Science: Building the digestive system

As part of our Identity theme, we're learning about the different human body systems during our Science classes with Lisa. Check out her recent blog entry to see how we're learning about the digestive system!

Measuring and recording the lengths of our innards

If we could stretch our digestive systems out, they'd be about this long (and much bigger and messier).

In addition to the yarn models, we created models of our stomachs using plastic bags, complete with juices to replicate the conditions inside of them. We inserted torn up ("chewed") bread and corn, then spent some time mashing the food up to observe the results. It was both interesting and gross! 

Art field trip to the UMMA

A tradition: taking a group shot of the 5/6s at the Cube

On Thursday, the entire 5/6 took a trip to the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) to view some exhibits that related to their developing portrait work. Monica has written a bit about it on her blog, which can be found here. (Check it weekly! She updates every Friday!)

(In her entry discussing this field trip, she mentions that photography was forbidden, which meant that she couldn't get any photos of the kids working. I was unaware of the no photography rule at first, so I inadvertently violated that policy. If you keep it quiet, I'll show you a few of the photos that I got before a security guard politely asked me to put away my camera. SHHHH.... IT'S OUR SECRET.) 

Monica had us spend about fifteen minutes sketching our own versions of a piece. 

2015-2016 Jason's Class Schedule

Equality, Justice, Harrison Bergeron, and the Global Village

Nick and Eva spy a visitor to the Howell Nature Center Global Village.

We began our week in the spotlight, as it was the job of the 5/6s to lead our Monday morning assembly. Each Monday morning, all of the students, staff, and faculty (and occasional parents, grandparents, and other family members!) gather in the atrium for a community gathering. A different homeroom leads the meeting each week, often taking the opportunity to share something that's been going on in our classes. 

We chose to spotlight our trip to the Howell Nature Center Global Village, and we adapted the skits that they wrote and performed there for the Summers-Knoll community. While writing them, the kids were very thoughtful about how to best convey what we had learned to the wide age range of our audience. The Global Village trip is a fun and exciting experience, but the underlying message is quite serious. The fifth and sixth graders felt enlightened about the severity of inequity in the world, but they didn't want to disturb, for example, their Kindergarten compatriots while sharing what they had learned. We opted to share our direct experiences, and only briefly touch on the larger issues. It allowed us to introduce some ideas, and hopefully generate some conversation and thought. 

As I narrated, the entire group of fifth and sixth graders acted out brief skits about the challenges and triumphs of the trip: Learning to communicate with each other, bartering for resources, starting a cooking fire, trying to cook with limited ingredients, and eventually trying to fall asleep in cramped and primitive quarters. It was a fun and breezy presentation, that will hopefully generate further conversations.

---

And since we're talking about equality... 

This image always gets people talking. I'll come back to it in a moment. 

As part of a beginning-of-the-year writing exercise, I was asking the kids about the basic elements of a story. They quickly rattled off "characters, plot, and setting," but when someone said "theme," many had a hard time explaining what it meant. As a result, I did a read aloud of a Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Have you read it? If not, you can do so here. Go on! It's a very quick read. I'll wait....

While you do that, here's a photo of Henry, Niko, Kaz, and Eva celebrating their success at keeping their Global Village balloon baby alive through the night. 

Well, what did you think? Vonnegut really yanks the rug out from under you at the end there, doesn't he? 

Harrison Bergeron is a great story to read with 5th and 6th graders. It's funny, brief, and features a big idea that's played out to an almost cartoonish degree. The idea of mandatory equality appeals to them, just as much as the implementation of concept in the story appalls them. (And I've found that the concept of the ear piece broadcasting thought-scattering noises every twenty seconds is a great thing to reference during the times in the year when interrupting each other becomes an issue. Blurting things out when we're having a group conversation causes everyone to have to mentally reset over and over.) (If you haven't read Harrison Bergeron, and you just skimmed past that link earlier, this sentence made no sense to you. For shame.) 

Kids like to talk about the different handicaps mentioned in the story, which gets us into talk about why the characters in the story would willfully submit to them (and why other characters would attempt to subvert them). The discussion eventually turns to the idea of equality not necessarily being an inherently good thing, as exemplified by the Equality Versus Justice cartoon above. 

Of course, Vonnegut's story is satirical, and being very bright kids, they realized that the society represented in the story didn't match either side of the Equality Versus Justice image. In fact, the equality in Harrison Bergeron was best represented by this image:  

Equal!

One can interpret Vonnegut's story a number of ways (and people have! Not always to Vonnegut's satisfaction...), which is another great reason to read it with kids who are expanding their understanding of social justice, while also developing a sense of the power of writing. 

Howell Nature Center Global Village field trip!

Whew! We have successfully completed our once-every-two-years trip to the Howell Nature Center Global Village! There will soon come a day when I will write up a proper post about our experiences, but it is not today, as I am ready for a good, long nap. To tide you over, please check out the page for our class Twitter feed. There, you will find a chronicle of our adventures (tweeted in reverse chronological order). 

Here's a sampling of the photos that you'll find there! (Captions and context to be provided in a proper post later. Better yet, ask your child about them!)

Science: "Enigma Cylinders" (and banana phones)

As you may know, Lisa Johnson (famous and beloved for bringing Fish Lab to Summers-Knoll) has joined our faculty as a science teacher. We'll be co-teaching science this year, and we ran a fantastic activity on class on Monday. I'll tell you all about it, just as soon as Bora finishes this phone call. 

Bora blatantly violating our "no phones during the school day" rule

We wanted the kids to get the kids "doing science" early and often this year, but many people have differing ideas about what that actually means. To get us all thinking about what science really is, we introduced the class to some mysterious objects that we call "Enigma Cylinders." 

As an educator, this activity was incredibly easy to run: We simply passed out a few of the cylinders to the kids. Before we had a chance to bore them with directions, they all instantly snapped into the mindset of scientists. They furrowed their brows, tugged at strings, and started talking. 

First they made observations, then they started offering possible explanations for what they were seeing. Before long, they were sketching. By the time Lisa and I actually told them that they'd be attempting to make their own models of this contraption, most of them were already well on their way to sketching potential designs. All of this was pure inquiry. It required so little direction from us that I was able to film them in action. Check out the following video, which picks up immediately after handing kids the cylinders. None of what you hear them saying is in response to questions that we've posed to them. If you've ever wanted to be a fly on the wall during a Summers-Knoll class, this is the video for you:

As mentioned in the video, all three groups eventually constructed models that seemed to be reasonable facsimiles of the cylinders that they examined. However, Lisa and I have vowed to never reveal the inner workings of our actual cylinders, as that's part of true science! There are many things in this universe that we will never truly know. 

Lisa gave a great example: We will never know for certain what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. Never! We do, however, have a very good hypothesis or two about what happened to them. And as we collectively learn more about the world, we can revise our hypothesis (or throw it out entirely if compelling evidence demands it). In many ways, science demands failure and revision. We will encourage both over the course of this school year (and beyond)!

But enough about Science. Let's check in with Bora. How's that phone call going, Bora? 

See? This is why we make kids keep them in their backpacks. 

Welcome to the 2015-2016 school year! - Week one in review

Wow! Just like that, we've completed our first week of school! It's only Friday evening, but the first day jitters seem like a distant memory as we've all settled into our new class. Read on for a brief overview of the various threads of study that we began this week!

But first, say hello to the mysterious, affable, two-headed creature that we call Junella.

Identity Theme - Communities

Our first theme for the school year is Identity. One of the ways that we'll be exploring this topic is by taking a closer look at our own identities. There are many ways to think about who we are as individuals, and one particularly useful one is to think about what communities we are members of. After some discussion, we filled out charts listing (some of) our various communities, along with the benefits we receive for being a part of them, and the responsibilities that we have to them. 

For example, everyone listed their immediate families as one such community. The benefits they receive are food, shelter, love, safety, etc. Each person had different responsibilities to their family, such as doing chores, going to school, being kind, and so on. 

Other examples of communities were sports teams, the city of Ypsilanti, the city of Ann Arbor, the Summers-Knoll School community, our classroom community, the State of Michigan, the United States. Some kids thought even more broadly: We are a one species, and we are all citizens of the world. 

Everyone was able to think of several communities, as well as list some benefits that come along with being a part of that community. On one level, this got us all thinking a little more pointedly about the privileges and advantages that we are afforded in our lives. (And our upcoming field trip to Howell Nature Center will reinforce and expand this concept!) 

By also thinking about our responsibilities to these communities, it made us a little more conscious about what we're doing to serve and support them, and perhaps how we might be able to be even more mindful about them. (So feel free to use this weekend to try and encourage your child to pick up a few more household chores.) 

---

Technology at Summers-Knoll -- Crafting our technology guidelines

Each member of our class will soon be issued a Chromebook laptop for school use. These marvelous machines are remarkably useful tools, and we'll have them out regularly. However, learning to use them properly is fraught with peril. First of all, we all have to agree what "properly" means! Each year, we work with students to help them craft their own set of guidelines for safe, productive use of technology at Summers-Knoll. 

We began with a group brainstorming session with Jason's Class and Sam's Class working together to get our ideas going. What are some things that we shouldn't do with our computers? What are some things that we should do with them? Students then broke off into small groups to come up with guidelines that they felt were reasonable. ("Don't have food or liquid near your computer." "Do good work." "Don't get out your computer unless you've asked or been told to get it." "Use appropriate search terms." "Make sure your computer is plugged in at the end of the day.") 

Then we came back together and shared our drafts of items for our technology agreement. Once we've drafted it (and made sure that we didn't miss anything important), students will read through the rules that they created (and that we approved) and sign an agreement to abide by the guidelines. 

Giving the students an active role in the creation of these guidelines instills a sense of ownership in them that is far more powerful than simply being handed a list of rules to follow. It also gets them thinking about the challenges and issues that they will face over the years as they venture online more frequently. 

---

Stepping up and helping out
As recess was wrapping up on Thursday, we had an impromptu opportunity to help our our community. Shan had the Kindergarteners out on the playground as part of a science scavenger hunt, and one of her students got cut. As Shan tended to the (very minor, but bleeding and potentially disturbing image for our littlest students) wound, each of the 5th/6th graders quickly paired off and teamed up with a Kindergartener and proceeded to help them out with their task, while Shan took time to clean and bandage the cut. 

Ella takes a photo of her Kindergartener's find.

One of the best ways to bring out the best in older kids is to have them work with their younger schoolmates. It was lovely to see in action. 

---

Identity Theme: What is an American?

As another way to explore the concept of identity, we began a study of American history. There are many possible points to begin this story, and I've chosen the epic tale of Cabeza de Vaca. 

If you don't know his story, it's worth looking into. Cabeza de Vaca was part of a doomed conquistador expedition to the mainland of North America. Things went... poorly, and eventually only four explorers were left to struggle their way across this new (to them) continent. Along the way, they were attacked, befriended, enslaved, and borderline worshipped, depending on the disposition of the local population. Operating without the benefit of European technology (armor, weapons, horses), the stranded explorers were forced to deal with North America on its own terms, as opposed to acting like conquerors. 

It is for this reason that I've chosen to use this story as our entrance point to American history. It provides context for the strong European heritage of the United States, while still acknowledging the fact that the Americas were first populated by large numbers of complex and distinct societies. Cabeza de Vaca's experiences give us a unique glimpse into these cultures (albeit viewed through a European lens). 

They were eventually "rescued" eight years later, and Cabeza de Vaca prepared a lengthy and surprisingly accurate report for Spain, particularly given the fact that he did it all from memory. He had no way of recording information during this journey. In addition to describing the people and customs of the societies that they encountered, Cabeza de Vaca advocated for more peaceful and humane interactions between the Native Americans and the Spanish, a position that was rejected. 

We're using two books for this part of our studies. One is a translation of the report authored by Cabeza de Vaca himself (vocabulary term: Primary source!), and the other is a book that tells the tale as we understand it today (vocabulary term: Secondary source!). 

---

These were but a few of the happenings this week. We also visited all of our specialist classes (Math, Latin, French, Mandarin, PE, Music, Art, and Science. Science was particularly cool, and I'll add some photos to the blog soon! 

Thank you to everyone for a wonderful first week!