Middle School Experiential Learning

At the GIS Middle School, experiential learning is a major focus of students’ educational experience throughout each year, and a big part of what makes GIS a place where students can learn and grow with support and acceptance.

Experiential learning is a philosophy that sees students actively engage in projects and activities connecting theories to real-world experiences. Students learn from mistakes and successes and develop skills to last a lifetime.

In September 2024 grades 5-7 worked on an experiential learning day focused on “belonging.” 

Fifth graders wrote something kind about each of their classmates, with each student receiving their stack of notes and a group discussion about each other’s gifts, described as rays of sunshine.

This was converted into a group art project where all the rays were glued on to a sun for a beautiful piece of art for their school community.

In 6th grade a group art project involved making a fence mural with flagging tape spelling out the word “belonging.” Students dedicated the installation to the school’s volunteer Board of Directors to show they consider the Board an important part of the school community.

Seventh graders joined their grade 6 peers later in the day to focus on building community, reading the book Seedfolks, by author Paul Fleischman, about a diverse community coming together to build and grow a garden together.

The group also talked about skills they could use and learn to implement the Middle School Values established last year upon the inauguration of middle school at GIS.

The group also had a great time coming up with 50 different acts to "fill someone else's bucket,” a concept used to educate children about emotions and feelings, with the metaphor of a full bucket equaling happiness and contentedness and negative behavior and hurtful actions depleting the bucket.

Here are just some of the 50 acts the students brainstormed:

Giving a compliment

Talking to someone who is alone

Helping someone with an instrument during band practice

Assisting someone during clean up

Teaching someone a new fact

Inviting someone to play a game

Saying goodbye at the end of the day

Inquiring how someone is doing

Holding the door for someone

Writing a kind note to someone

Carrying something for someone

Students were challenged on a weekly basis to demonstrate an act of kindness to a random classmate whose name they pulled from a pile of people’s names, with the goal of implementing a sense of positivity in the Middle School.