RattleBag and Rhubarb

World Markets

Here are just a few pictures from the display of dioramas of markets from around the world. I will add others to Flickr. These mini-markets were made by first and second graders as part of their Market Street project.

Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Do you Twitter?

We are experimenting with an additional way to help people keep in touch with what’s going on at PDS. If you twitter (twitter.com) consider following @PoughkeepsieDay. We are linking it to our Facebook account as another way to keep up with what’s happening. Let us know what you think. And of course we appreciate your follows retweets and tagging (we…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

What is school for?

Seth Godin is a marketeer and prolific generator of ideas.  His blog often has interesting  nuggets about education. The purpose of school is to….here’s  his first ten of 27 answers. Any you would like to add? Remove? (My personal favorite is number 23 – sandwiched in between the sublimely lofty and the tongue-in-cheek – Minimize public spelling mistakes So, here’s …

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RattleBag and Rhubarb

New semester in motion

It’s day one of the second semester in the high school. That means the  start of new high school courses.  Here we are at the first meeting of Physics of Motion. The first experimental challenge:  Find the relationship between the distance a ball runs down an incline and the time it takes to roll. Students are looking for patterns by…

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Education, Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Saving the Children from Science

There’s another of those scary science stories in today’s NYTimes: Split Outcome in Texas Battle in Teaching Evolution. The real scary part is such ignorance is still alive and kicking, and not just in Texas. And when it comes to textbooks – as Texas goes, there goes the nation. Meanwhile next month we celebrate the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth.…

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Education, Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Stephen Colbert hears the Mermaids

What’s the difference between a metaphor and lying? With a president who reads Derek Walcott and quotes June Jordan it’s good to have comedians at home with T.S.Eliot. This week inaugural poet Elizabeth Alexander explained metaphor to Stephen on The Colbert Report. Get More: Comedy Central,Funny Videos,Funny TV Shows Meanwhile at PDS English teachers had a quick email conversation that…

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RattleBag and Rhubarb

The frozen Hudson River

Last year I bought some of those ice grippers you can velcro onto your boots. This year I put them to use on walks at Canopus Lake, along the Hudson here at Mills Norrie and clearing the ice from the driveway. This year I’ve added snow shoes to the equipment.

RattleBag and Rhubarb

New Furniture

As if on cue, the moving truck with the new furniture or Kenyon House arrived  right as the Peacemakers Assembly ended.  A willing crew of high school students soon had it inside and assembled.    

Poetry, Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

“Stony the road we trod” The inauguration of President Barak Obama

PDS marked the inauguration at its Peacemakers Assembly on Tuesday.  Entitled “Stony the road we trod” the event began with the singing of  James Weldon Johnson’s Lift Every Voice and Sing. In the collage you can see pictures of the participants from high school to lower school. Ater lunch everyone returned to the JEJ theater to watch the inauguration.

Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

PDS is a a part of it.

More about our assembly later but here is a screenshot from the NYTimes website. The middle school Photo Journalism class previewed some of the pictures on the site. One student sent a picture. When the class noticed that it got published it sent another one. Picturing the Inauguration: The Readers’ Album PDS MAKES THE NY TIMES WEBSITE Photo of Dan…

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RattleBag and Rhubarb

Nice photographs

There’s a rather nice set of photographs by Karl Rabe on- line at the Poughkeepsie Journal. This one shows the gym with it’s new maple hardwood sports floor, reinforced walls and retractable hoops. There’s also a gym divider to enable flexibility of use.  It was taken last week during a boy’s varsity basketball game. The occasion for the visit was…

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RattleBag and Rhubarb

Winter Festival Delayed

The weather played havoc with the  Winter Festival and instead of an all-school event it was presented in segments. We  managed to celebrate with some beautiful music and dance nevertheless.  Here are a few pictures from two events.        

Education, Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb

In the microscope

PDS has new science laboratories. Time for a poem from the Czech poet-scientist Miroslav Holub. In the Microscope Here too are the dreaming landscapes, lunar, derelict. Here too are the masses, tillers of the soil. And cells, fighters who lay down their lives for a song. Here too are cemeteries, fame and snow. And I hear the murmuring, the revolt…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

A Children’s Manifesto for Creativity

Question: What do you need to be creative and succeed in the future? Point number one: We want less formality in schools and more creativity in the classroom Here’s an interesting story from the UK:  students from schools all over the country met at the Tate Modern to plan and design a manifesto for creativity. The kick-off for this 18…

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