Month: May 2024

Nurturing the Thinkers, Creators, and Changemakers of Tomorrow

If you were able to join us last Friday night at the Peace, Love, Saklan Auction, you might already know this exciting news: Linda Lathrop has been nominated to the PBLWorks National Faculty. This prestigious position places Linda among just 75 educators who are collaborating with PBLWorks to train thousands of teachers across the United States and beyond.

Linda’s nomination is not only a testament to her hard work but also to the dedication and teamwork exemplified by our Saklan Faculty. Crafting and executing high-level project-based work demands courage and a willingness to be vulnerable—qualities our faculty possesses in abundance.

With Linda’s appointment, Saklan gains direct access to the expertise of PBLWorks, enhancing our deep commitment to project work. Even more remarkable is the fact that our innovative approaches at Saklan will influence educational practices worldwide, giving our school a voice in the global conversation about the future of education.

Building on this momentum, this year’s Fund-a-Need campaign is aimed at enhancing our facilities to foster truly effective and collaborative project based learning (PBL). While our educators are developing groundbreaking projects, our current physical spaces limit the full potential of their innovative teaching methods and our students’ learning experiences. This year’s campaign focuses on creating environments that support the dynamic nature of PBL, with adaptable furniture and technology designed to facilitate collaboration and creativity.

By supporting our Fund-a-Need initiative, you are investing in a future where education transcends traditional boundaries, empowering Saklan students to explore, innovate, and lead. Join us in crafting an environment that nurtures the thinkers, creators, and changemakers of tomorrow—right here at Saklan and around the world.

Thank you for your support and generosity,

David 

#SaklanPBL #SaklanHeadsCorner

Shared Power

Fostering a sense of belonging is one of the most important things we can do in our classrooms. When students feel seen, known, and valued, they become free to take on new academic risks and challenges. 

At Saklan we extend the importance of belonging beyond SEL curriculum, morning meeting, or advisory. In Project Based Learning students bring their authentic wonders and ideas to the academic day, peer feedback, and collaborative work. 

Through showing the value of what they have to offer to the learning experience, students are reminded that we all have ways we can help support our community, ways our community can help us, and, most importantly, none of us alone is smarter than all of us together!  

Shared power is a core equity lever of projects at Saklan. By sharing power the class takes ownership over their growing knowledge which deepens the students’ sense of belonging and purpose in the classroom. 

Authentically incorporating students’ unique interests and talents, providing them options and agency in making decisions within the project, and creating a sense of interdependence among the teacher and students are all ways shared power show up in high quality project learning. 

Here are a few examples of how students are bringing their own unique identities, ideas, and questions to support academic learning in our projects. 

Owlets: Voice and Choice in Rainforest Representations 

Choice is provided for even our youngest learners. In their rainforest project unit, Owlets have had the freedom to respond to their growing knowledge in a variety of ways. After a visit from a reptile expert, students created models to represent what they learned. They chose an element of the experience that was exciting to them and selected which materials they would use to create the representation of what they learned. 

Owlets see the importance of their voice by developing their own wonders. The teachers reinforce student voice by making space to respond directly to these authentic student inquiries. One Owlet wondered how much rainfall there is in the rainforest each year. After some research the class discovered there is an average annual rainfall of 7 feet in the rainforest. They collaboratively made this chart to show 7 feet of rain! They even measured themselves (and their teachers) against all this rainfall!

We hope you can join the Owlets for their rainforest culmination celebration where you can see all they have learned about rainforests on May 31st after CLAS!

6th grade: Interdependence Through Critique, Revision, and Co-Creation of Rubrics

This PBL unit requires students to create a final product based on their own unique interpretation of the driving question, “How are we still connected to Ancient Greek culture, language, and mythology today?” 

While building knowledge and pursuing individual research paths, students also develop a deep sense of belonging and shared power in the classroom through interdependence. One major aspect of this was co-writing their grading rubric for the project through generating, sorting, and refining criteria and rubric language together. 

Throughout the project they receive feedback and support from peers and teachers through small group work and feedback protocols like Big Paper and a modified version of the Charrette Protocol. 

This critique and revision cycle is designed specifically to show students that their ideas matter. These practices intentionally lift up student voices, ideas, and opinions within the guardrails of our content standards and teacher learning goals. 

#SaklanPBL

Teacher Appreciation Week 2024

Teacher Appreciation week is next week! The Parent Association has planned lots of fun and unique ways to celebrate the Saklan faculty and staff, but they need your help!

Meals for the Saklan Staff

One of the beloved Saklan Teacher/Staff Appreciation Week traditions is themed potluck lunches from the parent community!  If you are able, please sign up to bring something yummy for the teachers and staff by clicking on the button below.

Help provide lunch for the Saklan staff

Teacher & Staff Kind Notes

Additionally, we are collecting quotes from students about all of the things they love about the Saklan faculty and staff members. Use the button below to see a list of all teachers and staff at Saklan with a link to a Kudoboard for each one. Please have your student click on the links for the staff members that make differences in their day (think Music, Spanish, Miss Shay, and the list goes on!) and write what they love about those individuals.

Saklan Staff Kudoboard Links

Thank you for helping make this year’s Teacher and Staff Appreciation Week extra special!

SaklanPA #SaklanTeacherAppreciation

Student-led Socratic Discussions

In their Languge Arts classes, the 6th and 8th grade students participated in Socratic-style seminar discussions to showcase their understanding of their class novels. The discussions were 100% student-led with 0% teacher involvement.

In a Socratic seminar discussion, students ask and answer all of the questions. The teacher remains silent. The students sit in a circle or around a seminar table where every participant can make eye contact with all other participants while speaking or actively listening. The discussion moves freely as the students answer one another’s questions, build on the commentary of others, and, of course, invite one another to contribute to keep the discussion going.

The 8th graders wrapped up their reading of the novel Uprising with two Socratic discussions inside the “fishbowl.” The novel Uprising tells the intersecting stories of three young women before and during the tragic fire in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Manhattan on March 25, 1911. Along with reading the novel, the students analyzed the benefits and downsides of the Industrial Revolution in American life at the turn of the twentieth century. 

To prepare for the discussion, students generated their own questions about the novel’s main themes, especially characterization. The 8th graders also shared their analyses of meaningful passages from the novel and real historical events before inviting other participants to add to their ideas.

While one-half of the class participated in the discussion inside the fishbowl, the other half sat around the room outside the discussion table to observe and listen to their peers. The discussion lasted for 20 minutes before the two groups switched roles.

While the discussion was underway inside the fishbowl, each observer tracked specific elements of the discussion in their Observer Notes. They logged specific types of commentary as they occurred, including when a speaker connected the discussion topic to a broader theme, when someone built on another person’s comment, or when an analytical question was asked to the whole discussion group.

The 6th graders finished reading the novel Flowers for Algernon, which is about a mentally disabled man who triples his intelligence through an operation. For their cumulative project, the class also held a Socratic Seminar. In the discussion, students evaluated the various themes present in the novel, such as the relationship between EQ and IQ. Students made connections with the nonfiction topics discussed in class, such as the story of Adam and Eve, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, and eugenics. When reflecting on their performance, the 6th graders were most proud of their ability to support one another’s intellectual thinking. 

In both grades, the students were surprised at how quickly time flew by inside the fishbowl. The discussion participants in both grades asked if they could have more time to continue as they felt they had much more to discuss.

Be Resilient

Saklan’s final social-emotional learning topic for the 23-24 school year is to be resilient. During the month, all Saklan students are discussing what resilience means and looking for ways to show their resilience on campus and at home. On Friday, May 31st, the 1st through 8th graders will join with their family groups to participate in Field Day activities. Field Day activities allow the students to an opportunity to not only show how they can be resilient, but also to showcase many of the other SEL traits they have practiced this year

#SaklanSEL