Category: Hoot Owls

Classroom Jobs

Jobs at school can help students build a sense of excitement, community, and interdependence. Tasks such as putting up the flag, cleaning the tables after lunch, or being the class helper give students the opportunity to exercise and practice decision-making and reasoning. They also give students a chance to be responsible in a meaningful way: the children know that completing their jobs helps their school, classmates, and/or teachers.

Upon returning to school in January, the Hoot Owl teachers noticed how much the students had matured since the beginning of the year and decided they were ready to take on more responsibility in the classroom. As part of a new project unit on cleaning, the class brainstormed ways to help keep their classroom clean. From that list came new classroom jobs that the students will take turns doing each week for the remainder of the year.

To kick off their jobs work, the class worked on a big cleaning task together – cleaning all the chairs in their classroom. Using buckets of soapy water and sponges, the students scrubbed down their chairs. They noticed that the water in the buckets didn’t look so clean when they were done, so we know the Hoot Owls did a great job of cleaning the chairs! After the chairs were scrubbed, they were rinsed off using the hose, and then students dried them. Some of the Hoot Owls took such pride in their work that they wanted to make sure the chair legs were shining!

Project Culminations at Saklan

A key element of Saklan Project Based Learning units is a public product. This looks different depending on the division and, hopefully, over the last month, you have had the opportunity to share in a culminating event on campus! 

In our Early Childhood Education program, our projects culminate with a public event where students share all the expertise they have gained over the course of the project. It’s a joyful time to celebrate their hard work with family, friends, and other students and staff. It is also a rich opportunity for them to be the experts in the room and develop their speaking and listening skills. Recently our Pre-K (Hoot Owl) class culminated their project unit on farmers’ markets. 

In our lower and middle school projects, products are created for an audience beyond the teacher and students in the classroom. One key aspect of a public product in these divisions is that it must raise the stakes of the work in a meaningful and authentic way. Students aren’t doing something just for the sake of doing it or solely regurgitating information learned from teacher-directed lessons.

Instead, the work students engage in mirrors what adults do in their various career pursuits. After student-led inquiry and teacher guidance to address the content standards, students make or do something that serves some purpose in the Saklan or broader community. Students are creating, educating, or advocating beyond the context of our classrooms. Some examples of recent products that answer the driving question and serve an authentic public purpose are below:

GradeDriving QuestionPublic Product
2ndCan animals survive in any habitat?Lunch table mini posters advocating for food swaps that help avoid palm oil. 
2ndHow can we use color to communicate feelings?Design and creation of the concert backdrop for our Spring Concert at the Lesher Center
3rdHow can we show respect to the people whose ancestral land our school is on?Research, design, and creation of the hopscotch and four square murals on the sports court to reflect the Saklan Bay Miwok culture.
6thWho do artifacts really belong to?Public art graffiti stencils to share options on repatriation of artifacts with the community. 

The final products differ but all include authentic sharing and action beyond our classrooms. At Saklan, students feel a sense of purpose that is hard to replicate in other styles of teaching and learning. This brings the work alive and prepares them for the critical thinking challenges, complex communication needs, and creative problem-solving they will encounter in high school, college, and beyond.

If you’d like to dive deeper into the various design elements of a Project Based Learning (PBL) unit, check out the recording of our October 22nd Saklan Projects! virtual event. And we hope you can join us at our culminating events next week.

Upcoming Project Culminations

  • Preschool (Owlets)- Nocturnal Animals Culmination Celebration at 8:35 a.m. on December 12th
  • Kindergarten- Names Unit Culmination at 8:45 a.m. on Thursday, December 12th

#SaklanProjects

Farmers’ Market Project

The Hoot Owls have begun a Project in which they are diving deep to learn about the Farmers’ Market! First, they worked on writing and illustrating stories about their real-life experiences at the farmers’ market. If the students hadn’t been to one, they imagined what it might be like. The Hoot Owls then took turns sharing their stories at circle time. This helps the children get more comfortable speaking in front of a large group and helps them feel proud of their work. Their fellow Hoot Owls asked questions about the stories, which allowed them to practice using the question sentence structure and to ask questions relevant to the topic. 

The Hoot Owls also practice questioning skills with their Wonder Wall. The Wonder Wall is how the class keeps track of what students are curious about. The teachers help the class review the questions they have posed as they progress through the Project. When they uncover the answer to one of the questions they add it to their Topic Web. This web helps the class track what they already know and what they learn. Both the Wonder Wall and Topic Web are growing mediums to display the students’ curiosities and knowledge.

The Hoot Owls have enjoyed talking about things found at the farmers market: fruits, vegetables, cheese, flowers, crepes, popcorn, and more. The class wondered where cheese comes from, so they invited a dairy cow expert, Erin, to help answer their question. They also came up with other questions about cows:

  • “Do cows drink?”
  • “How do cows eat carrots?”
  • “How do baby cows drink the milk?”

The students learned that only baby cows, or calves, drink milk. Adult cows only drink water and can drink as much as 6 bathtubs per day! They discovered that cows eat 100 pounds of food daily, mostly hay, but sometimes carrots, other vegetables, or grains. The Hoot Owls found out that cows only have teeth on their bottom jaw, the top is just a hard leathery piece. To help digest food, cows have four chambers in their stomach. Calves drink milk from the mother’s udders. The udders are also where farmers milk the cows. The milk is then used to make items like cheese and yogurt.

After learning new things, the students make representations. Not everyone makes the same things, as each student makes what they are interested in. Some molded a cow out of model magic and others built a cow using big Styrofoam pieces!

The Pre-K students are enjoying their journey to learn more about the Farmers’ Market. Stay tuned to see where this Project takes them!

#Prekindergarten #SaklanProjectWork

Thanking the Moon

Last Tuesday, September 17th, the Hoot Owls, 1st graders, and 2nd graders learned about the Mid-Autumn Festival, or Moon Festival, that is celebrated in East and Southeast Asia to mark the end of the autumn harvest. The Hoot Owls read the book Thanking the Moon by Grace Lin, and learned how Maggie, one of the Pre-K teachers, celebrates the festival with her family by sharing a dinner with her family under the moon. During the picnic, her family will eat fruits and mooncakes and thank the moon for a bountiful harvest.

The first and second graders welcomed Dana, a first-grade parent, who also read a book about the Mid-Autumn Festival, and then shared her experience and family traditions with the festival. The students were excited to try mooncakes, a pastry filled with lotus seed paste and an egg yolk in the middle, which Dana brought in for them to try. Some students really enjoyed the mooncakes, others not so much, but it was fun to try!

The Pre-K students also used mooncake presses to make their own mooncakes out of clay. This was a great opportunity to exercise their creativity and fine motor skills, as they each decorated their mooncakes, making very colorful creations!

#SaklanDiversity #SaklanCommunity

Please Join Us

The Hoot Owls are getting ready to come back to Earth following their space exploration! They have been reviewing their notes from the Topic Web they started way back in March, gathered questions on their Wonder Wall, talked to experts, including astronomer Sophia Wallstrom and Saklan’s Science Teacher, Ms. O, and conducted research in the field at Chabot Space and Science Center. It’s been an out of this world journey for the Hoot Owls, and they now invite you to view their results! Please join us for the Hoot Owl Space Culmination next Thursday, May 16th at 9:00 a.m.

The Hoot Owls aren’t the only class with a culminating event this month. We invite all Saklan families and friends to learn more about the learning our students have engaged in by joining us for the following events:

  • Hoot Owl Space Culmination – Thursday, May 16th at 8:30 a.m.
  • 3rd Grade Saklan/Bay Miwok Culmination – Friday, May 17th at 9:00 a.m.
  • 4th Grade Gold Fever Culmination – Friday, May 17th at 9:00 a.m.
  • Art Show – Thursday, May 23rd from 2:00 – 4:00 p.m.
  • 6th Grade Museum of the Future – Thursday, May 23rd from 2:00 – 4:00 p.m.
  • Owlet Rainforest Culmination – Friday, May 30th at 9:00 a.m.
  • Kindergarten Community Culmination – Friday, May 30th at 9:00 a.m.

Hoot Owl Space Exploration

The Hoot Owls have continued their space exploration! They been been discussing gravity and its effects in space, as well as talking about astronauts. They learned that there are astronauts living in the International Space Station. The astronauts grow plants, do experiments and send the information back to Earth. The class watched videos to see how astronauts go about their lives up in space. They saw a tour of their kitchen, their sleeping quarters and their bathroom. The Hoot Owls also learned that astronauts need to be very strong, and continuously exercise to keep their muscles and bones healthy.

The Hoot Owls recently went on a field experience to the Chabot Space and Science Center. The students brought journals with them to record things they saw and what they learned. The class watched a show in the planetarium about gravity waves and were excited to see parts of rocket ships. The students also enjoyed seeing the different space suits that have been used through time, and some of the Hoot Owls even designed their own!

The Hoot Owls will share their learning with the community on Thursday, May 9th during their Space Unit Culmination event. All Saklan community members are invited to join us to learn about their project!

Spring Holidays

For those who attended CLAS last Friday, you caught a glimpse of the learning our students have done around spring holidays. Here is a deeper glance into some of the learning that has taken place during the month of March.

Fourth grade students partnered up to explore and learn about various spring holidays including Holi, Easter, Ramadan, and St. Patrick’s Day. Their collaborative efforts culminated in the creation of informational posters which they formally presented to their classmates, and then put on display at CLAS. Through this activity, the fourth graders emphasized the importance of respecting and understanding different cultures while celebrating diversity.

Earlier this month, Hoot Owl parents, Rachel and Richa, taught the Hoot Owls about Holi. They shared that Holi is the Indian festival of colors which happens in Spring when new colors start showing up in nature. It is a time to celebrate our differences, and even though we are all different, we are all beautiful.  They read the book Festival of Colors by Surishtha Sehgal and Kabir Sehgal, and illustrated by Vashti Harrison. It shared the meaning of the holiday and how people celebrate it by wearing white and throwing powders of various colors (made from dried flowers) at each other in a fun and festive way. As a class the Hoot Owls represented this by creating marble art with lots of different colors. The marbles were rolled on top of paper in different skin colors, and when the paint dried they cut them out into people.

The Owlets learned about Ramadan when Nadia, an Owlet parent, visited their classroom. Nadia narrated the book Moon’s Ramadan and showed the Preschoolers images of her family celebrating Ramadan. The students discovered that Ramadan is observed throughout the new moon phase and concludes on the new moon. Adults fast during the day and eat at night, breaking their fast with an iftar, a meal which usually starts by eating dates. The Owlets also enjoyed painting some Ramadan decorations!

Sharing Knowledge

The Hoot Owls have emerged from their ocean unit and blasted off into space! To start their latest project-approach unit, the Hoot Owls made a topic web to showcase their prior knowledge of space. As they meet experts and read books, they will add to the web. They also created a space wonder wall, which they will continue to add questions to throughout the unit.

The first space guest experts to visit the Hoot Owls were the 1st graders! The 1st grade students shared what they learned during their Space PBL Unit in the fall. Prior to the visit, the Hoot Owls generated questions for the 1st graders, which they shared ahead of time. The 1st graders then researched answers to the Hoot Owl questions, and during their visit were able to answer all of the Hoot Owl questions. The Hoot Owls were very impressed!

Thank you, 1st Graders, for sharing your expertise with the Hoot Owls!

#SaklanProjectWork

100 Days of Learning

Did you know that on Thursday, February 8th, Saklan students celebrated the 100th day of the school?  

The Hoot Owls celebrated by making 100 hand prints, 100-day crowns, and counting to 100.

Kindergarteners made a special snack of 100 things, did 100 different exercises, counted to 100 in many different ways, made cheerio necklaces with 100 cheerios, wrote numbers to 100 and built different structures with 100 cups!

One of the highlights of the 100th day of school for the Hoot Owls, Kindergartners and 1st graders was the opportunity to gather in the Pre-K room and watch a video of Joanna’s 100 year old grandmother, who answered questions the students had about being 100. Witnessing a healthy centenarian left the students in awe and provided them with a unique perspective on the passage of time. Check out the video here!

The 4th graders celebrated during their Ohana Circle Time by estimating 100 in various ways, writing their names in cursive 100 times, and tackling an Order of Operations challenge to create equations of 100. 

The students had a wonderful day celebrating 100 days of learning!

The Depths of the Ocean

The Hoot Owls have continued to explore the depths of the ocean in recent weeks. They learned about coral reefs and read the book “The Brilliant Deep: Rebuilding the World’s Coral Reefs” by Kate Messner. It shared the story of Ken Nedimyer, the creator of the Coral Restoration Foundation. They also watched a video of a scientist exploring the coral reefs and explaining how coral reefs grow. As a class, the Hoot Owls talked about ways they can help keep the coral reefs safe. They talked about making sure trash goes into the right bins so it won’t go into the ocean, about not wasting water, and about being gentle with animals in the water. The students also created their own coral in class, which they drew with oil pastels and then used water color to create the ocean around them.

The class continued learning about more sea animals that they are interested in. Whale sharks, hammerhead sharks, great white sharks and more were on the list! The owls painted these animals, and currently have them swimming in their classroom. Stop by and take a look at their under sea classroom!

#SaklanHandsOnLearning