The Lexicon of Mystery: Reading Work Made Visible

Sometimes, a theme can feel almost contagious in a school as small as ours, drifting from one discipline to another. While learners puzzled over mystery tubes in Science Block, Violet Band readers began their work as detectives across the hall in Literacy, exploring mystery as a literary genre.

The intellectual work of reading mystery is both complex and irresistible. Violet Band’s unit encouraged readers to start by identifying the “crime-solver” and the nature of the mystery itself – a task that’s often less than obvious in the exposition phase of a mystery novel, when a generalized atmosphere of weirdness may appear before an actual conflict emerges. Once an inciting action occurs, the reader begins to act as a detective herself, paying attention to details that might be clues…

literacyLisa ZapalacNovember 11, 2022Long-View Micro Schoolreading, writing, mystery, thinking, strategies

Developing Key Ways of Thinking in Science Block

Since the start of the school year, Long-View scientists have been collaborating in small groups to develop their understanding of experimental design. Because we will be using these skills in our science practice all year, it is important to start off with a strong basic grasp of how to how to design and perform a fair test experiment, how to look for patterns and trends in our data, and how to make evidence-based claims that answer the questions we explore with our work. In order to support sense-making of what our data is actually revealing to us about our questions, we also spent time learning about science concepts like force, velocity, gravity and friction.

This models the approach to science that we take at Long-View....

scienceLisa ZapalacOctober 4, 2016Long-View Micro Schoolthinking, creativity, discussion, science