Winter time is a perfect time to come together in community! The whole family is invited to this free funky fun dance party at the Rainbow Community Center in the auditorium at 60 State Street, from 3pm to 5pm on Saturday, February 4th. Preschoolers through Middleschoolers are encouraged to get up on the stage and boogie to their favorite tunes. Rainbow students don’t often get the chance to romp and sway, groove and bounce on the auditorium stage. This is the perfect opportunity to let your kids move their bodies in whatever authentic ways they are inspired to while we gather and mingle in community!
Rainbow community, won’t you join us for this fun 25-minute educational play designed to inspire green living and energy saving?!
Arrive at the auditorium in the Rainbow Community Center on Wednesday, January 25th, at 60 State Street, at 10am to grab a seat and enjoy the play starting at 10:15am.
Access educational materials and play fun games with your children either before the play or afterwards to help them integrate all they’ve learned. https://www.myenergykit.org/education/
You’ll also have a chance to order an energy kit filled with energy efficient materials for your home such as energy efficient light bulbs and a water conservation showerhead. As a community, how effective can we be in creating investment among our children to be more concsious of their energy use?
Play Synopsis:
Energy is being wasted everywhere you look, but Nikki Neutron and The Energized Guyz are here to help! The Conservation Caper is a theatrical program designed to engage elementary students in green living and saving energy. In this 25-minute educational play, Nikki takes on Dr. Maybe, a villain bent on wasting water and energy, and shows our students how we all can do our part to save energy.
In fact, The Conservation Caper has a goal to save 10 million kilowatt hours of energy during the 2016-17 school year. Will you join this mission?
Back-to-School Summer Camp at Rainbow Community School!
Student Support Coordinator, Ali Banchiere, and Sixth Grade Teacher, Jenny Armocida, will be leading academic, organizational and creative activities to help your child transition into the new school year with ease and confidence.
Camp sessions will be held from 9 AM to 3 PM:
August 1st – 5th for rising Kindergarteners through 3rd graders
August 8th -12th for rising 4th through 7th graders
Rising K – 3rd Grade Activities Include:
Reading, Math, Handwriting and Writing skills
centering activities and mindful movement
arts and crafts
social skills and teambuilding games
outdoor games and water play
Rising 4th-7th Grade Activities Include:
Reading, writing, grammar and spelling
Math review based on Singapore Math curriculum
Note-taking strategies
Effective organizational habits and routines
Typing and word processing
centering and mindful movement
engineering challenges and teambuilding games
arts and crafts
outdoor games and water play
To enroll:
Camp fee is $250 for the week, with $50 due upon enrollment. To enroll, please email Ali at ali.banchiere@rainbowlearning.org with your name and your child’s name, age and grade. The $50 deposit can be made by check made out to Rainbow Community School,
or can be withdrawn from your school account if you prefer.
Dr. Theo Dawson and her team at Lectica have spent over two decades designing formative, standardized educational test that can assess student’s complexity of thinking and ability to reason ethically. This work is based out of research from the Mind, Brain, and Education program at Harvard Graduate School of Education, and the work of Kurt Fischer, a Lectica board member. After testing 25,000 students Dr. Dawson found the jackpot to their research – Rainbow Community School. Rainbow’s scores shows higher student development than any school tested. See graph. (Note that Lectica has graphed out the projected developmental levels of students older than 8th grade)
This February, Rainbow’s fourth through eighth graders took the Reflective Judgment test, which reveals how they think about inquiry, evidence, learning & the mind, truth & certainty, conflict resolution, persuasion, and deliberation. The test consists of open-ended questions about dilemmas, such as ethical dilemmas or societal issues. Students must write essays in response, and must defend their thinking. Lectica has a complex scoring system that codes each response and examines lines of reasoning in order to determine cognitive development.
From Dr. Dawson, “Lectica has tested many other private schools – very good ones–and also public schools of high socio-economic level, but we have never seen scores like Rainbow. We had to create new language to describe students’ thinking – embedded learning.” (Remember also that we accept a much broader demographic of students than most private schools. So our Lectica test scores include students with diverse learning needs, too.)
Not only were Rainbow students’ levels of development higher on average for their age than any school they had tested, but their level of coherence was higher than they had ever seen. Coherence is the ability to connect thoughts intelligently and develop a persuasive argument. Additionally, she said our students have incredible “perspectival” abilities to take the perspective of others — empathy, essentially.
Dr. Theo Dawson’s blog post about Rainbow Community School’s Lectica test results includes an excellent, easy-to-watch video explaining Lectica tests.
We never thought it would be feasible to have quantitative data that shows the true value of a Rainbow education, since what we do is very sophisticated. Sure, Rainbow students score very well on traditional standardized tests, like the SAT10, but those tests only show a small sliver of rote skill attainment, without showing complexity of thinking or affective skill development. Those tests only show the achievement of our students, but Lectica’s tests show development. Lectica has done the impossible – produced a way of giving a numerical score for holistic development – they’ve come as close to looking at the whole child as any quantitative test could.
What does this mean for your child? It means your child is incredible. We are so proud of the students here at Rainbow. They are truly motivated, empowered, and sophisticated learners who love learning. It means that with the collaboration between family and school, we have created a curriculum and school design that is, in fact, supporting the achievement of all seven domains… It means that the incredible sacrifice you have made to send your child here is paying off.
Rainbow students’ high level of social/emotional skills will also serve them very well when applying to colleges. The most prestigious universities are now changing their application processes to make the SAT optional, and to stress empathy as the most important quality– and this trend is going to become much stronger by the time your kids are applying for college. The Washington Post has a great article on this.
What does this mean for Rainbow Community School? Rainbow’s holistic program creates kids who are highly ethical, empathic, and cognitively developed to a level of sophistication that is beyond their years, and now we have quantitative proof. The researchers from University of Texas, Columbia, and LSU that have visited this year is only the beginning of what is to come. Our Seven Domains model of education will be sought out for research, in the hopes of it being implemented in more places and accessible to a broader demographic. Thank you for investing in the vision! We are providing hope for education and for a better world.
What Matters Most: An Exploration of Love in the Classroom
Susie Robidoux, our 4th Grade Teacher, was published recently on the National Association of Independent Schools Magazine. She shares a reflection of the unit on Love that helped to frame the 4th Grade’s winter performance this year. The piece speaks to Rainbow’s Seven Domains model and whole child development. It illuminates the important relationships (connection to self, others and a greater purpose) that are fostered and nurtured at Rainbow. Check it out by following this link. Congrats to Susie and the 4th Grade Tigers- thanks for sharing the LOVE!
