Year 4, Session 1, Week 1
Welcome back ALA heroes! Year 4 is off to an exciting start as we begin the adventure of “Building Our Tribe''. The ES and Little Hero studios worked closely together this week on team-building, problem solving and communication.
Writer’s Workshop - Poetry
Writer’s Workshop in Session 1 is about different types of poetry. ES will construct an ode, free verse, and a haiku for exhibition. This week they explored what poetry is and dived into metaphors. We read “I Love You the Purplest” by Barbara M. Joosse to find examples of metaphors and then practiced coming up with metaphors ourselves.
“Build the Tribe” Quest
One of the most important things to do as we embark on a journey together is to get to know each other. Being comfortable communicating with one another allows the tribe to better navigate any challenges that arise. The first quest of the year centers around several team building games and a “Lip Dub” project. The lip dub requires our learners to practice skills they will need to use when facing trials throughout the school year. How will they deal with frustration if they mess up and have to start over? Who will step up as a leader when the environment gets chaotic? Will they work cohesively together to ensure everyone feels heard?
A tool that they practiced to settle minor disagreements was playing “Rock, Paper, Scissors”. While this can be used anytime throughout the day, they started by playing “Rock, Paper, Scissors” to determine teams in our tribe building games. First, we played “Name Games” to ensure everyone from the Little Hero and ES studios were familiar with each other. Next, we moved onto the “Chocolate River”. Learners had to cross the river on magic marshmallows handed to them by their teammates, but the challenge was that there was one less marshmallow than person on each team! They had to strategize and communicate how everyone would get across. If anyone fell off their marshmallow, and into the river, the whole group had to start over.
We wrapped up the week with lego building challenges and a scavenger hunt. Have you ever had to build something that can fly out of legos, with a partner, under a time constraint? These heroes did and their creativity was abundant!
All of our heroes worked hard and played harder this week! While members of the ES studio engaged in a friendly competition for who could earn the most points in core skills, the Little Heroes had fun exploring Montessori based work. Both groups enjoyed free time together where they had the option of a calm corner, releasing energy in the dojang, or exploring outside.
