koan school newsletter - october 2014
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NEWSLETTER | October 2014 1
IN THIS ISSUE
Hello parents, students, faculty and friends of the Koan School!
We have successfully completed the first six weeks of the 2014-2015 school year. To the students, we thank you for all your hard work learning many new subjects, helping us get into the groove with the new classes and buildings, and generally being awesome. We have some of the greatest teachers in the world (and Texas) working here at Koan, facilitating our kids’ learning every day.
To the parents and community, we very much appreciate your being willing to support our school by volunteering your time, donating money to keep us up and running, and talking to others in the community about what we do here at Koan. We love having you in the school and if you would like to visit, please make sure to have an appointment so that we can keep the kids learning with as few disruptions as possible.
So far, we have traveled around the DFW area, learning about art, science, history, dance, gardening, and many more subjects, learning firsthand from the experts we have available to us out in the
world. That will continue in the next six weeks with further visits and great learning experiences. Let us know if you have any ideas for supporting our kids’ learning in the community through projects that the kids could be involved with.
Thanks for all your hard work and support!
Scott & Heather
Welcome to the School Year!
Lower Elementary Update
Le Coin Francais | French Corner
Upper Elementary Newsletter
Middle School Fun
Adventures in High Schooling
Ways you can help Koan School
SAVE YOUR BOTTLE CAPS
Koan School, led by art teacher Katie Kernan, is putting together a mural for the City of Denton Recycling Center out of old bottle caps. Give your bottle caps to Soline, Scott, or Heather and help with this awesome project!
Welcome to the 2014 – 2015 School Year!
Newsletter
2014 Volume 1
October 10th
Dear parents, students, faculty and friends of the Koan School,
We have successfully completed the first six weeks of the 2014‐2015 school year. To the students, we thank you for all your hard work learning many new subjects, helping us get into the groove with the new classes and buildings, and generally being awesome. We have some of the greatest teachers in the world (and Texas) working here at Koan, facilitating our kids’ learning every day.
To the parents and community, we very much appreciate your willingness to support our school by volunteering your time, donating money to keep us up and running, and talking to others about what we do here at Koan. We love coming to school every day, and we hope you do, too.
So far this school year, we have traveled around the DFW area, learning about art, science, history, dance, gardening, and many more subjects, learning firsthand from the experts we have available to us out in the world. That will continue in the next six weeks with further visits and great learning experiences. Let us know if you have any ideas for supporting our kids’ learning in the community through projects that the kids could be involved with.
Thanks for all your hard work and support!
Scott & Heather
NEWSLETTER | October 2014 2
Our Lower Elementary students are exploring local and global sustainability beginning with the choices they make at home and at school. They are maintaining a food garden at Koan and will be traveling to Meador Nursery soon to search for plants that attract butterflies. The students are volunteering and learning at local farms. Cardo’s Farm Project hosted our first service project this year. They visited Earthwise this week, and explored the community garden at Shiloh Field that donates its food to local food banks and the preschool children at Fred Moore Day School.
The students are recycling, reusing, and composting at Koan. They visited SCRAP off the square and made crafts from reused materials. They decorated their own reuse box to take to their classroom to keep usable items out of the landfill. The students also went on an extensive tour of the Denton landfill and recycling center that included visiting their bee boxes and butterfly garden. They came back to the classroom discussing ways in which we can reduce the amount of trash we produce in the first place.
In addition to building skills in language and math, the Lower Elementary class is learning about the cultures and civilizations of the many indigenous people of North and South America.
Our students are progressing very well in French. Their vocabulary is growing rapidly. They are learning new words and expressions every week! By now, they all know their numbers (up to 12 or more), colors, different ways to greet people, as well as a couple of French songs.
In recent weeks, the Elementary students have learned names for animals and vocabulary related to seasons. You can admire their artwork in the hallway. Upper Elementary children got to work in the garden and planted winter vegetables in the front parking lot. When you have the chance, check out the planters and see what is sprouting.
The Middle School and High School students have learned to talk about the weather, ask simple questions, and, more importantly, have survived their first French grammar lesson on masculine and feminine! We have also been enjoying watching the adventures of my French relatives traveling through South America in an RV thanks to the short videos they posted on Vimeo. You can view all of those videos at:
http://vimeo.com/channels/dacaluf
In the coming weeks, we will be studying French food and hopefully try our hands at French cooking!
Lower Elementary Update by Jeanne Webb
The Lower Elementary students visit City of Denton Recycling Center.
Le Coin Francais | French Corner by Soline D’Haussy
NEWSLETTER | October 2014 3
Dallas Heritage Village Check out this fancy house at the Dallas Heritage Village. It was owned by a farmer who grew cotton and corn.
What a big heart you have! Ready to present our heart project to the other classes. We were awesome!
THIS MONTH IN PICTURES
Upper Elementary Newsletter by Kay Treacher
Word work: 25 words ‐ we chose 25 words and then made crazy phrases with the words.
It has been a busy first few weeks in the upper elementary class. We’ve been working hard on our math facts, word work, and reading. Emily comes in every week to help us with language arts. We are reading and exploring Alice in Wonderland. We are also having fun learning French with Soline, theatre arts with Leslie, and fine art with Katie.
Our main project work has been about the heart. The students presented their work on the anatomy of the heart to the other classes. You can see their enormous heart outside our classroom. During the last couple of weeks we have been learning about exercise and foods that keep our hearts healthy. Next, we are going to look at how and where our food is grown. At the end of September, we visited an Alpaca Ranch to see one example of farming in Texas. At the beginning of October, we visited the Dallas Heritage Museum to see how people grew their food in the late 1880s and early 1900s.
Please come by the classroom before or after school to see our heart and presentation booklet and some of our work displayed on the wall.
In the next few weeks we’re looking forward to investigating where our food comes from, activities for Halloween and Thanksgiving, and to preparing for our end of semester play.
Upper Elementary students enjoying a trip to a local Alpaca Farm.
NEWSLETTER | October 2014 4
FOR MORE INFORMATION
about Giving Hope, Inc. visit:
www.hopeincdenton.com
Middle School Fun! by Amanda Newton
Almost all of the students in the middle school class are new to Koan this year. We have spent much of our time so far getting to know each other: our likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, our interests and preferences.
The girls have begun taking a ballet class with Leslie at Greenspace. They are becoming more graceful by the second, all while getting lots of great exercise! They also started learning a spooky dance to Michael Jackson’s Thriller. If your family goes to the Day of the Dead festival in Denton this year, your student will be well prepared for joining the zombie flash mob!
In theater, the students have started learning their lines for Star Wars Shakespeare. It is going to be out of this world! Zelda has introduced the students to the marvelous world of machine sewing. The kids are getting comfortable with setting up the machines and have some creative sewing projects planned.
Alana Presley helped our students calculate their ecological footprint. This footprint activity really opened our eyes to the effects our daily actions have on the world. It also tied into our lessons on the “Story of Stuff”, during which we learned about the ecological footprints of different products. In October, we will be learning all about food. October 24th is National Food Day!
In Art, Katie and the students have talking about positive and negative space, shading, and contrasting colors. In French, we have been learning the basics. We even created our own people and labeled their clothes and body parts in French!
Koan kids love their community, so we are putting together a collection drive for clothing and hygiene products this month. The students admire the services Giving Hope Inc. provides for people experiencing or at‐risk of homelessness. On Oct.15, we are partnering with the OSDH & CP’s Social Run to collect items for Giving Hope, Inc.
For event information, visit: www.facebook.com/events/458668270940154/
Back in the classroom, George continues to take us through the pillars of civilization in Social Studies. In English, we will be completing our first book report of the year soon. We can’t wait to see the book covers the kiddos will be designing!
Middle Schoolers calculating their ecological footprints with Alana Presley.
NEWSLETTER | October 2014 5
September was a busy month for the High School students! In addition to setting up our space, we began discussing the culture of our school and the responsibilities we all have to contribute and help each other in our learning. We discussed constructive feedback and doing multiple drafts of our work so that we can improve and create work that is important to us and that makes us proud.
In science, we investigated a curious termite behavior, and we developed experiments using shell‐less eggs to observe the movement of materials in and out of the cell membrane. We will keep learning the types and parts of cells as we work on our creative presentations that we will be sharing over the next few weeks.
Our AP Biology students made a great stop‐motion video to teach us the processes of dehydration synthesis and hydrolysis. The students have also all successfully written their first lab reports! I have been so impressed with the professionalism of our biology presentations, and the fantastic critical feedback that our scientific community gives as they carefully consider the evidence presented before developing consensus.
In English, we finished our first book of the year, Lord of the Flies, which we connected to our government discussions with George, including some great parallels the students made between the book and the social philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.
During Christopher's guest class, we traced some linguistic history and explored the lasting impact that William the Conqueror and the Battle of Hastings (1066) had on the language that we speak. We also played some rousing games of Geoguessr, a game that uses Google maps to drop the player anywhere in the world, during which we had to look for clues to guess where we were.
We had two teams tackle a full practice problem in Future Problem Solving. Two teams of four students each read a futuristic scene involving the future of social media, thought of potential problems, chose a significant one, and developed creative solutions for topics like “finding ways to improve cyber security”. Soon, we will begin researching the next topic, Processed Foods.
We took a field trip to the Fish N' Chirps pet store to practice our French animal/color vocabulary. We have also been visiting local parks and recreation centers for exercise and to train for an eventual French field trip to do "accrobranche" (a high ropes obstacle course, using safety harnesses).
We are excited about all of the events that are coming up, including our two‐day Global Gateway experience at Heifer International Ranch in Arkansas where the students will be assigned to a village site representing areas such as Zambia, Thailand or Appalachia.
HIGH SCHOOL AT A GLANCE
Robots! These High Schoolers are learning all about robotics and programming.
Termite Experiment Do termites follow pen lines on paper because of the color? The smell? The texture? What’s your hypothesis?
Adventures in High Schooling by Tiffany Fuhrmann
3D Printing We tried our hands at 3D printing last month. In the future, we want to learn more about 3D modeling and how to build our own 3D scanner!
NEWSLETTER | October 2014 6
There are many easy ways to help Koan School fundraise.
Link your Kroger and Target cards and Amazon accounts to our school. A percentage of your purchases will go to Koan.
Do you collect Boxtops or Labels for Education? Bring them in! We will send our first batch on October 31st.
Are old ink cartridges or small electronics cluttering up your house? Donate them to Koan! Your trash stays out of the landfill and earns treasure for our school.
Also, we are officially tax‐exempt now! Encourage your friends and family members to make a tax‐deductible contribution, or see if your employer participates in a matching funds charity program.
Ways you can help Koan School…