Continuing and revising our mini-studies

We've been continuing our work on our mini-studies, as mentioned in a previous blog entry. 

Pencils, tagged and being tracked

Students were given three choices for the subject of their study last week, and we've spent the time since then collecting data and fine-tuning (or radically redesigning) our data collection instruments. 

The original assignment 

After spending time working on these studies individually, we gathered today in small groups to reflect: 

This project has been an interesting challenge for us. What is the best way to collect data? What information is important? What's superfluous? What might be valuable later? What if you want to use your data to attempt to answer any of the following questions?: 

Collecting data in an organized, methodical way allows you to analyze it in different ways, some of which you might not anticipate at the beginning of a study. What patterns can be observed? What correlations might be drawn? What questions can be answered, and what further questions are inspired? Students worked in small groups today to share and compare their successes and their struggles, then revise their studies accordingly. 

Lee and Keira, comparing notes on their pencil tracking spreadsheets

It's challenging work, and it's being noticed! Some of the 7/8s became curious about all the oddly-marked pencils and inquired about what was going on. We then learned that a couple of industrious middle schoolers had been collecting all stray pencils that they had been left out all year and stashing them away. This partially solved a long-standing Summers-Knoll mystery this year: where do all of the pencils keep going?? When these enterprising young people realized that those pencils would better serve the community by being returned to circulation, they deposited dozens of them in our communal supply areas, solving our longstanding pencil shortage, while wreaking havoc on some of our studies. Science! 

Also exciting, our studies apparently made the S-K News! 

Student Government: Establishing Rights and Responsibilities

Our fifth and sixth grade representatives to our student government asked for some class time last week to talk about establishing a list of student rights and responsibilities. 

They came with a list that they had generated during their weekly student government lunch session, and asked the class for their input. 

The list so far: 

After a discussion, we agreed that the list was heavy on rights, and a little light on responsibilities. 

Talk to you student about this! What responsibilities should students have to our school community? What responsibilities do we have to our larger communities? 

Artist Martin Cheek presents our new dragon!

We gathered as a school yesterday morning to meet artist Martin Cheek, who created and installed our fabulous new mosaic dragon in the atrium. It's a beautiful addition to our school, be sure to stop in and take a closer look!

Designing a study

We're back to a project involving observational science this week, as students are tasked with creating individual studies to document the fluctuations of temperature in the middle school, the flow of traffic on Platt Road, or the mysterious travels taken by pencils in the S-K middle school. 

Pencils with odd markings are showing up all over the middle school. Each one is from the study of a different student, attempting to track its movements through Summers-Knoll. 

The inspiration for the pencil banding.

Each student is designing their own study, developing a data collection instrument, and attempting to gather data in a useful, meaningful way. By the end of the week, we should be able to draw some conclusions based on the information that we've collected.

Hints of Spring

At long last, we had something approaching decent weather today! We got outside this afternoon for some hard-earned recess, and many kids immediately set to constructing dams like the kinds we've been studying this week. 

While some kids were digging down into the dirt and snow, others were climbing up... 

Five greedy pirates

Adi, Christopher, Matthew, and Lee spent some time in Math today considering the dilemma of the five greedy pirates (they enlisted a basketball in a paper pirate hat as their fifth pirate). 

Check out the problem below!

5th and 6th graders popping up on other blogs...

I periodically make time to check in on all of the other Summers-Knoll blogs to see what's happening around the building. It's always fun and interesting to see the work that other students and teachers are doing. 

I was happy to see some of our kids popping up on other blogs, and I thought you might enjoy a glimpse of our kids through other lenses. 

For example, here's an entry from Joanna's class blog recounting the day that we visited to help the 3/4 class electrify their cardboard homes. (Here's our blog entry about that day, to refresh your memory.) 

Karl's 7/8s recently completed a round of exhibitions of their work, which many of our class attended. Some of our kids wrote blog entry recaps of their experiences: 

Margaret writing about Nico's exhibition 

Sydney writing about Isobel's exhibition

Adi writing about Aristea's exhibition

Kaeli writing about Mike's exhibition

There's always a lot going on at our school. Be sure to check in with the other blogs to see what everyone is up to! 

Guest Speaker Perry Kulper

On Tuesday, we were fortunate to have architect and University of Michigan professor Perry Kulper in to visit with our class. 

Perry showed us an assortment of his fascinating work, and talked about his life as an architect and an artist. He even took some time to offer critiques of some of the collages that our kids are making in Art.

Take a closer look at some of Perry's work here. It's very interesting, and the kids were quite taken with it. 

We were all grateful for Perry's time and the thoughtful discussion that he generated. 

To dam or not to dam?

We've spent the week discussing dams, which, as it turns out, are pretty controversial structures. 

We began with the reading of a hypothetical scenario in a hypothetical town: The tiny town of Rocksburg (population: 900) sits on the (also fictional) Jones River. The citizens are considering approving the construction of a dam on the river two miles upstream from the town. We spent a lot of time mulling over the ramifications of such a structure. 

There are many pros to this idea. For example, it would provide the area with a clean power supply. It would generate a number of jobs in the area, while stimulating the local economy by increasing tax revenues and increasing tourism. The lake created by the dam would help control flooding, provide inexpensive irrigation for farmers, and it would provide needed nesting areas for Bald Eagle populations. 

On the other hand, the local infrastructure would be stressed: Where will the construction crew live? What about their families? How would the roads handle 2000 workers in a town currently populated by 900 people? What about the sewage system? The school system? Looking at the longer term, the dam would create a large lake, where once there was a river. Land that supports a wide variety of species would be lost beneath the newly-formed lake, and the transition from the cool, fast-flowing water of the river to the slower, warmer water of the lake would have a profound effect on the species of fish living there. 

Those are only a few of the pros and cons. There are many others. Read the full scenario here for more details. 

After a group discussion, each student was assigned a role to play. For example, one student might be portraying a land developer who is interested in the building and selling lakeside homes, while another might be acting as a Native American concerned about heritage sites being submerged beneath the new lake. Each student is using the situation to write a short persuasive essay about why the town should or should not vote to construct the dam, based on their character's interests. 

These issues aren't black and white, and today, we ventured out to see how they've played out in our own community. There are a number of dams along the Huron River, and we visited one of them today: 

Barton Dam, frozen solid

Some brave souls ventured the cold and the wind to take a look from the walkway above the floodgates. 

The view from the walkway on the floodgates. Sam and some of our class are visible waving to us on the right. 

Looking straight down from the walkway. There were some amazing ice structures to check out. 

 

Not everyone was complaining about the cold. 

Heading back to the warmth of the buses. 

STEM: Flow in cities and our bodies

As part of our Cities theme, we've talked a lot about the concept of flow. Electricity, water, traffic, people, resources, internet bandwidth, and phone lines are just a few of the many types of flow that are vital to a city's operation. One gauge of a city's health is how efficiently these systems operate. 

In Math today, the blue group (and our visiting fourth grade guests) took this concept and applied it to our bodies, measuring our pulse rate after sitting at rest, then again after doing twenty jumping jacks, and then a third time after quietly stretching out on the floor with our eyes closed for a few minutes. When we saw the changes in the rates after each activity, we talked about the reasons behind them: Why does your heart rate go up during physical exertion? What's happening in your body, and why?