Students today are learning and growing in technology heavy environments.  Rather than using technology as a babysitter or time filler, teachers have the responsibility to instead utilize the wide variety of information and applications available in today's connected...

You may have heard your second grader talking about ACE in the last couple of weeks.  Chances are you heard who was in their ACE group and the fun things that they did.  You might have even seen some of their ACE projects make their way home.  But I wonder if you've...

This past week the second graders participated in our highly anticipated and always challenging annual 2nd grade Egg Drop! This project provided students with the opportunity to strengthen their Science and Engineering Practices as laid out by the Next Generation...

Students growing up in this 21st century environment are learning about and interacting with the world in a much different way than their parents did.  Technology is now a huge part of everyday life, both inside of a learning environment as well as out of it.  As with...

In a blog post on the Concordia University website, author Brian Gatens identifies several important benefits of having older students in mentoring roles with younger students.  (Gatens, Mentorship: How to Let Older Students Teach the Younger Ones) While his article...

Friday morning in second grade started off with parents and other family members staying for a Parent Breakfast.  These parent gatherings are a large part of the PNA culture, as each class has 4 of these events each school year.  Parents come in and enjoy a breakfast,...

From my earliest memories, I've always loved a good story.  This love stems from the time spent in various relative's laps and getting read to every day.  I've tried to instill this love of reading in my own kids and those kids who come through my classroom each year....

At PNA, we utilize the model of a writing workshop to implement writing instruction.  Teachers in grades K-8 use the Lucy Calkins Units of Study curriculum to instruct, guide and assess students on their writing skills.  This curriculum comes from her work with the...

At PNA, students and teachers are expected to exercise their growth mindset everyday.  Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, coined the term after studying the attitudes of thousands of children regarding failure.  She found that “In a growth...

As teachers, we know our students learn in many different ways: visual, auditory, tactile, kinesthetic, and social. These are commonly known as learning styles.  The term learning styles is widely used to describe how learners gather, sift through, interpret,...