Project Fishing: Independent Project Topic Exploration

By Julie Mountcastle, Head of School and Grade 7 Teacher

During our third week of school, our Grade 7 students began exploring topics for their upcoming project cycle. We call this process “fishing” because our students travel from Reading Room to Reading Room with book sticks to mark the spots in the collection to return the books that they peruse. Each of the four Reading Rooms currently house a quarter of our book collection, and our students are getting acclimated to the depth and breadth of our current collection before the books move to their permanent space in the Alma, the heart of our school with bookcases to house thousands of books.

Our students surveyed the new and growing collection of books for topics that might be of interest to each of them. They collected their thoughts and questions about at least one book in each of our Reading Rooms. The collection is so new and constantly evolving because of the generosity of friends of Slate School. Our Curator and our Upper School Coordinator have been working with volunteers almost daily to shelve the new and exciting additions to our catalog. This effort has sparked student interest in the topics of Sociology, Cinematography, Anatomy and Physiology, Food, Music, and Renaissance Art, as well as the lives of Alexander Von Humboldt and Napoleon. We are excited to see where this “fishing” will lead.

In the Upper School, student independent projects follow a somewhat different path than the journeys they took in the Lower School. The project studies for these older students unfold over a 12-week cycle. Along the way, our learners share robustly with their classmates every 3-4 weeks. The culminating presentation at the end of the cycle includes their findings from each section of research and a broad overview with plans for action and positive impact. We can’t wait to see what the “catch of the day” will be as they make their final project selections!

All of this exploration and discovery has been made possible by our our community of book donors who have purchased a spectacular array of books for our brand new Upper School Library. We are grateful for every donor, and each donated book is commemorated with a personalized bookplate honoring the contributions. Please consider joining our growing community of friends of the Slate Upper School Library by continuing to purchase books from our Book Wish List.