by Kerri Consalvo | Jul 1, 2022 | Blog
Two weeks ago Rotary welcomed the Phoenix School as the students gave a presentation on their recent trip to the Everglades.
Prior to leaving, students completed research on what to expect when they arrived in Florida, specifically the plants and animals they might encounter. Upon arriving in the Everglades, the students were amazed at how many alligators they saw, along with the amount of wading birds, especially little blue herons.
The presentation included drawings, photos, sketches, and excerpts from journals that the students kept while on the trip.
The highlights of the trip included a solo walk at night when they first arrived. The focus of this walk was to use their ears instead of their eyes, and they certainly heard a lot of sounds in the darkness.
This was followed by walking the Anhinga Trail the next day where the students saw many alligators, mangroves, and water lilies.
Another highlight of the trip was the Slough Slog where the students got right in the waters with alligators and cypress trees nearby. They came out of the water soggy but happy!
Students also went canoeing down a canal, which they loved. They did have to pay attention and got very wet, especially Charlie who fell in the water. They saw lots of wildlife while on the canoes, notably crocodiles and many birds.
The trip wrapped up with a 15-mile bike ride where the students had the chance to climb a tour. A final highlight was a trip to “Robert Was Here”, a fruit stand that makes delicious smoothies that has been around for 63 years.
The Phoenix School students stayed at a hostel in Florida where they got work done, journaled, ate, and had fun. It even had a huge treehouse!
When the trip was wrapping up, students reviewed their journals and compared notes. It was clearly a trip of a lifetime where students learned a lot about the natural world.
by Kerri Consalvo | Jun 29, 2022 | Blog
Tala and Ragad, 10th graders from Saudi Arabia, have worked with our students for the last 2 years. They work collaboratively with our 5th-8th grade students to create a curriculum to explore together.
We strongly believe exposing our students to global collaboration builds cultural understanding, communication skills, and knowledge and awareness of the wider world. We participate in multiple global collaborations yearly, some are one-off collaborations and some are ongoing relationships built with other schools, students, and educators across the globe.
Each Friday morning we gather together on zoom. This particular Friday they had a fun science experiment for our students to dive into. This time we had our TK-4s join in on the fun! The goal of this experiment was to understand animal cell size and how that affects medical research.
Students had to use raw beets and cut measured cubes, ½ centimeter, 1 centimeter, and 2 centimeters. Once these measurements were made, the students soaked the beets in bleach to find out how the different-sized beets (cells) had different penetration volumes.
It was concluded that the size of the cell plays a big role in determining what is able to travel in and out of the cell. It was an interesting experiment for our students.
by Kerri Consalvo | Jun 27, 2022 | Uncategorized
Engineering is a HUGE part of our curriculum here at Phoenix. It provides the opportunity for curiosity and exploration through design, experimenting, building, testing, and trialing.
Each team or individual designed their own airplane, based on the challenge they wanted their plane to go through. First, we brainstormed ideas as a whole school.
Some challenges were to see how far the plane would fly, what height it achieved, how long it stayed in the air, and how many flips it could do.
We experimented with an app called Wind Tunnel to experiment with different shapes, aerodynamics, and wind flow.
For the older students, it was a mathematical challenge to figure out the speed of their airplane. They used testing tables and documented their data after each flight so that they could learn from their mistakes and create better designs.
by Kerri Consalvo | Jun 21, 2022 | Blog
This is how we view failures at The Phoenix School…
First
Attempt
In
Learning,
Understanding,
Redesigning,
Experimenting, and eventually
Solving!
by Kerri Consalvo | Jun 16, 2022 | Blog
We are so excited to announce we have partnered with Montserrat College to offer volunteer internship positions. Today we are introducing you to Cassandra who is our Communications Intern. We feel so fortunate to have such talented young adults working with us!
Hello, My name is Cassandra (She/They), and I’m going to be interning at the Phoenix School as a Communications intern. I’m an animator, illustrator, photographer, and writer currently enrolled at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly. My job at the Phoenix School will be to help create images and writing to help spread awareness of the Phoenix School. I had a similar elementary school experience to the one offered by the Phoenix School, so I’m excited to be able to help provide the wonderful education I received to the next generation.
My main artistic passion is animation. I think it’s entirely unique in the way it combines other forms of art, and I think the things you can do with it are absolutely amazing. In addition to my other contributions to the Phoenix School, I’ll be running a short workshop on creating simple animations with flipbooks. This was my first introduction to creating animation when I was little, so I’m very excited by the opportunity to help introduce it to the Phoenix kids.
I’ll also be contributing my photography experience to the Phoenix School. I’ll be accompanying students on some of their excursions to places like the PEM and taking pictures to record those adventures they go on. I love photography for its ability to capture a moment in life, and I’m excited to use that ability to showcase the strengths of the Phoenix School. Every form of art I do has different strengths, and I’m excited to use all of them to contribute here.
