Monday and Tuesday’s morning launches were dedicated to equipping the learners with tools to help them stay Socratic while assisting each other on math. At AABC, one of the main challenges we face is “to learn how to learn” and discover each learner’s own process. The learners are working at their own pace and need to find out the best way to learn math for each one of them.
This week’s current events article was about the car chip shortage that came about because of the pandemic. The learners discussed different ways to solve the problem and what they would’ve decided if they were a person of influence.
This week in Art, many of the learners finished making their snow globes and moved on to the next activity: Decorating wooden frames with mosaic pieces.
During our Socratic launch for Music, we watched a video of Lanna Mi, a second-grader who recited Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech in English and Chinese. During the lesson, she stumbled on words and began to hiccup. The learners debated how they would react if they were in her shoes; some said they would want to get help in the middle of the speech, and others said they would like to push through even though they had the hiccups.
For Chess Quest, the learners read in pairs the rules for our chess tournament and had a chance to improve their chess skills using chesskids.com or by playing against each other. On Friday morning, we had the first tournament round, and the studio was packed with excited learners doing their best to win and learn!
In Civilization, we read the chapter “Islam becomes an empire,” and the learners enjoyed listening to a famous Islamic story from “one thousand and one tales” about Sinbad and his adventures.
For Writers Workshop, we watched this inspiring video about the inequity between female heroes to male heroes in classic literature. One of the questions the learners wrestled with was, “if young girls hear only stories about male heroes, will they grow up being less confident? Yes or no and why?’’ Many of the learners finished their fantasy stories and have begun their peer feedback.
