Peter Moravetz joins Avenues this fall as a Spanish teacher in the Middle School. This summer, he was an instructor, through the Broadreach program, on 22-day Spanish immersion and service courses based in Costa Rica and Nicaragua.
Peter Moravetz joins Avenues this fall as a Spanish teacher in the Middle School. This summer, he was an instructor, through the Broadreach program, on 22-day Spanish immersion and service courses based in Costa Rica and Nicaragua.
In September, 2012, we rushed around the new Avenues campus sporting tee shirts that proclaimed “The First, First Day.” Now venerable, in our third year, Middle and Upper School students trooped into the Tenth Avenue building on September 3, hugging teachers and high fiving their “old friends” from last year.
In February of 2014, Avenues Middle School students took part in our second annual minimester program, a week-long period where students take time off from their regular academic schedule to investigate their interests with intensive courses in a diverse range of areas. We have written before about the minimester program as a whole and also posted articles from several instructors about the courses they taught in the 2014 session.
Avenues on Tour was conceived as an effort to push students out of their comfort zones and in so doing demonstrate the generosity of spirit our mission statement espouses. We put students in a pressure cooker—a real-life situation in which they needed to put together a 40-minute musical review in two days and then perform at three disparate venues.
Seeing Things was a week-long exploration during minimester into how, from a design perspective, we view everyday objects and experiences around us. Students were visited by a number of entertaining and interesting guest speakers including comedians, an electronic dance music DJ, voice artist Fred Newman (of A Prairie Home Companion) and graphic designer Susan Hochbaum (creator of the Avenues Globe Book icon).
The inquiry-based approach to teaching and learning is central to an Avenues classroom. As teachers, we seek to help children construct their own knowledge and understanding by presenting our students with open-ended questions. We set up an environment in which students learn by exploring possible answers to such questions, as well as their own questions that arise as they dig more deeply into an inquiry.
The readers, eaters and writers in this course spent their mornings during the minimester week delving into the world of culinary journalism. Their objective was to notice how food writers use the senses of sight, smell, taste and touch to bring a culinary experience alive for their readers.
In this minimester course, 12 Avenues students under the supervision of Maggie Wollner, the head of eighth grade, worked with the Dinner Lab team to design and host a dinner event at Avenues that transformed our third floor into a full functioning restaurant.
It’s been a jam-packed first few weeks at Avenues. And for the fifth graders, it’s been a big adjustment to the Middle School. It has been fascinating watching them figure out how to open their lockers, navigate changing classrooms and schedules and make new friends.
Last year during minimester, students were fortunate enough to have guest instructor Trey Bonnell share some of his knowledge on writing and broadcasting for a course called “Sports Journalism.”
Kids Media is an app from Common Sense Media that helps parents find age-appropriate media for their children. Users can search through thousands of ratings and reviews of movies, DVDs, books, music, TV shows, games, websites, and apps.
Koma Koma is a simple and easy stop motion animation app for the iPad. Stop motion animation is a cinematic process used to make static objects appear as if they are moving. It is commonly used in claymation and puppet-based animation. The objects are brought to life by breaking up the figure's motion into increments and filming one frame at a time. Users of Koma Koma can create their own stop motion videos and save them to their camera roll.
Shadow Puppet EDU is a digital storytelling app for creating and sharing narrated slideshows. Users have the ability to add images to their slideshows from their camera roll, NASA, Flickr: Creative Commons, the Met Museum of Art, and the Library of Congress, without leaving the app. This app was chosen by the American Association of School Librarians as a 2014 Best App for Teaching and Learning.
Our year at the Avenues Middle School started off with a bit of bad news: Ms. Kim’s Vespa had been stolen. While we were all thankful that “Stella” (the Vespa) was found within the next 48 hours, it gave me a great idea for a project-based, real-world scenario for this year’s Middle School Chinese level three classes to tackle.
The study of languages entails more than just its grammar. In order to create a real immersion experience, students must be in contact with the culture and history of the language. The Day of the Dead (“el día de los muertos”) presented a perfect opportunity for the students to have not only a better sense of community but also a better understanding of the Hispanic culture.
Saying “thank you” can be one of the best ways to learn.
Neil Ginsberg joined Avenues in the fall of 2013 as a Middle and Upper School vocal music teacher. In this short interview, Neil talks about collaborating with his young musicians and working in an environment that encourages risk taking.
Life for Middle School students at Avenues asks that they take ownership of their learning, become more independent and explore their interests. One way Avenues cultivates a lifelong passion for learning is by offering clubs, which take place once per six-day cycle.
Carrie Pollack joined Avenues in the fall of 2013 as an art teacher in the Middle School. In this short interview, Carrie talks about her role as an art educator and about helping students transform themselves into artists in a studio setting.