Session 5 Begins: Year 5 - Week 18 In Review
Happy new year!
We’re ready for a new session! Check out this week’s updates below…
spark studio
Happy New Year!
Our Heroes were just as excited as we were to start off the new year together. Take a peek at what they did this week!
elementary studio
“A dinosaur out of context is like a character without a story.” - Jack Horner, Paleontologist
The first session of 2023 is off to an epic start. Welcome to Jurassic World! Heroes are taking on the role of paleontologists and museum curators. They will be uncovering fossils from the Mesozoic period and using chemistry to learn about the lifestyles of Dinosaurs. At the end of this session, Heroes will curate a museum exhibit that showcases their findings.
Next Friday, we will take a field trip to one of the best museums in the world, Fernbank! Please keep an eye out for an email invitation. We will need a few chaperones.
In other exciting news…parents are coming in each morning to talk about responsibility to our Heroes.
Last session, our Heroes displayed their creativity by filming Talk Shows & Puppet Shows. In this session, learners are taking it one step further and writing episodic Television Shows! Our Heroes are learning the key elements of storytelling and will learn what it’s like to be in the writer’s room. This session is full of adventure and creativity. We are so excited to see what our learners create!
middle school studio
Happy New Year everyone, and welcome back to school.
This is Session 5, one of the longest sessions this year and we are excited to have all of the staff and learners back to grind out the rest of the year. We started school on Tuesday, and it was very busy, fun, and productive.
So far this week has been a reminder to all heroes that we are still practicing ‘’ Flipping the Script’’ and having them be in control of their own learning with the guides by their side. As the new session is in effect, we have a new Quest called ‘’Seedify’’. In this session, Middle and High School learners will explore the fundamentals of gardening and harvesting different herbs, fruits, and vegetables by creating their own gardening towers and traveling to local farms.
They will have two options for this Quest: 1.) create a proposal for the Town at Trilith for a new location for a community garden (the winning group will have their proposal implemented!), or 2.) create a proposal to the mayor and city council for how Fayetteville may better incorporate gardens in the city. All learners will participate in the building of garden beds. This is very exciting for their studio because they feel like it will teach them patience, time management, and to be more self-sufficient.
Furthermore, we will continue our Story Arts badge by bringing in a lesson called ‘’ Inside a Televisions Writers Room’’. This lesson is very creative and hands-on for the learners. These challenges will help them with clear concise writing skills, creativity, grasping the understanding of developing scripts, and analyzing and developing different characters. There will be a Live Event on January 23 where the learners will be chosen to showcase their best script/movie for the host Jeffery Stepakoff.
This week is off to a great start, and so is this session.
high school studio
Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back!! 2023 looks promising already! We are hitting the ground running this week! First things first, housekeeping.
We started the first day back with open arms and reminders-plot twist. The reminders were of the changes made last session; perhaps you remember the phrase "flipping the script"? Many studio changes were created and implemented last session to ensure a positive learning environment. The studio was simply reminded of them the first day back to maintain the productive vibe we worked so hard to create, and it's been great.
So far, learners have done more work in school than at home, the studio is clean every day now, and accountability amongst the learners has been at its best. Next, we dove into Quest, which was our focus for the week. Our "Seedify" quest this session will have learners explore the fundamentals of gardening and harvesting different herbs, fruits, and vegetables by creating their own gardening towers and traveling to local farms. In doing so, the heroes will learn the importance of agriculture and the process of plant growth over the course of 7 weeks.
This information they can take with them in the future for themselves or others in need during a food shortage or for a healthier way of life. This exhibition lends itself to pure anticipation and excitement, for there will be several components to experience. There will be a blind taste test of their harvest, a garden design contest judged by PTC Gardens.
Lastly, viewers will watch our groups pitch a gardening idea to the Trilith community and Fayette Council. Stay tuned! While we introduced Story Arts and Civilization for this session, that’s all it was and will become the focus for next week.