Wednesday morning, Upper School students gathered near the Hy-line, ready to board the 7:40 am fast ferry. Every fall, Upper School students head off on adventures as class groups. These trips are purposeful in their design: it’s a time for students to engage as a community, to get to know each other better as they work together through demanding challenges. This year proved that, especially for 7th and 8th graders who climbed peaks in the White Mountains in chilly, driving rains. Congratulations to the students and the chaperones who braved the cold and wind to achieve the summit!
Early and Lower School students had a quieter week on campus, settling in to routines and beginning to dive more deeply into curricular work. I had the pleasure of visiting classrooms and watching students tackle assignments, with a specific emphasis on reading. Reading instruction has been a topic of high interest to me. It’s fun to watch New School students as they build a strong foundation as readers. Starting with letter and phonemic awareness, early readers recognize and manipulate the sounds in spoken language. Phonemic awareness is about listening, segmenting, and blending sounds. Phonics is interwoven in the work, with phonics blending visual and auditory skills to learn sounds of letters, syllables, letter-sound recognition and more. By first or second grade, students are really building momentum as readers, tackling texts and decodable readers. In third and fourth grade, readers are working with more complex texts, including chapter books. Teachers shift from teaching children how to read, into reading to learn. It’s an exciting time of reading skill development!
Upper School students are well on their way as readers, using their skills to dive more deeply into all aspects of the broader curriculum. Reading in history, science, and even math (directions can be complicated) require our students to be facile in reading. Conversations and written work in the Upper School English class stretches readers to think critically about the complexities of texts, stretching readers to explore different genres and grow in their ability to comprehend, predict, analyze, and write about what’s read.
What’s on your bedside table and what are you reading? I tend to read books that are connected to the field of education, including non-fiction about everything from brain research to the effect of media on children! This summer, the entire faculty was asked to read The Anxious Generation, a book by Jonathan Haidt that compels us to consider how social media impacts our children. For us at New School, it was a good reminder of how we continue to ask children to put phones away during the school day and build more open-ended opportunities for creative play at recess. Parents might find it an interesting read, too!
We’ll welcome the Upper School students back from their camping adventures Friday evening and look ahead to next week’s events, including:
Friday, October 4th
Field Day - Please send your child ready to join in their color team, including PK & Grade 8 rainbow attire.
Back-to-School Family Picnic - Join us for a cookout, with potluck contributions of salads, sides & desserts shared by families from 4:00 - 6:00 pm.
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