Doherty
November 13, 2020
Calculating Curiosities
“During a recent walk from the cafeteria to the playground, a Unit II third-grader’s curiosity turned into a lesson. A student asked me, ‘I wonder which way to the playground is longer…the route we take this year or the way we went last year?’” said Unit II teacher Sherri Linville. “Thus, a student-driven math lesson was created!” Armed with tape measures and colored chalk, Unit II teacher Julie Guminey’s class marked off the “old” route students took last year, while Linville’s class walked the new path. “Marking off five-foot increments, there was a lot of measuring and counting to reach a final number,” said Linville. “We found that the new path wins, in terms of distance. We calculated it was 315 feet to the playground, as opposed to last year’s 290 feet.”
Public Speaking in Unit III
Using student recognition as a backdrop, Unit III students recently participated in an activity called Star Student, in which they composed a narrative about themselves featuring their hobbies, favorite things, and family stories. The students delivered their personal presentations to their classmates, then, in a second part of the activity, they read an inspirational quote over the main office speaker system, for all students on campus. “They choose a famous quote and write a paragraph about why they chose that quote and what it means to them,” said Unit III teacher Dana Pease. “The whole student body, faculty and staff, were able to hear their inspirational messages in real time,” said Pease, adding that her students’ inspirational quotes often become discussion starters for Unit III as well as students in other grades. “This opportunity tapped into students’ public speaking abilities and allowed each student to help set their intensions and purpose for the day as well.”
Doherty Campus Becomes an Open Book
A walk across Doherty Campus tells a story. As a way of building a literary experience into all students’ outdoor experiences and class-to-class transitions, Doherty librarian Jo Schnirring recently installed a series of lawn signs bearing the images of book pages from “Otis” by Loren Long. The progressive installation is posted along the walkway near Jones Hall leading to the cafeteria for everyone to enjoy. “It has been so beautiful outside and we have had so many outdoor learning experiences, I thought it would be great to present a book that the students and classes can walk by and read” said Schnirring. “Students can read the book in English and Spanish as they go.” Schnirring said, “The StoryWalk® Project was created by Anne Ferguson of Montpelier, Vermont, and developed in collaboration with the Kellogg-Hubbard Library.
Learning Spanish in Pre-kindergarten for 2-year-olds
Doherty Spanish teacher Maria-Fernanda Torres teaches Spanish to all students on the Doherty Campus, including our youngest learners in the pre-kindergarten-for-2-year-olds program. During her visits, Torres often engages her students with a modality called story listening, in which she incorporates movement and images she draws on a whiteboard to correspond to her dynamic verbal lesson. During a recent storytelling lesson to Julie Brackett’s pre-kindergarten class, Torres taught the toddlers the word correr, the Spanish word for run. Torres said story listening allows students to learn words in a naturally occurring way.
Number Crunchers
First-graders on the Doherty Campus brought a whole new meaning to the term, number crunchers in mid-November. “We discussed how we can represent place value blocks with food,” said Kulhavik. “I let them guess which food stands for which blocks and then I demonstrated how the students would use the food to count and make numbers.” The students used cheese cubes for the thousands place, Cheez-Its for hundreds, pretzel sticks for the tens place, and Skittles for ones. The first-graders then used their knowledge to build four-digit number models using the food. The students made their number by rolling dice and then used a recording sheet to write about each number they made.
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