teaching and learning

It's a Wednesday morning, and Holden Caulfield is railing against prep school phonies in the library. Detectives and spies mull over the clues in their latest cases. An Afghani ponders how to continue enduring the unendurable in a country rocked by war and want. And over in the gym, a green- faced witch agonizes over feeling misunderstood.

It's an uninspiring, grey afternoon outside, but in Tanna Hall's fifth-grade physical education class, students are deep in the zone. Their focus is fierce, and at least one student's tongue pokes out of his mouth a la Michael Jordan as he concentrates on perfecting new skills.

RDS students have been exploring issues of hunger, homelessness, loneliness, the environment, and other issues that affect our community and world - and they've been working to address those needs. Some (not all) of their many service learning projects in November/December include:

• Who am I as an individual?
• How am I the same as -- and uniquely different from -- my peers?  

These are the sorts of questions that middle schoolers grapple with as they actively

Do your children come home raving about the great new foods they've made and tried in cooking units with our own Thelma Lancaster? Now you can recreate them at home with access to her recipes online.

RDS Middle School students learn important lessons about leadership and peer relations throughout the year during guided advisory discussions and activities, but learning about leadership took centerstage this week as Redwood Day hosted the East Bay Independent Schools Association's Student Government Roundtable.

How often do students get to learn firsthand from true "national treasures"? Twice last week, if those students are RDS third-, fourth-, or sixth-graders! For the second year in a row, Julia and Lucy Parker visited Redwood Day to demonstrate and teach the art of basketry and acorn processing, bringing an important human dimension and true sense of history to each grade's curriculum units on California indigenous peoples.

Service learning starts early at RDS.  Both first-grade classes have been thoughtfully collecting donations for the Alameda County Food Bank and recently toured the facility on separate outings.

Quick. Pick up a magazine or search the web: can you find a number with a 3 in the one millions place?  Kelly Alexander’s fourth-graders can, after an exercise this week titled “Real World Information Scavenger Hunt” that reinforced their understanding of place value, measurement units, and number sense, while drawing on their linguistic, logical-mathematical, and interpersonal intelligences.