This school year has called for perseverance and ingenuity from teachers, students, and families, alike, inspiring us to take NASA’s Mars 2020 mission, with its Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter, as a theme for the year.

Tilden students have been learning about many aspects of  the Mission to Mars, drawing, writing, investigating, experimenting, modeling, and wondering. 

Today Tilden students, faculty, and staff gathered “together” virtually to witness the historic landing of the Mars Rover, Perseverance. We shared in the nervousness, excitement, and ultimately joy as word of the successful landing made it back to Earth, to NASA, and to us. A day to remember, for sure, but the learning doesn’t stop there! We’ll be continuing to follow and learn as Perseverance and Ingenuity explore their new planet!

Tilden students, staff, and families are taking on the Tilden Art History Challenge, as inspired by the Getty Museum in LA. Participants are choosing a piece of art that they’d like to use for the challenge, then posing three or more people, pets, or objects (all items found around the house).

Our resident art history expert Martha says, “Keep in mind the elements of art. Consider the composition (the way the objects are arranged), the lighting, colors, and textures.”

Take a photo and send it in, along with an image of the original art. Here are a few examples from the Tilden Community:

April is National Poetry Month, and today is Poem in Your Pocket Day. Every year the Tilden students and teachers honor this day by carrying and sharing poetry all day long. This year we are honoring the day virtually, since we aren’t together physically. Parents and families, check out the Virtual Tilden page where you’ll find pockets full of poems. Clearly, at Tilden we know that POETRY ROCKS!

Tilden is following the state-ordered emergency school closure order. We miss our students already, but teachers are working hard to ensure they can all continue learning (offline and online) during the closure. 

And Jan, our wonderful Kindergarten aid, is one of the dedicated Tilden staff taking time during the state-ordered emergency school closure to clean and disinfect! ❤

Stay well, and keep your 👐 washed!

–Tilden Staff 

An absolutely HUGE THANK-YOU to our fifth-grade families for their generous gift to our school: funds for new recess and PE equipment! Having just arrived, this gear will soon be in the hands of our students to enjoy daily. Yay!

Would you believe that this whole equation equals one?

It’s true! This is an order of operations problem created by fifth graders, Maryn and Jack, who, along with their classmates, took part in the PEMDAS Partner Challenge. Students were given tiles with the digits 0-9 and all the operations symbols and parentheses they needed. Then it was up to them to use as many of those digits as they could to create a complex problem with a simple target answer (in this case, one!). In several problems, including the one above, students were able to use all of the digits and a variety of operations from addition to exponents. In completing the challenge, students exercised flexible thinking, cooperation, listening skills, creativity, and teamwork. Way to go, 5s!

Today the fifth graders practiced teamwork to set the stage for a year full of learning with and from each other in math class. They were given a challenge that required full participation from all and they rose to it!  Between rounds, groups had a chance to reflect on what was and wasn’t working and adjust their strategies accordingly. Upon reflection, students said that good group work looks like “everyone taking turns and working together” and “people standing up for their ideas and helping everyone with the problem”. Others noted that good group work can sound like “calm voices talking together about a problem” or “encouragement and laughing”. Finally, one student said that good group work is simply “spectacular”.   

If you know Tilden, you know the tradition of Thursday stories. Each week students gather together to brainstorm with Whitney before writing about the assigned topic in their classroom. The kids learn not only the mechanics of writing, but also that they have valuable ideas and that those ideas can be expressed on paper. The topic for the first week? Summer, of course! 

Welcoming, indeed! Thank you to all the Tilden families for making this such a warm community, and for contributing a delicious spread! It does take a village, and the Tilden staff is thrilled to begin another school year working with you. 🙂