ISW is always brimming over with exciting events—proving over and over that excellence and rigor don’t have to be painful. As a matter of fact, there is a great deal of research that young brains are most open and receptive when they are challenged in a pleasant way.

Here’s a little sampling of our week:

  • The butterflies are here! Our Lowers are very excited about studying them as part of our Smithsonian/NSF curriculum.
  • Middle Schoolers planned and cooked a full Indian meal to celebrate their study of The Silk Road with Humanities teacher Diane Sheehey. Math specialist Brigitte DeHaven led this effort as a Quantitative Reasoning project—applying math to real world problems.
  • Our Kindergartners have begun their study of community by creating a flag that represents themselves. Some of the themes they touched on were taking care of each other, friendship, playing nice, and having fun. They are very proud of the new flag hanging in the classroom. They also began making a giant map in the room. They started with drawing a picture of their bedrooms, then made a house and the bedrooms inside, and today they will make a piece of land to for their homes. Eventually they will add their roads, counties, states, country, continent, planet, and universe.
  • Our 7th grade Algebra students were treated to a Skype session with Jerald Murdock, a Presidential Awardee for Excellence in Mathematics Teaching, a Woodrow Wilson fellow, former President of the Michigan Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the author of our newly-adopted Algebra program, and the grandfather of one of our newest students. Jerald plans to “drop in” via Skype as a guest teacher frequently!
  • The teachers are very excited to have Ed Mayhew joining us Friday afternoon to train our faculty about how to integrate movement into the classroom experience. Turns out that students learn better when they move, and there are some terrific, ingenious ways to get them moving while continuing working on academics. Read about Ed’s approach here:

http://www.nvdaily.com/lifestyle/2012/10/winchester-author-promotes-fitness-in-area-schools.php

And finally, this week even the adults get in on the “learning can be fun” theme with our unique fundraiser, Clues and Blues, this Saturday. For more information about that check out ISW’s FaceBook page:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Independent-School-of-Winchester/215591988461816

Or check out our Clues and Blues page: https://www.facebook.com/CluesAndBlues