner. Partnerships were strategically chosen by Otter teachers based on individual student strengths, challenges, and talents. Partners worked together to read articles and books about their animals. Together they took notes about interesting facts and then used those notes to begin designing their riddle. This morning students worked hard to use their best penmanship and writing conventions as they created the final copies of their riddles. This week during numeracy centers students learned how to play a new game called Match Madness that requires visual spatial skills, reasoning, and persistence. During project time this week students worked on a variety of art, drama, and building projects. For the last couple of weeks a group of the Otter and Sea Lion students have been working on a production of The Wizard of Oz. This has been 100% student-led. Students did all the planning, script writing, directing, acting, costumes design, prop creation, etc. They performed it for classmates and teachers on Thursday. We were so impressed with their play that we asked if they would be interested in doing an encore performance for the rest of the school on the big stage in Taylor Meade. Our student actors were thrilled about the prospect and this will likely occur the week of June 10th (if we can reserve the stage). This morning we had an authors’ celebration where several students shared their latest published stories. We applauded as students added their new stories to our classroom library. This afternoon we had a pajama popcorn party as we said goodbye to Ms. Stephanie. Students presented Ms. Stephanie with the farewell letters they wrote for her. We will miss her greatly and wish her best of luck at her graduation tomorrow.
