Year 1. Session 1. Week 5

This week the Eagles launched with a discussion surrounding the TED Talk: How to Speak So People Want to Listen. They were asked to reflect on the following questions:

Which of the 7 deadly sins of speaking are you most guilty of?

Which do you think is the worst offense? Which one is worst for your community?

Which of the positive cornerstones should you focus on the most as a group?

Which one is most critical to creating a strong community?

Which is your strongest as a tribe?

Using the words here (7 deadly sins and the cornerstones) how will your ideal tribe communicate by the end of the year?

This launched the Eagles into a very important discussion on how they want to communicate as a tribe and it set the stage for on-going productive conflict resolutions, Socratic Discussions, and collaborations throughout the week.

Eagles were also introduced this week to the concept of a public exhibition. They first made a list of the questions they would need to answer in order to plan their exhibition and then started on a very detailed and well-thought through plan for their very first one at the end of the session!

Another new concept and system they learned about this week was peer-to-peer 360 feedback. At the end of the week, they were introduced to 360 surveys and spent over an hour giving direct feedback to their peers on how well each of them followed their temporary studio contract. This will happen at the end of each session going forward, and upon returning from break, the Eagles will complete a detailed self-reflection that includes a 360 survey goal based on their responses.

Since the focus this session is Build the Tribe, Eagles continued to be challenged with team building games. The two this week challenged them to, 1. Keep an inflated ball in the air for a certain amount of counts, and 2. Tape a shape to their forehead and find the fellow travelers with the same shape- no talking allowed! They completed their challenges with grace and loads of smiles.

In Writers’ Workshop, Eagle authors completed peer critiques and Community of Editors where they were challenged to identify their strengths in editing (inner punctuation, outer punctuation, capitalization, spelling/grammar, or Voice -their focus trait of the session) and sign-up to edit their peers’ letters in the Community of Editors with that particular focus.

This week was all about preparing for the upcoming PD olympics! On Tuesday, kickball anchored the day during which learners worked on a variety of skills after just having gone through a gate-to-gate team challenge. Thursday, a prep day, had the learners practicing for the other events coming up!

In Art the Eagles began painting! It was a bright sight to see!

Thank you to the parents who were able to come to our first Parent Coffee! Everyone is looking forward to celebrating a successful session at the end of the upcoming week!