Teaching and Learning
Starting with Story Workshop
Story Workshop begins on the first day of the new school year. Here's what it looked like!
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Getting Ourselves Ready
The teachers are back to work at Opal School this week, getting environments ready, cracking open big ideas, and imagining possibilities in anticipation of the…
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Building nests together
Opal School has a long relationship with Alise Shafer Ivey and Pedagogical Institute of Los Angeles. We’ve admired and contributed to the important work that…
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Becoming Who I Am
What is the lifelong value of an exceptional early childhood learning environment?
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A treasury of video resources
As this school year comes to a close, many of you are on the verge of having more flexible schedules – allowing some new viewing…
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Working on Whiteness
Have you read the book Not My Idea by Anastasia Higgenbotham? Several weeks ago, Anastasia dropped by Opal School to speak with the 4th and 5th graders in our Willow classroom. She joined us there to talk to us about whiteness. The children were ready for her.
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The rights of bugs
One of our goals for all students in our school is to take action as mindful citizens who care about making contributions to a future…
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Materials In All Phases of The Writing Process
The kindergarten and first grade children in Cottonwood have been preparing to publish stories about characters that they invented and developed over time. These characters…
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Questions as invitations to play
It’s always a treat to have posts written by guest authors! This one is written by Ben Mardell, Principal Investigator at Project Zero. It is…
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Windows into Perspective-Taking
What we heard from the dialogue is that the children perceived the windows as a distraction to their work. What we did not hear was the children thinking about the possible perspective of the guests of the other people that might have an opinion about this situation.
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