The Importance of Documentation and Reflection in Building Community
In the Cottonwood community, one of our main focuses in the beginning of the school year is community building – which is foundational to all…
Tag: documentation
Looking for Invention
With generous funding from The Lemelson Foundation, Opal School is embarking on an exciting journey this fall to research Invention Education alongside our friends and…
On the edge of Symposium, thinking without bannisters
Opal School’s Summer Symposium begins Wednesday. It’s a frenetic time around the building: having said goodbye to students last week, teachers are setting up their…
Materials as Metaphors
My recent post, Say What You Mean, began as this post — but I got so tangled up in thinking about the relationship between knowledge…
How might cardboard foster connections?
In the start of the school year, it is my practice to offer experiences that might build relationships between children and materials in order to build…
The Secrets of Wire: Play, Reflection and Relationships with Risk
As my colleagues and I continued to think together about our big idea of transformation and some of our research questions, we wondered what materials…
Speaking in Tongues
Who are these children? How can we bring their voices to the world? At our staff gathering to begin the school year, we read and discussed…
Focusing our intentions
Don’t for heaven’s sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense. -Ludwig Wittgenstein As Opal School staff reconvened last…
Setting Intentions for Our Year Together – Intermediate Team
Opal School has two intermediate classrooms, Opal 3 & 4, which include third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders. In many ways, the teachers from the two classrooms function as a…
Articulating our intentions
Opal School has two primary classrooms, Maple and Magnolia, which include kindergartners, first graders, and second graders. The teachers from the two classrooms function as a…