What a fabulous week we all enjoyed! Today was all about wrapping things up and getting ready to share our learning with our families. It was great to have so many parents and family members able to come and all the Rangers enjoyed taking them around the courtyard and sharing our work.
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| Painting Urban Rangers 2014 on our tye-dyes |
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| bug hunting |
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| painting en plein air, cont'd |
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| bug hunters in action |
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| painting together |
Friendship and belonging are big themes for Urban Rangers that lie beneath all of the wonderful science, art, math, and literacy connections we make. In every activity we do, we observe positive social interactions between boys and girls, boys and boys, girls and girls, and kids of different ages. Part of the philosophy behind multi-age groupings in schools is the environment of nurturing they naturally facilitate. Younger children seek help from older kids, and it is wonderful to observe older kids eagerly assisting their younger friends. This creates an opportunity for older children to take on the role of "teacher", and one of the surest ways to know a child has learned something is to observe them teach it to someone else--that's called authentic assessment. Authentic assessment gives us real information about what our students know and can do vs. a general, standardized number that tells us what our kids did at the time they completed a test. Big difference!!
Another benefit of multi-age groups is that the social structure of the group is more like real life. As adults, we rarely find ourselves working in groups of people who all live in close proximity to us and are the exact same age--except maybe at a high school reunion, right?;) So the dynamic in a multi-age group operates more like adults do in the real world--at work, at social events, in families. The friendships that form within the UR groups are in some ways predictable, but always surprising at the same time because they are so genuine and purely based on common interests.
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| bug identification app on the ipad |
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| new find: caterpillar! |
Each session of Urban Rangers ends with a morning of painting en plein air with direct instruction from Mr G on perspective as we sketch the courtyard.
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| The burning sun proved to be too much so we decided to complete our sketches with watercolor paints inside. |
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| prepared to speak about her work en plein air |
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| sharing the courtyard with families |
Our last day together was emotional, exciting, and lovely. Three of our Rangers are moving on to middle school next fall, and so they each received a small gift and certificate for lifetime membership as an Urban Ranger. Once an Urban Ranger, always an Urban Ranger!
Session One Rangers: You were AWESOME and AMAZING to work with! We had a great time and are so glad you did too! Stay tuned for more Ranger news and events and please feel free to contact us anytime with a cool sighting or find or experience! We'd love to post stuff on this blog! Email us at:
urbanrangers4@gmail.com
Have a wonderful summer!!!!
Thank you!!!
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