Greetings Fairmeadow Community,

 

The global community that defines our school gathered for an enjoyable Fairmeadow International Night last Friday evening. Featuring delicious cuisine, engaging performances, and delightful company, our 2017 International Night lives on as a community highlight of the year. Thank you to the many parent volunteers who helped to make International Night a resounding success, and for the many participants who shared a taste of home!

 

An engaged and creative group of parents and community members participated in last Friday's Principal's Coffee on design thinking and engineering. We met in our new Fairmeadow Design Studio and worked together to respond to a simple design challenge where participants designed and constructed a basic parachute.

 

During the last school year, our school community identified the need to create a space on campus where our students and teachers can engage in the design and engineering process, which led to the creation of our Design Studio. The implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards requires that students apply their scientific learning to solve problems and respond to challenges in our world. One of the four disciplinary core ideas in our new standards is engineering design, where even our youngest learners start to define engineering problems, develop possible solutions, and optimize design elements. Our design studio provides students and teachers with access to a variety of hands-on, simple materials with which to design and build in a dedicated space with appropriate tools and supports.

 

We opened our new Fairmeadow Design Studio in Room 27 in February, 2017 and many students K-5 have engaged in the design process in the room. Some design challenges that I've witnessed in the studio include designing a simple catapult, creating a device to reduce erosion, building a house to withstand significant wind force, designing vehicles, and extending marble runs. When children are asked to apply their learning and understanding in science to developing and optimizing a design solution, the results are remarkable. During simple design challenges it is common to hear students reference mass, volume, force, cause and effect, fractions, angles, impact, validity, data, and many more mathematical and scientific concepts in application around their solutions. Kids display active curiosity, applied interest, and genuine engagement, key ingredients for optimal learning!

 

At the end of our Principal's Coffee last week I practically had to pry the materials out of the parents' hands to get them to debrief the exercise with me! I wouldn't be surprised if a few of them were completing redesigns at home! If you have questions about the Design Studio, ideas to share, materials to donate, or thoughts about getting involved please email the Design Studio Planning Committee.

 

In our front office, Alicia and Mary Ann contribute to Fairmeadow in many, many ways. Help us appreciate Alicia and Mary Ann by celebrating Secretaries Week with us this week! Please consider bringing by a flower or a kind note for our two hard working front office leaders! The week of May 1st is Staff Appreciation Week at Fairmeadow, where we turn our attention to appreciating our teachers, aides, and other staff at school. Please contact your room parents for more information. Our teachers and staff work so incredibly hard for our children, please join me in appreciating them for their unwavering dedication.

 

Please check the Fairmeadow calendar on our website and on the eNews to stay up to date with upcoming events at our school. I look forward to seeing you at Fairmeadow soon!

 

Grant Althouse