Dear Friends,
Well, I just heard that with the wind chill it’s -25 degrees in Worcester today and next week it will be in the 50s. A friend of mine was praying on her way to visit her very ill mother. She asked God when life would get back to normal and she heard,
“What’s normal?”
I was blessed to grow up in a very happy family and as a child I believed that “normal” meant peaceful, happy, and predictable. My little world was rocked from time to time when, like New England’s weather, I realized that life could feel warm, secure, and normal one day – and not, the next, like a polar vortex sweeping in to shut down “normal”. Jesus warned and prepared us for real life when He said,
“In this world you will have trouble but take heart I have overcome the world.”
We so easily forget His words. Let’s help each other remember by speaking His promise each time we complain about the weather. Now that’s a challenge!
Speaking of challenges, thank you for praying for our faculty as together we continue to work on creating exemplary lesson plans for our
Food for Life book
that is still on schedule to be
published this summer.
We are finding that it is much easier to do the lesson and discuss it than to carefully pull apart a complex, integrated lesson and document it on a template we created for other teachers to use. We have also had to learn that hard work
is
really hard, as each lesson is edited multiple times and revisions have to be repeatedly made. It has been a great review exercise for us all in the fundamentals of planning and documenting a concept-based integrated lesson plan; this will have a positive effect on all our lessons in the future.
Amy Imbody and Erica Reiter, from the Center for Redemptive Education, visited us recently from the D.C. area and met with each of us individually to review our lesson plans and writing thus far. It was extremely helpful and encouraging. As our publishers, they feel we are on track. They were
extremely impressed by a school-wide, integrated (combining several subjects) project that we just completed
(the brainchild of Jeremiah Shea), which was tweaked and carried out by grades K-8.
In this issue of Pathways, we are highlighting this particular multifaceted project that brought great joy and life to our school-wide study of the Founding Fathers. I am writing the basics, then each teacher will give you some highlights from their grade in their team’s page. You will grasp the breadth and planning involved for this project and see that grades K-8 truly can and did
learn a great deal at their own level
. Please read each team’s report for a broader view. We want you to understand how we do what we do and pass that informed knowledge onto others.
The
project
began last year when I ordered a book entitled,
It described how
personally involved our FF’s were
in agriculture, kitchen gardens, and various new plants of their day. They
actually sent seeds
to one another and traded plants when able. Together they documented their experiments and enjoyed tours of one another’s gardens. George Washington’s garden at Mount Vernon is a highlight of our DC trip.
Mr. Shea was intrigued and decided to integrate his 7
th
grade lesson on
formal letter writing
with this fascinating idea of patriot gardens and have the kids
research and write as one of the Founding Fathers
. At this point
LA skills
,
History
, and
Food for Life
were neatly
integrated
in a meaningful, interesting way. Because we were planning this in the late summer, it gave us plenty of time to research and teach
the skill of saving seeds
. All the grades were able to save some seeds from their garden boxes to share in term two. Quickly we expanded this idea so everyone could share the joy and fun.
Each grade was
assigned a Founding Father to research
in depth. Next they worked on compiling their information and writing letters to the other FFs. The LA skills involved were determined by the teacher and were integrated with
their grade’s learning targets
, plus everyone had a lesson on letter writing at their level.
On an appointed day, each class
sent out eight letters and seed packets of their very own seeds
to the other classes’ FFs. (Some dressed in costumes and rode horses to deliver the mail). Many seeds and fascinating facts were passed along as the eight letters were read with joy. Each grade responded to and dealt with the information from the other eight FFs. Some made
charts
, others
bulletin boards
, still others made
Facebook profiles
for each. They then responded in an informed manner to the letters, asking questions and “sharing news”. The letters are all posted on the bulletin board outside of the 4
th
grade if you would like to see them. The Facebook profiles are on a big bulletin board outside of Mr. Shea’s classroom upstairs.
So, there you have it.
Fun, creative, integral learning at HCA
. Mrs. Imbody was so impressed by this project she decided to feature it in a three-part lesson in our book. Stay tuned, keep warm, and PLEASE remind your kids to send out emails for
Read-a-thon
sponsors as well as read, read, read!
Blessings to you all,
Susan Hayward, Principal
