We celebrated cross-generational learning today when the Fiddlers of the Genesee came to Harley to play a side-by-side outreach workshop with our 7th and 8th Grade String Ensemble. Kelly Schroeder, our string teacher and avid fiddler, has been dedicating a portion of her rehearsal time to having the students learn...
The Project Space has seen some great activities and planned events, but sometimes the best use of the space is when it is spontaneous. If you want to know what spontaneous means, just look up Dan O’Brien in the dictionary. Mr. O’Brien (the math one) took his 7th Grade Pre-Algebra...
The exciting culminating Geography Bee Game Show was this past Thursday afternoon in the Briggs Center for Civic Engagement. The final grade-level teams (decided through preliminary rounds earlier in the week) engaged in heated head-to-head team and individual competition while the rest of the Middle School cheered them on from...
Nothing like two dramatic Shakespeare tragedies to draw the 7th and 8th grade students into the spacious Briggs Center for Civic Engagement to act out the final scenes! In this final week of Trimester 2, Kirsten Reader took her 7th grade classes to the BCCE to read through and act...
This Common Ground features two teachers who made excellent use of problem-based learning opportunities….one has been ongoing in the 3rd and 4th Grade Project Based Learning class, and the other was a spontaneous inspiration drawn from the previously mentioned project installation in the Gallery. But first, a description of the...
As a new element to our Outdoor Education program this year, the Seventh Grade spent four days downstate near Poughkeepsie at Sprout Creek Farm. This farm is where faculty member Chris Hartman worked for several years after graduating from Vassar College. He was the farm supervisor, which included everything from...
In a fantastic fall finale, the Fourth Grade was given a design thinking challenge to create a device that could “chunk” pumpkins. Catapults and trebuchets can be found at local farm markets and other locations during the Halloween season for launching full size pumpkins. The challenge for the fourth graders...
We are indeed fortunate to have Chris Costanza, the designing architect of The Commons, available to interact with our students of all levels. He had a busy day today, starting off speaking with the Lower School Project-Based Learning class of 3rd and 4th graders about being an architect and his...
Student-conceived and student-driven initiatives are celebrated here at Harley, and we have our fair share of them. This year’s first such endeavor was in support of Alex’s Lemonade Stand for Childhood Cancer, an organization which raises funds to further cancer research. “Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation (ALSF) emerged from the front...
While walking around the school, one can find meaningful moments of mindfulness. This is so woven into the fabric of how we behave and what we do in all divisions, that we can sometimes take it for granted. Many of us have established ways of regulating ourselves in response to...
