1st Week of School!

Hello Families!
We had a great first week, filled with adventure, CREW work, and fun!  The first week is such a wonderful and exciting time for CREWs to come back together and rediscover the wonderful benefits of collaboration.  Thus far in the year we have already had some fantastic moments.  Yesterday for example, the CREW worked through what is known as a 'rich task' in math.  The idea of the rich task is that it requires deep mathematical thought, and has an array of possible outcomes.  The focus is less on the 'answer' and more on the process and explanation of thought.  During closing circle yesterday most of the CREW shared that the best part of the day was the rich task in math.  With that said, today was also a great day!  PPSEL had its first community circle of the year, and it was a huge success.  There was singing, music, skits, birthdays, spotlights, and a 7/8 CREW presentation on student expectations at Palouse Prairie.  Our trip to the Arboretum focused on trust, collaboration, and supporting one another in a positive and effective way.  After lunch, we worked on collaborative paintings.  Each CREW member created a painting that was then build upon by each of the other CREW members.  The symbolism here is of course that we create higher quality work when we collaborate with each other.  

Sarah and Noah collaborating prior to a presentation.

Kaylee working to put the finishing touches on a presentation poster.

CREW discovery at the Arboretum.

Ask your child about 'Duckie Wuckie!'

The 'innie/ outie' circle interview allows CREW members to share their thoughts in a safe and open way.

 An important component to the Arboretum work is to provide CREW members with time and space for quiet alone time.  This is to be mindful of our EL Design Principle 'Solitude and Reflection.'

CREW art.

MOSS Day 4

Hello Families!  I am completely exhausted, so I am going to be brief.  :)

Today the crew had a session with a park ranger discussing local ecology.  Following this we sampled the plots we established the other day.  After our sampling was finished, we had a class clean up around MOSS.  This was a nice friendly competition to see which person or group could collect the most trash from the forest or sagebrush.  According to our scale we removed abou 200 pounds of trash from the surrounding area (not bad for 45 minutes).  After dinner we all jumped in the freezing cold lake, built a fire, had an absolutely fantastic spotlight session, and played a really fun game of 'fugitive.'  I have more pictures to share (I'll display them at gallery night).

MOSS Day 3

Hello Families,

We had such an awesome day!  I don't have time to explain the specifics of each photo (and some of them aren't in order), so I will just give a brief summary of the day.  We started the day by experimenting with fire boards (these are boards that we load up with matches to create scale experiments of actual wildland fires).  After finishing, I tallied it up and we burned 1,500 matches during these experiments!  One aspect of this that was really interesting was that these scale experiments did a great job of demonstrating some principles of fire behavior we analyzed in class.  After this we hiked up to the marsh.  One interesting part of this marsh is that it is in the process of succession.  About 1,000 years ago it was a lake, and over the years it gradually fills in with sediment.  In the future, this marsh will turn into a meadow, and eventually a forest.  Our main purpose in this ecosystem was to discover insect diversity and look at turbidity.  Following the aquatic sciences we split into two groups and the students chose which group to join.  One group went on a discovery hike with me to the northern tip of the peninsula (which turned out to be a 5 mile scamper around the edge of the lake, followed by bushwhacking to find the trail), and the other group chose to do nature art.  After both groups returned to MOSS we had a wonderful time down at the beach.  Several of our CREW jumped in the lake (I should tell you there was still snow on the beach and the lake just thawed last week).  We were whooping and yelling and had such a fun time!  After the beach we had a really fun campfire, roasted some marshmallows, and played board games in a yert!  Today was definitely the best day yet!

MOSS DAY 2

Hello Families!

     The kids are working with the Forest Service right now, and I finally have a few moments to get today's blog posting done.  Yesterday was very eventful, when we arrived at MOSS I found out that there was a scheduling glitch and they weren't expecting us until next week, YIKES!  After collecting myself (and running through my head how in the world that happened), I spoke with our amazing chaperones and we decided to tackle MOSS head on!  The beauty of the situation is, next week we would have shared MOSS with 4 other schools, but this week we get the entire camp to ourselves (except for the Forest Service modules going on right now).  To make things better, our class has done so much outdoor science this year that we just hit the ground running!  I am using the MOSS field module lesson plans that the kids would regularly be doing, but since I know exactly where the class is at in terms of science knowledge/skills, I can take the discussion and instruction to a much higher level.  I think the bottom line is that this glitch actually worked to our benefit!
    Now, onto the science.  We started today out by looking at sage-steppe ecosystems. These are really interesting places because they really walk a fine line between resource competition and fire disturbance.  We have discussed these ecosystems in class and it was really cool to get out and actually work in one!  After this we went up to an old growth ponderosa/doug-fir stand.  This was particularly impressive as these were some of the oldest ponderosa and douglas firs I have ever seen.  Another exciting part of this was that we found a gorgeous quaking aspen stand.  After lunch the kids split into groups and are currently working with the Forest Service.  After this we will have dinner and make a big camp fire!  Tomorrow, we are going to be looking at turbidity and succession in aquatic ecosystems.


*sagebrush ecosystem

*ponderosa, douglas-fir, quaking aspen ecosystem