We had a full, exciting first week of 2021 at East Valley Acton Academy. Happy New Year!🥳
Students are taking on many roles over the next few months. They began a study this week of robotics and yoga 🧘🧘🏼♀️🧘🏻♂️. They will build and program robots, ponder the difference between humans and robots, and practice daily mindfulness. Throughout the week, in addition to reading great books, working through math problems, and practicing their language arts in IXL, they spent time playing Code.org, a computer game that teaches the basics of programming with a series of increasingly complex challenges.
Students explored questions comparing humans to robots such as: Could a robot be trained into the same person you are today? Other Questions included: Would you rather work for someone with great ideas but poor leadership skills, or someone with mediocre ideas but who is a strong servant leader? Have advancements in technology improved our quality of life?
In Writing Workshop, students will be taking on yet another role, that of reporters for the school newspaper. They began the week by breaking into small groups to read several different newspaper articles. The headlines had been separated from the articles and they had to match them up. Then, they went through each article and attempted to locate where the report answered the classic questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? After sharing their answers with the group, they each set off to write their own articles about the events that occurred.
As Artists this week, students found an open art studio to let their creative juices flow. Most learners dived into making craft robots, while some explored with paint.
As Historians, students were excited to get back to their studies of ancient civilizations: Alexander the Great, Early Americas, and ancient Rome. The discussion was high energy as they imagined what-if: Would a twenty-year-old today becoming President of the United States be more or less impressive than Alexander becoming King? Why?
Throughout this Quest, students will continue to explore and pursue their own hero’s journeys. We will be asking the question “What is the hero’s journey” and discussing how the answers to this question impact our lives and the discovery of callings.
Namaste 🙏 🙏 🙏