Grit and Perseverance Podcast Episode 1: Learning Traits

Day of Service

On Tuesday April 22, Alexandria Country Day School students set a high bar for future days of service at our school.  After spending eight weeks collecting 11,160 quarters for Stop Hunger Now, the students, faculty, and staff assembled 20,000 meals for the hunger relief organization.  With each meal costing just 25 cents, the student quarter collection paid for 11,160 of the 20,000 meals they packaged.  To assemble the meals, which contain rice, a soy protein, dehydrated vegetables, and a vitamin packet, the ingredients were measured into bags at funnel stations and passed along to weigh stations to ensure they contained the correct amount of food.  After being sealed, the bags were packaged into boxes to be shipped to overseas.  

Assembling 20,000 meals was big task, but ACDS students still had more to give and soon began work on a variety of projects both on campus and around Alexandria.  On campus, Kindergarten students planted a butterfly garden, while the third and six grades planted beans that will be given to the Capital Area Food Bank.  The third and sixth graders also planted herbs and created informational signs for the recycling and compost bins on campus.   

 

Students in second and fifth grade left campus to clean up to three Alexandria Playgrounds: Armory Tot Lot, Montgomery Playground, and Windmill Hill Park.  The first and fourth grade volunteered at the Buddie Ford Nature Center.   

Seventh graders, in partnership with the City of Alexandria Parks and Recreation Department, created an assessment and monitoring plot in Monticello Park, and the eighth grade cleaned up Four Mile Run.   

 

Students went home tired but happy, knowing that they had made a difference in their school and local communities as well as for hungry children around the world.

Festival of Learning: Mythology

Every culture has its own mythology and now ACDS does too!  

Every year, the Alexandria Country Day School community comes together for a week-long Festival of Learning focused on a single topic.  This year we explored myths and legends from around the world.  Our students read, discussed, compared and contrasted myths in their classes and arrived at definitions of mythology. We generally agreed that a myth is a story used to teach a moral lesson or explain a natural occurrence. First graders enthusiastically consolidated their definition into three words: "love, magic, violence"!

During the Festival of Learning, we heard fantastic stories.  We listened to Native American storyteller Dovie Thomason tell legends from across North America.

Storyteller Baba Jamal Koram shared compelling stories from the African and African American traditions.

We watched and participated in myths through dances presented by the Nepal Dance School.   

Our art students created inspired mythical art work.

 

The 5th and 6th grade drama students shared several Greek myths with us.  We joined together as a community (with popcorn and cotton candy!) to watch the 4th graders present the hilarious Circus Olympus (password: "acdsacds"). 

Best of all, throughout the week, we wrote, drew, filmed and created our own stories, which we shared on Friday morning.  Here is the collected Mythology of ACDS:

Kindergarten:

            Why Kindergarteners Take Naps**

First Grade:

            How Buddies Came to Be at ACDS

Second and Fifth Grade Collaboration:

            Why We Have a Gargoyle

            The Origins of Field Day (Open in iBooks on iPhone or iPad)

Third Grade:

            Why We Play Capture the Pig

Sixth Grade:

            The Misunderstood Monster of ACDS  (Open in iBooks on iPhone or iPad)

            Why We are Green and White  (Open in iBooks on iPhone or iPad)

Seventh Grade:

            Why Seventh Graders are So Chatty

            The Epic Seventh Grade Overnight

            Why Math is our Favorite Subject

Eighth Grade:

            Why ACDS Students Don't wear Hoodies

** ACDS Families-- email Elizabeth Lockwood for the password.

News Literacy in the 4th Grade

Every day, each of us is bombarded with information.  How do we decide what is true? How do we know what to think? The fourth graders at Alexandria Country Day School spent the past couple of months in library class contemplating these questions and working on developing the critical thinking skills they need to be smarter information consumers and, ultimately, better citizens.

We started the project by considering whether we even cared about all this outside information. Students spent a weekend in a "news blackout"-- with no access to TV, print, radio or online news.  Students wrote about feeling "unprepared."  One student talks about why she did not like the blackout.

We then journeyed into the various "neighborhoods" where information lives.  Our team of information seekers, trying to write a report on frogs, wanted to know how long frogs live.  They received the latest score of the Frogs vs. Wildcats basketball game in the  Entertainment Neighborhood.  They were offered various frog delicacies (including "frog juice with just a hint of lemon") from Frog-o-Mania in the Advertising  Neighborhood. They found reliable general frog information in the Reference Neighborhood and the latest information on frog populations in the News Neighborhood.  The students spent quite a bit of time in the Reference Neighborhood while working on a natural disaster research project, before traveling on for an in-depth visit to News.

We read news. We watched news. We looked for opinion words and factual words. The students considered whether the articles and broadcasts were telling us where the information was coming from.  Did we consider that source or evidence reliable? Was the journalist independent and accountable? 

Then it was time for the press conference.  Armed with press passes and carefully planned questions in their reporter's notebooks, the 4th graders got the scoop from the Head of School, the Athletic Director, the Technology Director, the middle school science fair winners, and other important newsmakers around ACDS.

Students wrote, edited and recorded their stories for the first episode of The Bobcat News.  Our critical thinking didn't stop there.  We watched and critiqued our own performance.  Did we use opinion words correctly? (Sometimes.) Were we as independent as we should have been? (Not always.)  How reliable were our sources?  (Pretty good.)

News and information literacy will be critical skills for these fourth graders as they continue through ACDS and determine how they know what they know, who will decide what they think, and how they will make convincing and credible arguments to others.  One student wrote, when "I am getting information I have to think about [it] and decide whether I can trust it or not."

Elizabeth Lockwood, the Library Media Specialist at ACDS, developed this unit for the fourth graders in conjunction with the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University.