LS Design Think Earth Day

On April 22 Lower Schools students participated in Earth Day Design Thinking Projects throughout the campus.  Working together is mixed greade level teams, students chose between the following activities:  What I Love About Nature, GaGa Court Paint Project, Redesign the Leas Hall Playground, iPad Designed Public Service Announcements, Design your own boat, Collect and Build in the Nature Nook, Earth Day Celebration Nature Walk and Campus Clean Up, Build a Bean Bag Toss Game, Save the Bats - Building Bat Boxes for Campus,  Earth Day Song Writing, and the GA Planting Project. 

Nature At Play: An Early Childhood Ediucation Conference

 

On April 16 GA hosted an Nature at Play an Early Childhood Education conference that welcomed nearly 100 area educators who spent the morning engaging in conversation about the vital role of outdoor play and education in a child's life. Amanda Mitchell, GA's  Director of Early Childhood Education, planned the event to draw on GA's leadership and rich work in the field, connect regional teachers to each other, and design solutions that address and alarming rise in Nature Deficit Disorder in our young children.  A resounding success, the program featured a keynote address by Cheryl Charles, Founder of Children and Nature Network, and workshops by GA teachers and area specialists in the field of early childhood education.  The Delaware Valley Assoc. For the Education of Young Children and The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education joined with GA in sponsoring the event.

Novel Engineering in the 5th Grade

Lower School teacher Lauren Vanin and her 5th grade class are using literature as a starting point for  an open ended engineering challenge that engages students in the Design Thinking process. 

Exploring Making in English Curriculum

The upper school students in Robynne Graffam's playwriting class unleashed their creativity and stretched their problem-solving abilities as they built models of their sets with Legos, for their final project, a ten-minute original play that they have written and will perform for the class.  Graffam notes, "Translating an idea into words, and then into a 3D mode of storytelling with real actors, furniture and movement presents challenges unique to this form of writing, but the process also builds creative, spatial and linguistic skills they can apply broadly in the world outside the theater".  Junior Nicole Zannikos enjoyed the fun of hands-on building, describing the experience as “nostalgic.  I felt like a little kid again.”  Amanda Parker said, “It was cool to be able to build [your set design] how you see it,” and Nick Moeller felt the process “helped with where I wanted things to go.  I didn’t know how everything would work before I built this, but now I see what they can do.”  Jamie Hermance added, “I liked how I could plan the scene and see the route of the characters.”

Building A Maze for Coding Bee-Bot in Tinker Lab

The New Community Project Share Night

Chidi Asoluka, Director of the New Community Project and his students have been working with the Philadelphia not-for-profit Urbanstead dedicated to eradicating food deserts in the city.  Just prior to spring break students presented their work in fundraising, programming, and marketing to the GA community.