Photo: Greek Temple of Segesta, Sicily (Oct 19, 2018)

At Summers-Knoll’s Friday morning meeting (aka Dragon Time) this week, the Preschool class shared what they’ve been working on in their classroom during their third quarter project: Traveling from Ancient to Modern Greece. The project revolves around three main pillars: Inventions and Inventors, The Olympics, and Gods, Goddesses & Myths. As with the preschoolers’ preceding study of Ancient Egypt, SK’s youngest explorers are introduced to the study of these ancient civilizations through stories, art, and games. This foundation is built upon throughout the grades at SK in a thoughtful and deliberate way.

In SK’s Latin program, Magistra Imogen teaches students about Latin and Greek cultures and languages in their historic context through the use of classical stories, fables, myths, and plays. In preschool, they are introduced to Aesop’s Fables and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In Kindergarten, they continue with Ovid’s Metamorphoses and are introduced to the Greek Gods as well as ancient explanations for natural phenomena. In the 1st/2nd grade, students study the Twelve Labors of Hercules and what each Labor shows us about the character of the hero. In 3rd/4th grade, they focus on the seven kings of ancient Rome followed by the heroes of the early republic, which is partly mythological. In 5th/6th grade, they study one of the books of the Odyssey to appreciate the inherent messages in both Greek and Latin, and then in 7th/8th grade, they compare and contrast two ancient Greek sources, The Iliad and Odyssey, with one Roman source, The Aeneid, to analyze the characters and themes of the Trojan War.

The Latin curriculum across the grades illustrates how, as students progress during their time at SK, the content and curricula become increasingly more complex; at every stage of learning, teachers provide multiple entry points with which students can access the content and construct new knowledge as they progressively build upon their prior knowledge. Depth of understanding is cumulative; it grows over time as students make connections across contexts and as a result of having opportunities for application and transfer.

For example, in the 5th/6th grade, students study astronomy and mythology. In their Myths and Stars 2022-2023 project, the 5/6s learned about stars, the universe, scientific notation, origins of scientific reasoning, mythological vs. scientific explanations for phenomena, locating stars and navigating by them, and writing mythology as a genre. The project’s driving question was “How has looking at the sky and stars influenced culture?” Students created their own constellations and wrote their own etiological myths, two of which were entered into the Ann Arbor District Library young writer’s short story contest and one of which (a 5th grade student) won 3rd place. The 5th and 6th graders also taught interactive, small group lessons on the solar system to the 1st/2nd graders.

Students in the 5th/6th grade example above were able to apply and transfer knowledge through the process of writing of their myths and teaching science lessons to their younger peers, but they weren’t merely transferring knowledge that had been constructed during the 8-week project – they were drawing upon years of learning experiences at SK that involved Latin and Greek languages and cultures, myths, fables, cross-grade collaborations, the Singapore mathematics program, and scientific inquiry. The upper school (5th – 8th grade) is where the depth of learners’ syntheses becomes most apparent.

In rigorous project-based learning, rigor is conceptualized as an integration of learning at surface, deep, and transfer levels (McDowell, 2017). While this occurs within a single project, it is perhaps even more profound when viewed across the trajectory of students’ learning in a school where all the teachers work together to create curricula that coheres vertically.