Category: Project Work

Beliefs, Behavior & Belonging

In humanities, sixth graders have been exploring the early civilizations of the Indian subcontinent and the origins of Hinduism and Buddhism. The class welcomed Saklan parents and guest experts, Manju Rajashekhar and Toshie Baba, to share their personal experiences and perspectives on Hinduism and Buddhism. 

Recently, the sixth graders visited a Buddhist Monastery in Lafayette. Students heard more about the story of Siddhartha and various Arhats, participated in seated and walking meditations, and explored more evidence for the 3B Framework and 3 Claims About All Religions they have used to discuss religions throughout the year. Students met with monks and volunteers at the monastery, who showed them the buildings, grounds, and statues. 

3B Framework– an individual’s religious identity may be a unique mix of

  1. beliefs- ideas about holy scriptures, sacred texts, teachings
  2. behavior- actions, habits, practices
  3. belonging- sense of community 

3 Claims About All Religions

  1. All religions are internally diverse
  2. All religions evolve and change over time
  3. All religions are informed and influenced by the cultures they are situated in

Last week, the class enjoyed a field experience at the Blackhawk Museum where they toured the Into China exhibit as a kick-off to their unit on ancient China. This was followed by a visit from Asian Art Museum storyteller docent Nancy Parker who shared stories that connect to the museum’s artifact collection about Confucius, Buddha, and the Silk Road trade.

#SaklanPBL

Communicating Through Color

One of the most special elements of Saklan Project-Based Learning is the ways in which annual units take on different elements each year. For the last three years 2nd and 3rd grade students have designed the backdrop for our spring concert at the Lesher Center as part of a PBL unit on color and communication. This unit centers on the driving question: How can we understand the art world to design a backdrop that communicates “garden?”

This year there has been an intentional focus on one particular Studio Habit of Mind: Understanding the Art World. This studio habit, one of eight developed by the researchers at Project Zero, focuses on the study of art history and contemporary practices to learn how to act as an artist in collaboration with other artists in broader society.

The unit began with students sharing their own experiences of gardens. This process activated their prior knowledge and began to elicit ideas, feelings, and questions connected to the concert theme. Next, they completed a whole class brainstorm of ideas, colors, experiences, feelings, and connections to the driving question. This work helped guide the decisions about which artists students would focus their learning on as they worked toward the design and creation of the concert backdrop.

The unit then moved on to explore artists whose work focuses on gardens, nature, and tending to the environment. Made with charcoal scavenged from the scorched earth after a wildfire, Emily Gui’s drawings of wild grasses that emerged after the fire, connected to the 3rd graders’ research on native plants earlier this year. It was also a jumping off point to help expand the students’ definition of what a garden may mean to different peoples. They compared drought maps to the work of Saif Azzuz, which often focuses on the importance of tending the California landscape through the Indigenous wisdom of cultural burns and the varied medicinal uses of native plants, as seen in his recent installation at Stanford Research Park. Finally, students considered the impact of color, and what happens to our interpretation of artworks when color is removed using works by Kim Champion. It struck students that when the color was removed from her art, often much of the meaning was lost and the figures became harder to identify.

Visiting SFMOMA as part of this PBL unit was a highlight for our second graders. This opportunity to engage with large works in a museum space gave students a chance to observe a variety of ways artists convey the theme of garden. They explored many different types of works and interpretations of our theme.

After exploring different artists’ interpretations of garden, students reflected on the feelings and connections to the theme that they wanted to express through their backdrop art. Three distinct groups emerged. One group most associated gardens with the feelings of excitement and joy, another with a sense of awe for life, and a third associated gardens with calm. Each feeling group identified colors to communicate those feelings using their growing understanding of the art world. 

Knowing how colors impact each other when side by side and gaining an understanding of the need for balance between colors were the next key elements to successful communication through color that students began to explore. Color mixing recipes were iterated on to figure out how to mix just the right tint, shade, or hue of the desired colors.

Additionally two small groups considered the ways line and shape can help us communicate our theme. One group felt a sense of curiosity when considering the theme of “garden” and worked to create a line language for our backdrop. Another considered the connection between the theme of “garden” and fruits and vegetables. 

At the concert, look for the line and shape language they developed among the beautiful colors the students have so carefully selected and balanced. You may spot many ovals, circles, and textures that mimic overlapping yerba buena leaves, curved lines like the edges of a valley oak leaf and its branches, or the texture of corn on the cob.

The students are now preparing the backdrop canvases by applying a base coat and will begin painting their version of “garden” very soon. We are excited to unveil the finished product at the All-School Concert on Friday, March 21st. See you there!

#SaklanPBL #SaklanCreative

Learning in the Field: O’ahu Edition

Field trip? Field experience? These terms may feel synonymous; however, at Saklan we draw an important distinction between a field trip and a field experience. Instead of trips that may loosely connect in terms of content, a field experience takes students into the field to work directly with experts, answer key need-to-know questions, and drive our project work forward. 

One example of connecting with experts in the field is the 7th grade field experience to the island of O’ahu. The driving question for this science PBL unit is, “What can we do to help reduce the single use plastics in our area?” 

Prior to arriving on the island, students watched the Mockumentary: Majestic Plastic Bag and looked at photos of different animals impacted by plastic waste including sea turtles and albatrosses. They also saw direct evidence of animals ingesting plastic waste via the dissection of an albatross bolus, in which they found: a lighter, fishing lures, fishing line, bottle caps, toy parts, plastic flatware, and many small plastic fragments. They came to the realization that, if there is trash in the ocean, animals will ingest it. 

Still, for students, an albatross and their food sources can feel removed from our local environment and experiences. They wondered what type of waste is in our local environment. Students went “foraging” for “food” around Saklan and found many waste and plastic items that animals could ingest. It became clear that, despite our best efforts, waste still finds its way into our local ecosystem and therefore ends up in our waterways, and ultimately oceans and ocean animals. 

So how can we reduce the plastic waste that impacts our environment? The field experience to O’ahu helps students better understand the impacts of pollution on ocean life, connect with Hawaiian organizations already working to reduce waste, and learn about sustainable alternatives that already exist, as they prepare to answer the driving question by developing their own single-use plastic alternative. 

Students met Rebecca, Hideki, and Lynn from Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii, a local nonprofit organization that runs beach clean-ups, partners with schools, and educates the community at local events. Together they had the opportunity to mālama, care for, the ocean by completing a beach clean-up at the Mālaekahana Beach. Using a sieve-like tool, students removed 30 pounds of waste! Much of it could be classified as “micro-plastics,” or plastics that are less than 5mm in size. While students did find a large blue plastic jug on the sand, most of what they collected were super tiny bits of blue plastic, evidence of many different large blue plastic jugs that have broken down over time. Another surprise was the tiny white disks called nurdles, which are pre-production microplastics that are super tricky to recover from accidental spills into the ocean. The class was reminded that choices on land impact the oceans and that beach clean-ups can only take us so far! The staff from Sustainable Coastlines provided some great inspiration and ideas for alternatives to these plastics that are washing up on Hawaiian shores each day.

Sustainable Coastlines was just the beginning, while on O’ahu, students also connected with experts at Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve and Project Genki Ala Wai where they made and deployed Genki balls in the Ala Wai Canal to restore its ecosystem making it safer for both people and animals. 

The 7th graders will take these many rich learning experiences in the field back to the classroom to help them answer their driving question and refocus on sustainable alternatives to single-use plastics in our local environment. 

As always, the students aren’t the only ones gaining inspiration and connections to drive their work forward! While on the island, Linda Lathrop visited Punahou School to learn about how they approach projects and design thinking. From the integration of native Hawaiian language, music, food, and dance to design projects in their STEM labs and art rooms, it is always enriching to connect with other teachers to hear about their practices. Just like our 7th graders are out in the field grappling with the content of their project, our staff enjoyed the opportunity to discuss project hurdles and successes from another school site. Opportunities like these to connect with different schools give us new ideas and potential solutions to our own project hurdles! It is also exciting to see practices we have in common too! Can you spot any in the photos below?

We look forward to hearing more about all this rich teacher and student learning when the students and teachers return to campus next week!

#SaklanPBL

Successful Community Spaces

As part of their Community Spaces Project Based Learning unit, 7th graders recently analyzed, brainstormed, collaborated and categorized to answer the focus question: What makes a community space successful and sustainable?

First, each student wrote a paper analyzing the successful and sustainable features of one space or structure in the Maya, Aztec/Mexica, or Inka civilizations. The spaces and structures they studied included the construction and urban design of Tenochtitlán, temples, marketplaces, ballcourts, observatories, homes, and palaces. 

Next, the class brainstormed successful features of the places they visited during field experiences: Moraga Commons, the Wellness Center at Los Perales Elementary School in Moraga, the Oakland Museum of California, and Temple Hill in Oakland. The students also learned about contemporary sustainable low-rise buildings designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, such as the National Stadium built for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. 

After they generated lists of the successful features of all of these spaces and structures, the students worked in small groups to place these features into categories. They used the below visual representation as a model. Next, the class narrowed down their successful space criteria into six categories. Working in groups, the class collaborated to create their own version of the diagram (click the arrows below to see their version).

To conclude the unit, the 7th graders applied the success criteria they developed to propose improvements to the existing Saklan School campus or a redesigned and rebuilt Saklan campus. The students presented their suggested improvements to members of the Saklan Board of Trustees and the administrative team on Thursday and Friday of this week.

To learn more about their campus improvement suggestions, please join us for CLAS next week, on Friday, January 31st, when the 7th graders will share an overview of their project with the community.

#SaklanPBL

Collaborative Group Work

Collaborating to solve problems is a key element of PBL work at Saklan and a skill that many of us need to employ in our workplaces too. Intentionally building this skill is one of many ways that project work benefits Saklan students long after they leave our campus. Here are some ways we develop our skill of collaboration! 

To effectively collaborate, we must develop relationships that are grounded in trust, interdependence, and shared accountability. Rich learning experiences that develop the skill of effective collaboration do not happen by chance, but are instead, intentionally woven throughout our project design. Teachers use success skills rubrics alongside content-specific learning goals, directly teach and model collaboration, and create driving questions and topics that encourage students to share and showcase their stories, skills, and talents. 

A recent student example can be found in Kindergarten’s PBL unit on names. During this unit students explored the driving question, “How can sharing about our names help us become better friends?” Throughout the unit milestones, students worked on their capacity to tell their own name stories, ask questions about each other’s names, and really listen to their peers. Name stories open endless opportunities to share about culture, language, and family histories. Throughout each stage of this unit, learning experiences were designed to not only meet academic learning goals but also foster students’ trusting relationships and their sense of interdependence. Whether it was helping design a name story costume for self-portraits in art class, sharing their favorite part of their name stories with each other, or telling our families about each other’s names, the fruits of intentionally collaborative project design were on full display in this unit. Our Kindergarteners undoubtedly grew their capacity for collaboration.

At Saklan it isn’t just the students working to deepen their collaboration and sense of interdependence. The teachers at Saklan are also actively improving our practice.

One way we are doing this as faculty is through our Professional Learning Community. A Professional Learning Community (PLC) is a way for our staff to share and grow in our capacity for project based learning with a pervasive, ongoing impact on the structure, style, and culture of PBL at Saklan. Instead of a series of stand-alone meetings, a PLC is intended to be an ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for Saklan students. 

At our most recent session on the January 6th PD day, there were two elements to our PLC work. Each teacher met as part of their year-long small group focused on one particular area of interest: using rubrics, managing team tasks, sustaining inquiry, and differentiation. Before these breakout sessions, the whole group worked on deepening our understanding of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and discussed how we can increase our alignment of collaborative work expectations across grade levels and divisions. It was a lively discussion and we are excited to implement our learning from the research we’ve discussed AND from each other.

#SaklanCollaboration #SaklanLifeLongLearners

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!

Portraits of Kindergarten

In art class, kindergartners recently worked on representing themselves through portraits. First, students observed well-known self-portraits by Vincent VanGogh and Frida Kahlo, and then used the art elements of line, shape, and color to create their own self-portrait drawings.

Next, the kindergartners observed the artwork of contemporary artist Cindy Sherman, who photographs herself dressed up as different imagined characters. In collaboration with their PBL unit exploring the driving question of “How can learning about each other’s names make us better friends?” students planned their own Cindy Sherman-inspired photoshoot that visualized the meaning and stories behind their names. Each student posed for photographs wearing costumes and props that not only represented their names but that superbly matched their unique personalities. Check out their photos below! 

#SaklanProjectBasedLearning

Artifact or Art Opinion

The 6th graders recently wrapped up their second milestone in their Project Based Learning unit, Artifact or Art Opinion. The driving question for the unit is, “Who do artifacts really belong to?”

During this unit, students explore arguments for and against the repatriation of Egyptian artifacts. They develop an understanding of museums, the history of archaeological practices, museum bias, perspective taking, and of course, dive into the content standards connected to ancient Egyptian civilization. This year, it has been great fun to add in mini lecture recordings and videos from the Egyptologist that Linda and Vickie traveled with over the summer, too! 

The unit kicked off in early October with an entry event highlighting a modern example of an artifact purchased by the Met that was, in fact, stolen! This helped the class to wonder how do museums end up with the artifacts they have in their collection? They then selected mystery Egyptian artifacts held at museums outside of Egypt to research. Through studying their artifacts, students began to build an understanding of what these artifacts are and why they are important. During their research, the 6th graders learned about ancient Egyptians and started sorting through some of the complexities of each artifact’s provenance. Students learned sometimes it is tricky to get to the bottom of how a museum acquired a particular artifact! 

Recently, the sixth graders met with two experts who helped them start to understand how museum and archaeological practices have changed over time. They visited a small museum in Berkeley at the Pacific School of Religion called the Badè Museum. There, the class met with archaeologist and Museum Director Dr. Aaron Brody to understand the unique history of the collection and their perspective on repatriation.

Sixth graders also zoomed in with archaeologist, Dr. Hannah Wellman, who shared a detailed timeline about changing archaeological practices, mummification, and the impact of context in a museum exhibit.

Students have been working on compiling all their research from the first two milestones into a research paper. After a first draft, teacher conferences, and initial revisions, they participated in a feedback routine called “Big Paper” with the help of David, Emily, and Kim. The 6th graders did a great job providing constructive feedback, glows, and questions to improve each other’s work.

In the final two milestones, students will learn how ancient and modern public art help individuals express their opinions and share their own answers to the driving question with the community. The sixth graders will showcase their work in this project at CLAS on November 22. We hope to see you there! 

#SaklanPBL

Bats & Camouflauge

As part of their Nocturnal Animal Project, the Owlets enjoyed learning about bats! After a special visit from Ms. O, our amazing science teacher, the Owlets dove into their first “representations” project of the year. This activity gives the students the freedom to express themselves in creative ways, making something that stands out as their favorite part of what they learned. From toilet paper rolls to aluminum foil and clay, the classroom’s “useful junk” drawers were full of possibilities!

After reading Log Life, a fun book about animal habitats, the Owlets discovered that bats live in all sorts of places—even right here in Moraga! Since there aren’t any caves nearby, the Owlets got curious about where our local bats might hang out. Ms. O shared that many bats here make their homes in old houses or even attics! But to keep them from settling inside, people put up bat boxes instead. These wooden shelters are placed on trees, and guess what? The Owlets made their very own bat boxes for the trees in their classroom using cardboard and thin cardstock strips!

As the Owlets dive deeper into learning, they’re also expanding their vocabulary—one word they’ve been exploring is “camouflage,” a super cool tool that bats (and other animals) use to blend in with their surroundings! This helps the animals hide from predators or sneak up on their prey. The Owlets had a blast with Victoria searching for spots in the classroom to hide their bats, doing their best to match the colors around them!

#SaklanProject

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