Exploring community, angles, our solar system, and more. Happy Holidays to ALL!!
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Project Based Learning
Last Week at Portfolio: sequences, 3-D modeling, 3-D printing, presenting who we are to the school, and more...
This Week at Portfolio: What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be me? Creating lessons for Google Science Journal App, a trip to New York Hall of Science, and more.
It's been a busy few weeks, with a successful "Work-in-Progress" night shared with families.
It was a week of celebration, creativity, and community bonding - Portfolio style! Check out who visited us to celebrate, create, learn, and play!
"When we listen, we learn more.
Be patient, kind, and respectful.
Try your best. If you hit a small problem,
it’s no big deal."
- from Portfolio’s Kids Constitution
How do ideas become a creation?
How do individuals become a team?
How does a traveler to Mars become a Martian? These are questions we are exploring as we learn, not only about Mars, but even more importantly, about ourselves.
How might we get to Mars? Rocket? Bus? Sun beam? Bridge? Balloons? Elevator?
You never know what might happen when learning and creativity emerge from student interest and student ideas!
We're creating—with words and materials—and planning for our trip to Mars...
Two important collaborations with NYU and Columbia are now underway at Portfolio. One partnership will give our students the opportunity to apply their learning in music, technology, design, art and science; the other partnership will help our school refine a methodology that is carefully crafted and guided by research.
“At normal schools, the teachers don’t tell you to write on the walls,” one student happily exclaimed.
“Elon Musk, Elon Musk, Elon Musk,” a number of students chanted, as they planned the interviews they want to try to schedule for the film they will create on permanently settling Mars.
"Amidst graduates from some of the best high schools around the world, I was struck by the intelligence that surrounded me. Yet, I felt better prepared for school and life at Columbia. While they had no problem taking notes in lectures or studying for exams, in seminars where deep learning happens at college and when relationships are formed with professors I found myself speaking up on the literature, proposing questions and interacting with texts while they worked to feel comfortable doing so."
At Portfolio rather than asking children what they want to be when they grow up, we’ll be asking, “what problem do you want to solve right now?”
Katy Kasmai, our advisor, talks about her organization, Exponential Education, where the goal is to have kids work on big ideas.