Opening Group Skills Days - Growth is the Theme

By Zoe Gold

Cece picking apples at Linvilla Farms 

Opening Group Skills is a week, at the beginning of the school year, where older and younger kids get mixed together to do fun activities, like painting or going apple picking.  It has been going on at Project Learn School (PLS), for 42 years, since the beginning of the school.  Opening Group Skills is when the  staff sets aside time to allow all the students, new and returning, to begin to develop a sense of community. It also lets everyone to get to know each other in an informal, safe way.  

     For the new kids it is when they get to meet  teachers other than their group teacher and it helps everyone get to know the building in a different way.  The way it works is the staff talks about a theme or topic and then they rotate taking turns to plan each Opening Group Skills.  This year it was Lisa Pack and Aubrey DiSanto who chose to plan the activities.  Lisa teaches the older middle group students and Aubrey teaches the younger ones. “In June, during staff meeting, we were talking and Aubrey came up with the idea of Growth as a theme.  Over the summer she and I planned it.  Joan helped us come up with the name tags for the kids to know each other’s names.” said Lisa

     “I believe that a big part of children working in a school and together is so people can grow in many different ways,” said Aubrey, about why she picked the theme.  Every year opening group skills have a cool new theme, and Lisa said, “I wouldn’t change how we have younger and older kids working together during these days.  I think it is vital to the development of each child to stretch themselves beyond their comfort zone and for some, that means going to a different teacher and being with a different group of  kids. It’s so great to see the young and the old members of the community get to know each other.  For me, the thing I worry about  is whether my ideas for these days will keep all of the kids interested and involved.”  Each year Lisa admitted everything goes well and so far, her favorite theme was when the group skills focused on Rube Goldberg.  Rube Goldberg, was a man who drew cartoons of complicated machines that could work for simple things.  “We’ve done Rube Goldberg twice, last year, and in 2001,” Lisa said.      Lisa said that her favorite part of Opening Group skills this year was the apple picking trip.  “I love that all school trip,” she said.  Lisa also thinks that making the partner pages into leaves and putting them on the bulletin board as part of a tree let everyone see them, which is better than in a book that no one looks at.  Partner pages are pages that the kids write about their partners.

Mixed up Groups working on a poster .

   Nasya Howard, a student in the Jr. High said, “I like how in Group Skills you can hang out with kids who are older or younger who you wouldn’t normally hang out with.”    Zack Waxler, also a student in the Jr. High said, “I like how in Group Skills you can meet all of the younger kids and the new kids.”

    Cassandra Bracero-Rivera, a student in Lisa’s group said, “I like how we get to meet new people in the school.”     This year's Group Skills was awesome, and everyone can’t wait for next year's theme.