Showcase Week!
/An image from Showcase Week 2019: Sealand City presents their City Council Members.
Come see the Breakwater Way in action!:
Showcase Days - happening this year on December 17, 18, 19 - is an annual Breakwater tradition where students, families, friends, and staff/ faculty are invited to step into classrooms for a glimpse at the student driven learning that happens here on a daily basis. Interdisciplinary learning is at the center of the Breakwater Way and is beautifully highlighted during our Showcase Days.
This unique opportunity allows students to share what they have been learning through curated ‘museum like exhibits’ that puts both the process of learning and final projects on display. Having the process of learning on display deeply benefits the children, immerses the families in the learning process, and guides the work of the classroom teacher. Teachers will have specific times set aside during the week for classroom visitors and presentations.
By being a part of Showcase Days, students learn that not only is it okay to make mistakes throughout the learning process, but that mess and mistakes are parts of the learning process that are worth sharing. This messy process makes the final project, piece of art, or presentation that much more interesting and informative. Students have worked hard during these first few months of school and are excited to share with their community what they have been up to.
What can you expect to see? What have we been learning? Check out the below excerpts to get a glimpse into each classroom ahead of Showcase Week!
Toddler A:
Erica and Carrie’s classroom has been very busy this year! They have been playing around with cooking and recipes - creating many culinary delights for sampling in both their indoor and outdoor classrooms! They have also been exploring nature - venturing into the woods in the Fore River Sanctuary and watching nature emerge on their playground through monarch metamorphosis and growing and harvesting in the Breakwater Gardens. We are excited to see what emerges for documentation during Showcase Week!
Toddler B:
From Danielle: It is can be magical to see what captivates a group of toddlers and this year is no exception. When we brought out the song, Dem Bones, as a playful nod to Halloween, the toddlers got right up and discovered their own "toe bone" and "foot bone" and "knee bone" etc... We knew right away we had discovered our next emergent curriculum. Since then, the children have been dancing, drawing, stretching, and exploring bones of all kinds.
From Nikki: As we were looking at bones in our "Dem Bones" book, a conversation that evolved was about being a baby and how friends once had even tinier hands, tinier feet, and tinier everything! We talked about how very slowly, as friends grow older, everything becomes bigger, including our bones.
Preschool has been doing tremendous work building community, friendships and support systems. They spend days singing, playing, working through challenges, learning to resolve conflicts and supporting each other. Just last week, preschool gathered together on the open air stage to perform a small play about kindness and intention and then brought veggies and other ingredients together to make a hearty “Stone Soup” over the campfire! These early commitments and connections help pave the way to deeper, more valuable learning experience as students grow.
Kindergarten:
From Molly: Each Friday, Kindergarten gears up and hikes into the Fore River Sanctuary to learn beneath the trees. The children have been wondering more and more about our Forest Friday environment. Each week, our Wonders have developed our study of the Fore River Trail.
The students have been exploring the trails with compasses, marking boundaries with North, South, East, and West markers, and documenting animal habitat changes with the seasonal shifts. We are learning about maps and using those skills to develop our own Forest Friday Map, which will lead hikers from Breakwater to our learning “spot”.
Along with our annual Kindergarten Showcase Timeline in the lobby hallway, we will be making a video about our Forest Friday experiences to play at Community Meeting and inviting our families to hike with us to our learning “spot” in the Fore River Sanctuary.
First and Second Grade:
From Katie: Last Thursday students met in small groups for the first time to do research on their newest Wonder. The six jobs that children are learning about in the Wonder groups are government workers, public works (specifically the sewage system), bakers, parks and recreation, doctors and veterinarians.
In this study children will learn in three ways - by doing research in a book, interviewing a person who does the job and visiting a place that a person can do their type of work. For example, the doctors group will read a book about a doctor, visit a doctor's office and interview a doctor to learn more. To end our research time we talked about how we will write and make about what we learn. Each group will show their learning in a Wonder museum at the end of the study by making our own city with a bakery, a doctor's office, a vet's office, a sanitation system, a form of government, as well as some examples of parks and recreation in our community.
Third and Fourth Grade:
From Alicia: During the first half of the year, students researched the history of Nason’s Corner Neighborhood. They began their research by meeting with a local expert and walking around our block to look for clues in the buildings and the surrounding land. Next students and teachers began to build an understanding of history and the passage of time by creating various timelines together. Students continued to gather information from visitors, various field trips, and non-fiction reading. Finally students began to research a specific topic related to the various phases Nason’s Corner has undergone. Topics of research included: Wabanaki History, Farming, Trolleys, and Canals. They summarized their knowledge by writing an informational paragraph as well as a fictional journal entry. They incorporated the arts by building and making hands on projects and a moving timeline to showcase their learning.
Fifth and Sixth Grade:
From Cheryl: This fall Grade 5/6 teachers offered a series of provocations to pique students' interest in several topics related to “Citizen Science”. Students learned about honeybees from Phil Gaven of The Honey Exchange, spent time exploring local birds and their habitats, and visited with Portland’s city arborist, Jeff Tarling, to learn about Portland’s trees. After hearing descriptions of three different project/learning paths - birds, honeybees, and trees - students chose which topic they were most interested in studying and formed inquiry groups. Fifth and Sixth graders are excited about sharing both what they've learned and how we all can get involved in helping our earth.
Seventh and Eighth:
From Tom: During the fall, seventh and eighth grade students have been studying the topic of polarization. As we looked at polarizing behaviors, the students pretty quickly saw the need to also study unifying behaviors. Our work has focused on understanding that disagreeing is not automatically polarizing, and that agreeing with someone is not a unifying behavior. We have identified different types of polarizing and unifying behaviors and categorized them. As students have listened to guest presenters, read articles, and read stories, they have taken notes on the polarizing and unifying behaviors they have identified. During Showcase week they will share charts they have made that show some of this note-taking. They will also share stories they are making using a variety of media, including written stories, movies, podcasts, and cartoons. These stories will show both polarizing and unifying behaviors. Some of those behaviors will be subtle and hard to spot, others less so. In addition there will be some still to be developed interactive activities that make this somewhat abstract topic more concrete for younger students.
Below are some images from Showcase Week 2019!
