Yellow Band: By Air, Week 1

Welcome all to the Yellow Band, and welcome to 1920 Bryant St! I'm so excited to be working in this space this year, and to get to work even more closely and collaboratively with Nicole and Nathan. This year is going to be great!Speaking of which, we got off to a really great start this week. We set goals for ourselves, and then used those goals to guide our group agreements. We started to establish routines and protocols for life in our space. We practiced using our tools. Oh, and we made lots of new friends of course!On Monday for tool practice, students worked in pairs to build something that both could sit on. Here, Rebecca and Reyahn work together to assemble a corner using a right angle, clamps and drills.And Solin and Devlin quickly built a see-saw--what a neat idea!On Tuesday morning, we did a quick run through of what our schedule will look like every day. Here goes:

  • In the morning, kiddos will work independently on a 'vitamin,' a short, skill building activity outlined in the morning message. Then, they'll eat a snack. After that, we'll have a quick morning meeting discuss our work, and give any announcements for the day.

Nolan and Reyahn work on our first vitamin. They made a self-portrait using pattern blocks. Then, they tried to determine the value of their portrait, assuming that the triangle = 1. This was a great practice in equivalencies, adding multiples, and doing a proof. Emilio's self-portrait is of his whole body!

  • After morning meeting, we're going to move toward having workshop time for the rest of our morning until park time. Kiddos will work from a Menu that outlines things they must work on during the week. They can choose the order to work on these tasks, and how long to spend on each one. And, they must get certain things done each week. We haven't started this yet, so no picture!
  • After park and lunch, we'll have a half hour of quiet time. This is basically choice time for calm, quiet activities like reading, building with blocks, drawing.

Need I say more?

  • Most afternoons we'll have group project time. Two collaborators will lead projects, and kiddos can choose which one they'd like to join for the afternoon.

2016-09-08-14-19-442016-09-08-14-34-51-hdrSince our bands will be spending so much time together, Nicole, Nathan and I thought it was super important to set goals and make group agreements as a group. While this was sometimes challenging as a whole group, we worked hard to read the needs of the kids and break out into smaller groups whenever possible. By doing this, we came up with a great list of group agreements that each kiddo signed today. Setting these types of norms really helps the kids understand how we'll live together in our little space.Solin and Sakira discuss the importance of listening, and the idea of 'one voice at a time.' We used a small candle during our discussion to show whose turn to talk it was. Have a restful weekend, and see y'all on Monday!

Piper Alldredge1920 Bryant, arc:byair, SF Brightworks