December was an amazing month of coding at the Fletcher Maynard Academy! All month long technology classes in grades 1-5 delved into Computational Thinking and Computer Programming. During our time together, we focused on activities that promote computational thinking, computer programming, and creative coding.

We live in a world dependent on technology and we know that in whatever field our students choose to go into as adults, their ability to succeed will increasingly hinge on an understanding of how technology works. By participating in this "Month of Code," our students have developed an understanding of what's happening "under the hood" of the technology we use, and their imaginations have been "sparked" as they begin to devise what technology will bring us in the future.

Learn more at the links below, and try out one of the fun ”Hour of Code" activities with your family!

Hour of Code Activities:
Try the "Dance Party!"
Scratch Jr. (Awesome free iOS/Android app for students K-2!)
Scratch (Great web-based programming language for students grades 3 and up!)

FMA Student Share their Thoughts

On Tuesday, January 14, a group of FMA JK, preK, Kindergarten, and fifth grade students got to test out some project ideas that students at the Harvard Graduate School of Education were working on. The Harvard Grad students were tasked with creating experiences for children in one of four categories: Health, Literacy, Global Citizenship, and Wiser Consumers. The graduate students brought mockups of their ideas to share with our FMA scholars and got a lot of great feedback. The FMA students also had a fabulous time being test-pilots for the ideas. They look forward to hearing if any of these ideas end up becoming real products!

Courageous Conversations

The FMA Courageous Conversations group met for the first of six meetings planned for this school semester. At the meeting, faculty and staff, community and family members met to discuss how strong teacher-student relationships and a community that supports the development of such relationships can lead to high expectations for all students—irrespective of race or gender.

FMA Staff have already begun acting on this theory through student-teacher pairings and other avenues. The Courageous Conversations group wanted to better understand the connection between relationships and high expectations and begin to develop additional ways that the school community could foster positive student-teacher relationships in ways that support student development in academics and beyond. Click here to see where the Courageous Conversations will go in the next meetings. We will explore the complex nature of our students’ identities and the intersectional nature of these identities. We’ll then explore how the school community can help develop student capacity to engage with and advocate for issues of race and equity. We’ll also explore how to help our students develop the resilience to maintain these identities and dispositions after they leave the FMA community. There’s a lot to come!

If you’d like to join our discussions please email Uche Amaechi. Look through our goals, and agenda below. Our next meeting is Monday, February 10 from 6 - 8PM, with potluck dinner at 5:30PM. Hope to see you!

Learning about Force and Motion

Hi, our names are Maereg and Elizabeth. Our favorite subject in December was Force and Motion in Science. We learned that a force is a push, a pull, a slide, and much more. We also learned that motion is a change in position. The reason why we like force and motion is that when we first learned about motion it was fun for both of us. We used centers to help us learn more about how force and motion works. The centers we had were:

• How to make the object go faster
• How do you make the object stop
• Can you make it move without using your hands?

We learned we make motion happen everyday. We also learned that when stuff moves that is called motion. We use force all the time!

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