Newberry Award-Winning Author, Kwame Alexander, Visits Shipley Upper and Middle School Students
Newberry award-winning author Kwame Alexander had Middle and Upper school students roaring with laughter during his talk on Monday morning.
While the poet, educator, and author comically engaged students with stories from his personal life, Alexander weaved into his talk encouraging words about perseverance and inspired students to translate their emotions and surroundings into writing.
Alexander shared with students the long and hard road he travelled to getting his novel, “The Crossover” published. One rejection letter after another, he never gave up. The book went on to win a Newberry medal for the Most Distinguished Contribution to American Literature for Children.
Shipley’s Library Director, Elizabeth Cousins, said when Alexander read his poetry, it was with a cadence that many of the students would find familiar from popular rap and hip hop artists. “They particularly enjoyed his stories of being shy and trying to ask a young woman, to whom he’d never spoken, to the prom,” she said. “He was self-deprecating and touched on many of the experiences that they’ve all had. He just channeled his experiences into poetry!”
Kwame Alexander’s visit motivated students to cultivate a love of writing through expression and creativity. These experiences foster The Shipley Method’s deeply-rooted learning.
Confidence to Explore: In this series, Shipley alumni show how the confidence they gained from their Shipley education didn’t end on graduation day. In this post, Maddie Norris ’12 explains how her experiences with Shipley’s French program and The Brain Tree School led her to Uganda and France today.
What’s so special about Friday’s one o’clock bell in the Middle School? Mini courses, of course! These half-hour sessions focus on letting the students take control to explore new hobbies, grow their passions, and learn about themselves in the process. Read more about mini courses in the Middle School.
Newberry award-winning author Kwame Alexander had Middle and Upper school students roaring with laughter during his talk on Monday morning. His talk focused on perseverance, inspiration, and using writing as a tool for expression and creativity.
With the opening of the Chris Wagner Arts Center in September of 2015, Chris Fornaro and his fellow STEAM teachers seized the opportunity to create a new home for their growing program by taking over the empty art spaces in the Upper School and establishing Shipley’s first MakerSpace, a modern-day workshop that's transforming the way students learn.
Since the 90's, Shipley has partnered with Agnes Irwin, Baldwin, and Haverford to bring students together for an extra-curricular, educational consortium. This year's collaborative curriculum focuses on art history.
Drawing inspiration from shows like The Layover with Anthony Bourdain, students in Annette Marrecau's seventh grade Spanish class plan what they would do on a 24-hour layover while building confidence to speak publicly in a foreign language.
The Middle School teaching duo of Christine Hutchinson and Peter Schumacher teamed up to create a musically-inspired interdisciplinary English and History project for their eighth graders. Read more about why they brought Bruce Springsteen, U2, and more into the classroom.
There’s an old saying, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." While there isn’t any fishing happening in Marian Roche’s second grade classroom, she uses the same basic idea in teaching her students the foundational skills for reading and spelling.
The 2015-2016 academic year will be remembered as a milestone year in Shipley history. With the excitement of the new building, one of Shipley’s Action Research teams is working to find how the trends in spatial issues have changed for Upper School students and what more could be done to improve student life.
A summer obsession with the popular HGTV and DIY Network tiny house television shows inspired Middle School science teacher Caroline Feldman. With a curriculum based on sustainability, she challenged her eighth graders to create their own, fully-sustainable, tiny houses.
Technology has become an everyday part of the Shipley curriculum. With a technology coach in each division, the additional resources allow even the youngest of students to get their feet wet in coding and programming. Read more to learn about how Shipley's emphasis on learning coding and programming can prepare students for success in any career, even one without a technology component.
The community unit of the Kindergarten social studies curriculum engages students to learn more about the people and places around them. Based on their own curiosity the students write questions and conduct their own interview, beginning with their classmates and ending with field trips to local businesses.
In Peter Schumacher’s eighth grade class, the history of the modern world is studied through the interdisciplinary themes of urbanization, technology, and government. The thematic approach aims at getting students to understand the world they live in today—where it came from, how it came to be, and why.
How does Shipley develop in its students the inherent qualities of a good leader? By understanding child development from Pre-Kindergarten through grade 12, Shipley’s program challenges emerging leaders to take risks and build the confidence to succeed.
What can constructing a chair out of newspaper and tape teach a sixth grader about creative problem solving? a lot! While constructing the most stable chair is the obvious goal of this project, teacher Caroline Feldman’s goal for her students points to the process. Read more about how the sixth grade chair project inspires creative problem solving.
How could fourth graders learn about several events leading up to the Revolutionary War in one day? Through an intensive preparation process, Shipley fourth graders organized and facilitated a student-led debate on who is to blame for the Revolutionary War.
Shipley is shaping its growing STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Art Math) program from Pre-Kindergarten through grade 12, including the addition of a maker space in Upper School, cross-curricular projects school wide, and curriculum tailored toward the future.
In Shipley’s second grade, students’ work on the writing process lays a foundation for future academic success and, more specifically, their end-of-year Desert Zoo research projects. It all starts with learning how to write a paragraph using the hamburger method.
How does getting together outside of school with fellow seniors and watching movies inspire creativity, grow confidence and build essential life skills? Read more.
Shipley’s student-led conferences provide an in-depth, personalized look at the student’s learning experience. Facilitated by the student rather than the teacher, parents and teachers alike work together to understand the student’s needs, praise their accomplishments, and plan for a bright future.
The Shipley School is a private, coeducational day school for pre-kindergarten through 12th grade students, located in Bryn Mawr, PA. Through our commitment to educational excellence, we develop within each student a love of learning and a desire for compassionate participation in the world.