This is the time of year at Parker when our halls start bursting with the overflowing creative evidence of months of thoughtful and industrious project work. Students are fully immersed in the substantive work of bringing projects to fruition. Our students know that the work they do in the classroom has implications that reach beyond the halls of their school. This sense of creating for an authentic audience inspires students to produce work that is meaningful not only to themselves, but also to others. With that in mind, we would like to once again feature a “Halls and Walls” edition of our Snapshot, to welcome our families and friends to see the incredible work that is happening inside (and out!) here at Parker.
East Greenbush Library Art Show
The work of Parker artists from Forest Toddlers through 8th grade is currently on display at the East Greenbush Library! Parker art teacher Claire Sherwood lovingly curated this exhibit to showcase the impressively creative and varied talents of our students. On the walls Claire chose to highlight self-portraits and landscapes. The display cases, meanwhile, show off specific projects. The Kindergarten case shows off their collage robots, which were inspired by the class book The Wild Robot that they are currently reading with Leigh. Another case displays fish illustrations completed by our 1-2 artists during their Day in the Life of the Hudson Field Trip. The 3-4 display focuses on their natural ink making project, and our 5th graders made a collaborative work after studying gems and crystals.Our student’s work will be on display until the end of March. We strongly encourage our family and friends to go and visit. If you do, please take a photo and tag us on social media!
Kindergarten 100 Days
 
On Tuesday, March 8th, our Kindergarten class celebrated the much anticipated 100th day of school! Every day, since the first day of school in September, the class has been tracking the number of days they have been in school. Aside from being a great reason to celebrate, 100 days is a fantastic representation of quantity. It gives children consistent exposure to adding one to a quantity throughout the fall and winter, and also allows them to practice counting by 10’s.The Kindergarten’s 100th day celebration incorporated concepts of 100 into many aspects of the curriculum in fun and multidisciplinary ways. One challenge consisted of cutting out a unique 6-7 number sequence and gluing the numbers in order on a strip of paper. The children then worked together to form a number line from 1-100! Another task was to accurately count and string 100 beads on a necklace. The children also created a 100 collage, did a dice rolling challenge to add up to 100, and participated in a 100 balloons game in the gym. They also took pictures using an aging app and imagined themselves as 100 years old. Overall, the day was an enriching and engaging immersion in numbers as the children discovered that math is truly everywhere!
Student-Led Conferences
For the past week, our 5th – 8th graders have been reviewing their winter reports (our narrative version of a report card), analyzing their performance in various classes, and preparing to share their work with their parents. Working with their teachers, each student filled out a rubric by subject to highlight an accomplishment in each subject, something they are working on to improve in that subject, and the steps to get there. They also wrote about the subject they are most confident in, the subject that is most difficult for them, and their greatest accomplishment this term. Today, 5th – 8th graders are meeting with their parents to share these reflections, along with personal collections of their own work from the past few months. This process of thinking about and taking ownership of their learning is an important step towards independence, self-direction, and accountability for our middle schoolers. We are so grateful for the opportunity these conferences provide to share all the wonderful growth we see in our students.
1-2s Celebrate Women’s History Month
For the past month, our 1-2 class has been honing their research skills by celebrating the many and diverse talents of influential women in honor of Women’s History Month. Their colorful illustrations and thoughtful words add an exuberant warmth to our hallway bulletin boards, and we have all enjoyed learning from and being inspired by our young historians.
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