Through Games and Role Playing Students Learn About Ohlone Life
Nine-year-old Lily Hernandez held up a deer antler as she listened to a presentation about the Ohlone people of long ago. Nearby, her friend AnMei Dasbach-Prisk examined a replica of an Ohlone arrow. The girls and their fourth grade class from Mount Madonna School were visiting Chitactac-Adams County Heritage Park in Gilroy to learn about California history and Native American culture. Chitactac-Adams Park is an authentic site of a former Ohlone village.
.jpg)
Recently the junior and senior classes at Mount Madonna School had the opportunity to interview John Laird, California’s Secretary for Natural Resources. Each year as part of their Values in World Thought course, students engage in conversations with individuals working for change, and through these dialogues the students come to better understand their world, country, community and selves..jpg)
Sitting near containers filled with assorted plastic K’Nex and Lego Mindstorm pieces, two seventh grade girls laugh as they put the finishing touches on their robot creation, and joke about what to name it. Nearby, other students concentrate on working with the program software and syncing it to correctly control their robot.
Standing in front of the class, the sandy-haired boy shuffles his feet, avoiding eye contact with the middle school students seated before him. He looks up, shyly meets his classmates’ gaze, and takes a deep breath. Exhaling, he begins telling a story in Spanish. The words come haltingly at first, then, as his confidence improves, he relaxes and expands his vocabulary, exploring different sentence structures and verb conjugations..jpg)
“Once upon a time…” may be an uncommon way to begin a mathematics lesson, yet in Mount Madonna School’s kindergarten where I teach, that is just how I present our “Golden Number Book” lessons. During the kindergarten year, each student will create their own counting journal, called a “Golden Number Book.” Every week the children add a new page to their book.
What: Presentation and DVD screening on the Western Burrowing Owl, subject of Mount Madonna School’s 5th Grade Class current environmental project.
