And we're off! Week One of the Summer Program

It's a delight to be back at Seymour Dual Language Academy with a curious group of kids working on reading, writing, and changing the world.  Each morning we have Book Club where children choose what book they would like to read in small groups and discuss.  We've already read a pile of books -- including Ling and Ting: Not Exactly the Same by Grace Lin, Apt. 3 by Ezra Jack Keats, Three Stories You Can Read to Your Dog by Sarah Swan Miller, Abuela's Birthday by Jacqueline Jules, The Boy Who Didn't Believe in Spring by Lucille Clifton, and Dancing in the Wings by Debbie Allen.  But by far the most popular book was This is Black Panther from Marvel.  The kids jumped into their Book Club discussion, comparing the book to the movie and imagining themselves as super heroes.    And they are super heroes.  The children have picked two important problems in their community to tackle this summer: gun violence and bullying.  They spend the second half of the morning researching the causes of those problems and what solutions have already been tried.  As the summer continues, they will develop their own solutions to those problems and work to get their solutions enacted.  Stay tuned for details as their work progresses! In addition to their work in Book Club and Problem Solving, the children are working to create a democracy in the classroom.  During Morning Meeting, they take turns being chair person, and facilitate discussions about future plans for the program.  So far, they have voted to use some time last Friday to make clay projects (they had a blast! – Pictures to come in the next blog post.)  They also voted that they will line themselves up alphabetically when they go out to recess or to lunch, each day moving the leader from the previous day to the end of the line.  They work for fairness in their decisions. There is so much going on in the classroom that I didn’t have time to take a lot of pictures.  I did get pictures when we went to the Rosamond Gifford Zoo on Wednesday.  These are amazing kids, learning and growing in a hundred ways!  Here they are learning about the reticulated python.