Congratulations Jean Jorgensen!!!

The Equipoise Fund partnered with Marie C. Wilson of The White House Project and Wyoming First Lady Nancy Freudenthal to name the winners of the 2007 Atta Girl Awards at a gala event in Laramie on March 1st. Awards were presented to women in three categories, vision, voice and visibility, who work to better the lives of women and girls in Wyoming. Jean Jorgensen won the voice award for her unwavering contribution to her community. She served on the Teton Country School Board from 1978 – 1984, has been a pollster for the League of Women Voters, a Hospice Caregiver, and is a teacher of the natural world through her classes at Teton Science Schools, where she serves as an Emeritus Board member. Jean’s quiet, unwavering voice supports all people to find their own greatest nature through reflection, sharing of knowledge, commitment and mutual support. (From Equipoise Fund Press Release, Melissa E. Turley)

Coaching for Parents Seminar Cancelled

Because of unforeseen circumstances, the Coaching for Parents seminar has been canceled. The Parent Council is hoping to provide an alternative seminar for parents later this spring. All questions can be directed to Nate.

Financial Aid Supporting Documents Due Thursday

Supporting documents for financial aid are due this week by Thursday. This includes copies of tax returns, the income/expense form, etc. The form can be downloaded from the parent resource page on the Journeys School website.

Science Fair

It is not too late if you are still interested in participating in the Science Fair and/or Science Olympics. Please see these documents for more information and contact Jo Snyder with any questions at joanna.snyder@journeysschool.org or x1133.

Intro Letter

Science Olympics

Calendar and Interest Form

ERB Testing
Standardized tests are administered at Journeys School each year for students in Grades 3-8. These tests are an additional form of assessment to measure individual student growth and to assess our overall program. The tests will be administered during the mornings of Monday, April 2 through Thursday, April 5. April 6 will be a make-up day. If your child misses the ERB’s due to Spring Break travel, they cannot be made up. Please keep this in mind while making Spring Break plans.

Heart Mountain’s Romeo and Juliet DVD
DVDs available! Kristen Gilbert, founder of Milestone Media and friend of the Teton Science Schools, is producing a DVD to document the middle school’s Romeo and Juliet performance. Included will be behind the scenes footage of the making of the play, still photography, and interviews with the cast. Also included will be the complete and edited performance that she will splice from a variety of wide and close-up shots. For grades 3-5, she made a DVD of Freedom Bound and a DVD of James and the Giant Peach last year, which was a big hit! They are excellent gifts for grandparents or relatives who were not able to attend the production in person. The cost per DVD is $15.00, checks payable to Kristen Gilbert. Margot will collect checks. Please contact Margot at extension 1112 with questions about the DVD and return your order forms by Friday, March 23rd. If you do not have an order form, when you deliver your check to Margot, just indicate the number of DVDs you want and who I should return them to. Thanks! Anticipated DVD delivery, Friday, March 30!

Community Lunch Menu

March 23rd
• All American Lunch with Hot Dogs, Chili & Cheese Dogs & Tofu Dogs.
• Whole wheat Buns, Potato Chips, Dill Pickle Spear, Fresh Pineapple wedge &
• Oatmeal cookies

Click here to access the March Calendar.

Order Organic Coffee

Support the Journeys School Annual Fund by ordering Journeys School Organic Coffee.
Online: www.FreshOrganicCoffee.com/journeys.html or call (307) 733-8046

Pre-Kindergarten

Announcements
Thanks
Many thanks to the crew of parent painters, Remy Levy, Kathy Coosaia, Ana Chapman, Matt Lee, and Bryan Ulmer for helping to paint the greenhouse. It was heart warming to see you all working together to make our dream of a green house become a reality. Thank you all.

Thanks to Beatrice Howard for coming to community to lunch on Friday, your presence was much appreciated.

Parent Zone
Learning Team Meeting Sign-ups
Please sign-up for your Learning Team Meeting; sign-up sheets are in the parent zone. Please contact your child’s advisor if you are having difficulty finding a time slot that will work for you.

Trimester Comes to an End
March 16th marked the end to our second trimester…we are already 2/3 of the way through the year. On Monday the 19th our classroom schedule will shift slightly; Anna and Erin will be leading Morning Meeting and spending more of their time encouraging students to explore outside during Focused Exploration, while Mandy and Charlie will be inspiring and facilitating projects inside.

New Documentation Panels…
Each Pre-K teacher will be leading a professional development workshop for the benefit of his or her team members. This past week Erin lead her team members in a discussion about documentation; its worth in the classroom, the obstacles to creating it, and tips for making it more aesthetically pleasing. There are three new documentation panels up as a result of the workshop and Anna’s, Mandy’s and Charlie’s efforts. Please look for them in the classroom. Documentation creates a context for further inquiry, richer conversations between parents and their children, and a deeper understanding of the experiences and learning that are occurring in the classroom.

Through documentation children become even more curious, interested, and confident as they contemplate the meaning of what they have achieved. ---Loris Malaguzzi

Curricular Updates
Our Exploration of the Human Bodies
The doctors in our classroom are learning about vital organs, blood vessels, bones and muscles to better serve their patients in the Doctor’s Office. Students are researching the essential parts of the human body in books located throughout the classroom and representing their interpretations of the interior body through large scale drawings and self-portraits. Children are including such details as the femoral artery, the brain, the heart, bones, and blood cells. These drawings are on display on the studio doors. They are fascinating to examine.

A Journey to the Elk Refuge:
Students enjoyed an exciting drive out to the Elk Refuge on Wednesday morning. They spied through binoculars to see elk in the grazing fields and big horn sheep on the top of the butte. We were lucky enough to see a large herd of elk migrating across the road. We talked with students about elk’s antlers and the cycle of shedding and re-growth. Students were amazed to hear how much antlers weighted. Children were also able to look closely at an elk’s carcass and point out familiar features of the skeleton. We ended our journey with a stop at the Visitors Center to explore the bear caves and taxidermy wildlife specimens.

Music
On Thursday we began a ten-week music program with Susan Prince. She is an experienced music teacher and runs the program, “Music Together”. Susan’s energy and enthusiasm is contagious. She led students in classic songs and nursery rhymes and rhythms. Susan incorporates a lot of movement into her music classes. Students had the opportunity to dance, shake, stomp and sing! Students were delighted to participate in music and share their talents.

Announcements

Kudos

As always, we are thankful for, and humbled by, our wonderful parent volunteers. Thank you to the many parents who helped with literacy centers last week while teachers pulled students for literacy assessments: Jenn and Walt Foley, Miriam de la Cruz – Morillon, Dana Sara, and Caroline Vohr. Jenn Foley also kicked off the Friday rotation of a deep clean for the bathrooms. A parent volunteer will tackle this job each week. How can we thank you enough? Lee Lee Robinson provided a special snack to keep everyone satiated during the end of the week.

Reminders

Attention, Parents of K-2ers:

Please check out our new bulletin board in the middle mudroom… Jennifer Foley has graciously created a Parent Volunteer bulletin board!

Learning Team Meetings Date Change
K-2 spring Learning Team Meetings, (which were originally scheduled to take place during the weeks of April 23 – May 4); have been rescheduled to give us a little time back after spring break to get settled. They will now be held over the course of the 2 weeks between April 30 and May 11th. Please mark this on your calendars and thank you for your flexibility.

Young Artist

Congratulations to Will Geraci on his first opening at Full Circle Frameworks last Friday. Any proceeds from sales will benefit the Raptor Fund. We are excited to see the community supporting our young at ‘art! Check out the article on page 9 in the Stepping Out section of last week’s paper.

Curricular Updates

Navigating with our Community

We had a fabulous finale to our winter navigation theme on Wednesday. We put our study of navigation into context by having parents who use navigation share their experiences with us. Chip Holdsworth talked about how he uses animal signs to navigate his way to the animal and then take a photo of them. Gary Silberberg described his experience navigating at the bottom of the world and shared a lot of interesting information about Antarctica. Tom Turiano talked about the three key reasons to navigate in the mountains and used his dramatic skills to reinforce the message. Finally, Sandy and Polly Wakeman shared their family’s experience navigating the open water from their sailboat. Thank you to parents who shared their expertise, wisdom and humor during theme time and thank you to Jennifer Reichert for leading a student group and taking on recess duty.

Theme Time!

This past trimester, students focused on navigation as a part of exploration. Students navigated maps using compasses, learned about migration and explored the night sky. This spring trimester, students will explore Lewis and Clark’s exploration of the western Untied States and learn about the impacts of westward exploration and expansion. We will investigate the influences and impact of the Native Americans on their journey, their use of waterways, and the importance of their journals. We will also explore the impact of their journey on Native Americans and westward expansion. Our year will culminate with our spring extended journey to South Pass City, a restored gold-mining town south of Lander.

Shhhh! The Quiet Cougars are reading!

This past month, the Quiet Cougars focused on the popular children’s author Cynthia Rylant. Cynthia Rylant has written many children’s books—both fiction and non-fiction. Her most popular book series include Henry and Mudge, Poppleton, and the High Rise Private Eyes. With each read aloud, the Quiet Cougars figured out the problem and solution in each story. They even wrote their own mystery in the style of Cynthia Rylant called, “The Missing Book Bins”. Excited to share their knowledge of Cynthia Rylant and their mystery, the Quiet Cougars created a play to perform for their peers. This month, the Quiet Cougars will begin to look carefully at the characters in their books during our March Character Study. Need ideas for great home read-alouds? Contact Betsy and she will send home a great read-aloud list!

Owl Math with Bari

Who says owls are not so active during the day? The Owl math group has recently been flying high with mathematical concepts dealing with whole number operations and number stories. Not just your basic number stories... we’ve kicked it up a notch and now these Owls are creating number stories which contain mixed addition and subtraction. Some serious data collection and analysis are happening in our class, as well. Were YOU questioned about your favorite food? Well, that was the first official stage of our data collection process. Next, students sorted the information, tallied their findings and then graphed the results. Needless to say the Owls were thrilled about this project and I do believe we have some budding analysts in our K-2 class. Watch out!

After a lot of practice modeling subtraction with Base- 10 blocks, we have just spiraled (as the Everyday Math curriculum does quite frequently) back to the trade-first subtraction algorithm. Ask your Owl to demonstrate using pennies and dimes! First, try a subtraction problem that doesn’t require trading, for example 68- 33, and then have your child show how the trading process goes in a problem like 63-38. Arrays and symmetry were also explored using Geo-boards and rubber bands (always a favorite among students). A related activity enjoyed by each student was one that could easily be replicated at home, which explores one meaning of division. The Owls liked it even more when they realized they were learning their multiplication facts! It is a joy to teach each and every student in this group and keep up the great work at home to support the learning that is taking place at school!

Monarch Butterfly Migration

During the phenology portion of morning meeting, kindergartners will begin to follow the migration of the Monarch butterfly from its wintering grounds in central Mexico, north. We will be following the migration using a website, (http://www.learner.org/jnorth/monarch/ ) which we will check once a week. We will keep a record of where the Monarchs have been sited on a map and answer some questions along the way in our phenology journals. You can keep your eyes open for signs of spring outside of school by watching for returning birds and plants as they appear.

Announcements

Student Update
The Grades 3-5 community bid Jimmy Hessler a fond farewell last week. His family moved back to Massachusetts to finish the school year. Grades 3-5 is pleased to welcome Tashi Wangchuk, a fifth grade student. Tashi comes to us from Bhutan and will be with Grades 3-5 until the end of the school year. We are pleased to have her with us!

Thank you
Thank you to the Hessler family for donating a camera to Grades 3-5. We really appreciate this donation, and are looking forward to sending Jimmy photos of our class in action! Thank you to Grades 3-5 parents Jessie Lang and Cathy Kehr for providing a delicious breakfast for the Journeys School faculty on Friday, March 9. It was greatly appreciated by all!

Freedom Bound DVD
This is the last week to purchase Freedom Bound DVDs. The cost per DVD is fifteen dollars. Please make checks payable to Kristen Gilbert. Some DVDs have not worked, so please check your DVD. If it is faulty, it will of course be replaced. Please contact Andie at extension 1117 with questions about the DVD.

Learning Team Meetings
Grades 3-5 Learning Team Meetings will take place between Monday, April 30 and Friday, May 11. Meetings will take place after school from 3:15-4:00 and 4:15-5:00. Please stay tuned to Basecamp News for information about Learning Team Meeting sign-ups. Thank you.

E.A.R.T.H. Club Global Warming Initiative
Grades 3-5 student Ruby Jones started an environmentally-focused club this fall. Her club is called E.A.R.T.H. (Environmental Allies Ready To Help). Ruby and her team members, who include Mia Tompkins, Alex Lang, and Sascha Heywood, are participating in an upcoming event that they thought might be of interest to the Journeys School community.

The E.A.R.T.H. club members have been working closely with an organization in Vermont called "Step It Up 2007.” They are urging communities all over the country to gather in a spot on April 14 and have a picture taken showing all who are concerned about the issue of global warming. The E.A.R.T.H. club members have partnered with the Jackson Whole Grocer to set up this event.
Their plan is to invite the community to the Jackson Whole Grocer location at a specific time on April 14 to have photos taken. The club will then send the photos to Vermont, where they will be packaged with other photos taken throughout the country. The photos will be sent to the government agencies that can and should do something about the issue of global warming.

The E.A.R.T.H. club has also organized a raffle that will take place during the event. With the intention of reducing the amount of small plastic bottles of water consumed in this community, the team will raffle off a water filtration unit (the kind that attaches to the sink faucet), a ceramic water dispenser with a 5 gallon plastic jug for the top, a t-shirt, and a tote bag. These items will be raffled to the winner of a drawing at the end of the event. For additional information about the E.A.R.T.H. club or “Step it Up 2007,” please contact Ruby Jones or visit the “Step it Up 2007” website (www.stepitup2007.com).

ERB Testing
Standardized tests are administered at Journeys School each year for students in Grades 3-8. These tests are an additional form of assessment to measure individual student growth and to assess our overall program. The tests will be administered during the mornings of Monday, April 2 through Thursday, April 5. April 6 will be a make-up day. If your child misses the ERB’s due to Spring Break travel, they cannot be made up. Please keep this in mind while making Spring Break plans.

Curriculum Updates

Third and Fourth Grade Recycling Project
Starting this week, students in third and fourth grade will work on a project with the Jackson Hole Recycling Center. The project is entitled, “Recycle: Why recycle, where does our recycling go, and what does that pathway look like?” This integrated project will include a journey to the Recycling Center on Thursday to see behind the scenes, interviews with people involved with recycling in Jackson Hole, and group projects to build educational displays. The displays will be shown at the EcoFair on April 28 and at the Recreational Center. The following science standards will be incorporated into our studies: science in social and personal perspectives, types of resources, and changes in environment. Special thanks to Emilie Lewis at the Recycling Center for her enthusiasm and willingness to work with our students. Fifth graders will continue to work on components of their Capstone projects during this time.

Tai Chi in Physical Education
For the next three Wednesdays, local Tai Chi instructor Greg Brazelton will be teaching Tai Chi during physical education time. Students will be shown Tai Chi demonstrations, will learn about the history and philosophies of Tai Chi, and will practice some basic Tai Chi exercises. Tai Chi is a great exercise for the mind and the body and should provide students with a unique and enriching experience.

Announcements

ERB Testing
Standardized tests are administered at Journeys School each year for students in Grades 3-8. These tests are an additional form of assessment to measure individual student growth and to assess our overall program. The tests will be administered during the mornings of Monday, April 2 through Thursday, April 5. April 6 will be a make-up day. If your child misses the ERB’s due to Spring Break travel, they cannot be made up. Please keep this in mind while making Spring Break plans.

Curriculum Night

The final middle school curriculum night for the year will be held on Thursday, March 22nd from 6-7 p.m. in the middle school building downstairs. This is an opportunity to learn about the academic themes and content for the spring term, the upcoming Capstone project for 8th graders, and the term’s culminating project. Margot and Charlotte will be leading the evening and look forward to seeing you there. If you have any specific concerns you would like addressed, please send them to charlotte.quesada@journeysschool.org – perhaps we can add your ideas to the evening’s agenda.

Thank yous

Thanks again to Jill Wright for her leadership and participation on the middle school journey to the Kelly Campus. We also enjoyed having Pam Terkovich and Scott Garland join us Thursday night. April Landale was a tremendous help transporting our Peter Pan thesbians to and from the Kelly Campus for evening practices. Thanks also to the entire Kelly Campus crew for helping make the journey such an incredible success.

Curricular Updates

8th Grade Capstone:
The upcoming journey to Washington D.C. marks the beginning of the 8th grade capstone program. The eighth grade capstone program culminates students’ middle school careers. Before graduating, students must reflect on who they are, their role in family and community, and the direction they want to travel as they begin to accept the responsibilities of adulthood. The capstone project requires students to apply acquired research, writing, and presentation skills to communicate their family heritage through a braided essay. Eighth graders also participate in community service during the spring, by organizing and leading sixth and seventh graders in a group service project. The final component involves a rite-of-passage experience modeled after coming-of-age rituals from around the world that culminates in a special spring journey involving solo time, reflection and self reliance. Each eighth grade student presents their capstone experience to an audience of students, teachers, and parents at the end of the school year.

Announcements

Rock Band

Congratulations to the Upper School Rock Band classes for their awesome performances this past Monday, March 12. The bands had folks from pre-k to parents tapping their feet, clapping their hands and bopping in their seats. The bands played a variety of cover songs:

First Band:

Little Wing by Jimi Hendrix
All Blues by Miles Davis
Hard Days Night by the Beatles
Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes
Ironman by Black Sabbath

Second Band:

Little Wing (sung in German and Spanish by Jonas and Omar)
I Can See That We Are Gonna Be Friends by the White Stripes
All You Need Is Love by the Beatles
Du Schreibst Geschichte by Madsen (sung in German)

Rock on kids!!!

Speech and Debate State Finals

The Jackson Hole High Speech and Debate team competed at the state meet in Cody the weekend of March 9-10. Three Journeys School students (Jonas Falkenberg, James Hockett, and Brandon Kapelow) competed as members of the team. The 2007 meet featured nearly 500 students, representing 37 Wyoming high schools, competing in ten different speech and debate events. In an exact repeat of the 2006 meet, Jackson placed third overall, among fourteen 3A schools, just behind Powell High School. Worland took the 3A trophy again this year. Hockett placed third in Student Congress and reached octafinals in Public Forum Debate with his partner and team captain Jordan Schreiber from JHHS. Congratulations to the team and its members. The team will have competed at the Wind River District Tournament, which qualifies members for the 2007 National Tournament of the National Forensic League, this past weekend.  Results will be published next week.

Curricular Updates

9-11 Social Studies

The essential question for this trimester has been: How do we interpret what we observe? Over the course of the winter, we have studied the catalysts of U.S. western expansion, compared and contrasted the Western genre with the historical record of the region’s settlement and investigated the roots of the modern environmental debate. Along the way we have studied many primary sources to interpret the past. In order to reflect and integrate these themes, the student’s final assignment is to:

a. Decide on one element of history or current events that changed their interpretation of the past or our world today
b. Consider why this element is significant: how and why does it change your interpretation? In what ways? What was your interpretation beforehand?
c. Construct an outline that:

1. Introduces and summarizes the observation in an engaging manner
2. Explains and elaborates on the questions above
3. Considers how you will apply this new interpretation to your future studies, life, etc.

d. Put your outline into an essay format (1-2 pages) based on a rubric.

By having students summarize their learning and reflect on how they can apply it to their lives, hopefully they will see the study of the past as a relevant and worthwhile exercise. Be sure to ask your upper school student what they learned in social studies this term.

Advanced Social Studies

The seniors recently completed reading The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson. The book, as its website states, “takes readers into a richly complex moment in American history, a moment that would draw together the best and worst of the Gilded Age, the grandeur and triumph of the human imagination, and the poverty, violence, and depravity that surrounded it.”
On one level, o0 is a story of two men and their very different passions. While these men and their connection to the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 drive the plot, the book encompasses so much more. It is really about America on the threshold of the twentieth century—“a time of widespread violence, fantastic wealth, growing labor unrest, financial panic, and technological wonder; a time when Buffalo Bill could take a bow to Susan B. Anthony; and a time when men and women as diverse as Jane Addams, Theodore Dreiser, Thomas Edison, Samuel Gompers, and Frank Lloyd Wright—could all gaze in wonder at the magnificence of the White City.”

As a final project, the seniors taught the rest of the class about the ways the Chicago World’s fair of 1893 represented the beginning of the 20th Century in America. In order to do this they:

a. decided what (1) political, (2) intellectual, (3) economic, (4) cultural, (5) environmental and (6) social characteristics defined the 20th century
b. chose six of the characteristics they felt were significant and that were well-represented by the events surrounding the fair
c. located the place(s) in the book where these characteristics are present
d. created an outline demonstrating their research
e. developed a creative device to demonstrate their analysis and learning to the class
f. prepare a presentation for the class of their findings

The seniors should be proud of their work. The final products demonstrated an understanding of major historical trends, strong reading comprehension and an ability to use cultural events as a window into larger historical processes.

               The Complexities of Learning to Read

By: Mandy Hullander
  Pre-K Coordinator

Eight Journeys School teachers and I recently completed a year-long professional development training called Schools Attuned which is based on the brain research of Dr. Mel Levine. During the training we investigated eight neurodevelopmental constructs of human brains which influence how people learn. I was not surprised to discover that all eight constructs are used to some extent when learning to read. Reading is a very complex task which many proficient adult readers take for granted. It is, however, estimated that up to 40% of students learning to read have difficulties. Whether your child is three or seventeen, his brain must combine many functions in order to read well. Every day, the Pre-K team strives to strengthen students’ brain functions to prepare them to be strong readers.

Controlling one’s attention is essential for reading. The reader must maintain stamina while deciphering difficult passages, determine which components of a story are important, and maintain an appropriate reading pace. In Pre-K, students build stamina as they participate in projects that do not have an immediate outcome. Students return to school each day and continue working on the project until it is finished, delaying satisfaction until the end. During our weekly storytelling time, students practice picking out salient parts of a story that is told by a classmate. After each story, students are asked to volunteer their interpretations and are challenged to paraphrase the important parts of the story. Students’ pacing and self monitoring skills are utilized daily during activities such as eating lunch or dressing for outdoor recess in a timely manner so as not to miss the next activity.

Reading also involves an array of short term and long term memory abilities. For example, a beginning reader needs to associate shapes of letters with a name, associate groups of letters with sounds and meanings, and remember the first part of a sentence or paragraph while reading the end. A proficient reader uses her memory to make these processes automatic. In Pre-K, our recent scavenger hunts strengthen these memory abilities. Students must identify a symbol on the map and make the correct association, follow the map to the first clue, and then remember the clue as they use it to find the next clue.

Receptive language plays a significant role in reading as well. A reader must be able to decode language sounds and associate words with their correct meanings. To prepare for reading, Pre-K students fine tune their receptive language skills as they listen for words that rhyme with their name. Being read to on a daily basis allows students to learn the structures of written language and be exposed to concepts such as subjects, verbs and sentences.
These are only three examples of brain function that are required in order to read. As students, teachers and parents learn more about how brains function, we can appreciate the complexity of a skill as common and essential as reading.

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© 2005, Basecamp News, Journeys School of Teton Science Schools.