Drawing from life

I tend to post a lot of photos from our Art classes for a couple of reasons:

1. Since I don't teach Art, I'm free to remember to pause to take photos while exciting things are happening (I often forget to do so when I'm leading the class). 

2. The kids are really doing remarkable work, and it's been really exciting to see them growing in their work this year. I get a little caught up in it! Some of it wouldn't be out of place in a college level art class. 

Going through some photos recently, I realized that I never posted some from a particularly active and productive session. The kids took turns holding poses for each other for just long enough for everyone to get a quick sketch down on paper. It was an exercise designed to, among other things, get them to loosen up in their drawing, forcing them to make quick, low-stakes decisions as they cranked out work. The results were really impressive! 

Flow and circuits

Today in STEM, we began discussing the concept of flow, particularly as it relates to our theme of Cities. Traffic, water, sewage, gas, all of these require substantial engineering, and have profound effects on population centers. We spent our time this afternoon exploring this concept with electricity, building circuits in series and parallel. Next week, we'll be working with Joanna's class to teach them what we've learned.

Warm-ups and work spaces

We often begin our school day with a Warm-Up exercise. Today, this problem was part of it: 

"Divide up the grid into four equally sized, equally shaped parts, each containing numbers that add up to 36." 

This task requires an understanding of addition, subtraction, and rotational symmetry, none of which are particularly complicated concepts for a fifth or sixth grader, but applying them to this puzzle becomes quite a challenge! The kids took to the task this morning, each in their own way. 


One of my favorite things about our classroom set up is the number of options that students have when tackling a task like this. Our home base consists of three large work spaces: "Jason's Room," "Sam's Room," and "The Middle School Commons." In general, we're able to allow kids to move to the space in which they feel the most productive. For some kids, that might mean sitting in a silent room at a desk. For others, the ability to collaborate, talk things through, and move around is vital. Having those options available to a student is wonderful. 

A large focus of the fifth and sixth grade years is encouraging increased autonomy and self-discipline. Having a silent room available to a student is great, but the really gratifying part is when a kid starts to take ownership of their own productivity by opting into the space that works best for them. At the beginning of the year, kids will generally sit with their friends when given the choice, regardless of how much they actually get accomplished. Over time (and with occasional guidance), kids start to figure out what environment works best for them, and under what circumstances. 

Some examples from this morning:

Sydney and Kaeli opted to work together on the whiteboard in the middle school commons. They eventually drew a version of the problem on the board with wet erase markers, allowing them to try several different possible solutions  

Chris and David paired up and began working through possibilities on paper. 

Lee opted into the silent room for part of the assignment, venturing out to collaborate with others when he felt it was useful. Eventually, several kids opted into this room. 

This group was particularly social, though not necessarily as immediately productive as they might have liked. After some nudging, they all made choices to move to areas that were a little more in line with their individual working style. 

Remember to check out the other S-K blogs!

Just a quick reminder, there is plenty of information to be had by visiting the other Summers-Knoll blogs! 

Definitely make a point to check in with Sam's Blog, which offers added insight into Math, STEM, and more. He recently posted an entry about Singapore Math assessments, which is probably of particular interest to many families. 

Cities topics presentations - The early 1900s

Our theme for January and February is Cities, and one of the ways that we've been exploring the topic is by learning about the growth of Midwestern American cities over the course of the twentieth century. 

Last week, students paired up to research and prepare short presentations on a variety of topics relevant to cities at the turn of the century (that's 1900, not 2000). Topics included Henry Ford and the $5 Day, Women's Suffrage, The Great Migration, The Toledo War, and Life on a Farm in 1900. They spent the week working with their partners, then gave their presentations on Friday.  

Luke and Karenna talk about the history of the importance of the railroad in Michigan. 

Margaret and Sydney teach about Native American cultures of Southern Michigan. 

This week, students will go further with their projects. First, they'll be receiving feedback about their presentations, both in terms of content, and their public speaking. They'll incorporate that feedback into a "second draft" of their presentation, which will be delivered again on Friday, this time to the third and fourth graders of Chris and Joanna's classes. 

In addition to making improvements to their overall presentations, students will be given an additional component to incorporate: 

We've been using a small model city during our class discussions to help illustrate various points and concepts. Though not based on a specific location, it has been designed to be a reasonable facsimile of a typical small city, somewhere in Southeast Michigan. It's currently meant to represent circa 1910 or so, and the plan is for it to evolve and grow as we move through history. 

For their presentations, students will be tasked with explaining how their topic might play out or affect our fictional town. For example, Matthew and David might talk about how Henry Ford's Five Dollar Day played out in the factories in our city. Did other industrialists follow his lead? What were the ramifications? 

Next week, we'll repeat the process, with new partners and new topics, this time investigating events from the 1920s and 1930s. Eventually, students will have a much deeper understanding of how and why American cities have developed in different ways over the years; How has Chicago thrived? Why is Detroit in its current state? How is Cleveland different from Buffalo? Why have Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor had such different trajectories? It's a fascinating topic that we're excited to be studying! Along the way, we'll be developing and strengthening our research, collaboration, and presentation skills.  

Art: Self-Portraits

Last week, our class continued working on their self-portraits in Art. These were drawn while looking at upside down photographs of each student, encouraging them to draw what they actually saw, rather than their preconceived notions of their own faces. It's a challenging and rewarding exercise!

Math: Budgeting

In middle school Math today, students formed family units and received paychecks. Their task: create a family budget based on a list of nonnegotiable costs (house payments, car insurance, food, etc) and potential wants that the family might have (cell phones, entertainment expenses, clothing). After creating workable budgets based on their shared resources, they were thrown some of life's curveballs: How does your budget change if one of your family members loses their job? What if a baby comes along? 

Ask your child how their family did today!

Writer's Workshop: Tiny Tales

Writing Workshop: Today, we worked on creating "tiny tales." Meant to be concise, but evocative, condensed, but rich, we talked about writing stories in which every character, sentence, and word is very deliberately chosen so that not a moment is wasted. 

Ask your child about their story!

Latin: The founding of Rome

Learning about the mythological founding of the city of Rome in Latin.

Happy New Year!

We're right back into the swing of things, after a long, restful beak (and a few snow days). Here we see Sam talking to the entire middle school about the mathematics of cities (our theme for the next two months). 

The conversation covered a lot of ground, and was largely guided by a read aloud of this article: Life in the City Is Essentially One Giant Math Problem