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 SRV School Store If you would like to purchase items like sweatshirts, SRV Songbooks, tee-shirts, caps, etc. please get fill out an order form and send it to the office. |
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Educational Experiences ...Geo-MAY-nia! Last autumn SRV engaged in an exciting all-school thematic study of culture using Central America as our backdrop. This experience was an opportunity to practice teacher collaboration, coordinating and integrating curriculum, and using backward design principles to create meaningful curriculum. Similarly, this past spring, during the months of April and May, preschool through sixth grade students studied geometry and measurement in a thematic study aptly named "GeoMAYnia!" As in the cultural study, the teachers utilized the principles of backward design to develop their GeoMAYnia curricula, identifying first the big concepts that they wanted the students to remember in years to come and then deriving essential questions that would inspire student interest and inquiry. Specific activities, learning experiences and lessons were created to teach the concepts and to assess how well the students learned those big ideas. During GeoMAYnia, all groups studied geometry and measurement during their regular math times as well as during Technology, Science, Woodshop, Art, and Music classes. This integration gave students a deeper look at measurement and geometry and how the principles of both are used in many disciplines and aspects of real life. Many classes even wove the theme into their literacy and writing curricula. For example, Main Circle students read The Wright Three, a mystery novel about one of Frank Lloyd Wright's houses that incorporated many geometric elements. They also wrote stories that incorporated spelling words like tangram, polygon, and pentominoe. In addition to regular classroom studies, kindergarten through sixth grade students were able to participate in a four-week session of GeoMAYnia-inspired mini-courses. Mini-courses are multi-aged 'electives' offered to the children in cycles throughout the course of the school year. Children choose from a variety of offerings and attend their chosen mini-course once a week. Mini-courses offered during GeoMAYnia integrated geometry and measurement principles with a variety of projects, such as building garden beds, studying Buddhist sand mandalas and Persian rugs, solving Chinese puzzles, laying out SRV's literary magazine "Leaves," and measuring wood to construct squirrel boxes for the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education's release program. The all-school study culminated in a math oriented May Fair in which the children used the theme as inspiration for the games, decorations and activities they designed. They created geometric collages with sand, built an Indian "Rangoli," an art tradition incorporating the use of natural materials like flower petals, natural grains, spices, and twigs in a symmetrical or geometric pattern, created a geo-sculpture, set up a Triangular Relay, and created clever games like "Hit the Shape" and "Pi In The Face!" |
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