New Inspiration in ES

Week 2: Sept 8 – 11

New Inspiration in ES

Despite the wasps that were trying to overtake our playground, the heroes continued to grow together as a tribe. This week in ES included a few more tribe building team challenges, more Maker Play experiences, Chromebook Covenant creating, and Deep Book reading.

The Hula Hoop Lift team challenge proved to be harder than it sounded.

How can we work as a team and have a growth mindset to continue trying this frustrating challenge?

The day we watched a video of what Maker Play (“Anji Play”) looks like at one school in Anji, China, stirred up new inspiration in the heroes for their own use of Maker Play materials and space. I observed a greater joy and enthusiasm in their play and structure-building.

“I was inspired [from the anji play video] because those kids were so young, and yet they were working so hard.” – ES Hero

structure in process

Improvements to their house have taken place over the past weeks since the beginning of school. Despite having to taking down their creation after every Maker Play, these heroes pursue in revising their plan. This week, they utilized the fence and added a “no shoe” policy for their wood floor.

Counting catches. Written on a Character Callout: “Thank you for playing football with me.”

During Core Skills this week, the heroes picked out and began reading their Deep Books. Deep Books are “just right fit” books that are in the hero’s challenge zone. Each level in the ES studio has a variety of book genres to choose books from that will count towards their Reading Badge. Book reviews for each Deep Book are also learning evidence that is added to their “Badge Work” portfolio. Some heroes are part way through grade levels with their Deep Books and Deep Book reviews. Three Deep Book reviews were started this week.

The heroes have a variety of methods to choose for when creating a review (each method can only be used once per year).

• song lyrics
• diorama
• board game
• literary map
• advent calendar
• speech
• character journal
• slide presentation
• movie script
• video newscast
• newspaper from page
• magazine article
• write a traditional book report
• propose their own review idea

Other nuggets of gold from this week:

• The TV was not connecting to the iPad. God answered our prayers through a growth mindset-focused hero who problem-solved for 30 minutes to fix the TV! Thank you, God, for providing help through a hero.
• Miss Cheryl jammed the laminator by accident. A hero who enjoys helping others and trying new things voluntarily joined in the effort to fix it. We took the laminator apart, and worked together to find a solution to the jam.
• During Town Hall Meeting, the heroes discussed more studio topics that were up for proposal.
• A level 5 Hero collaborated with Miss Cheryl to edit and make changes to how badges are earned for each level in ES and what evidence of their work should be added to each hero’s badge work portfolio.

See you next week!