Jason's Class S-K Archive : May 2016

It is astonishingly difficult to get ten different kids to 1.) smile, 2.) keep their eyes open, and 3.) look at a camera at the same time.

In this blog post, enjoy the many attempts that I made, along with a smattering of various happenings from the last few weeks.

Here's a video that you may have seen over email. Ella has called it "the trailer for our class."

We've had a few birthdays lately. It's a class tradition to allow the birthday person to choose a class activity in celebration. On Ella's birthday, she opted for "class karaoke." Watch the video below at your peril.

There has been a lot of wetland exploration at recess.

Shan was unexpectedly out sick for PE one day, so we picked a park, got on a bus, and headed over to check it out.

In Math, kids are doubling down on their book work, setting personal goals for the end of the year. Some classes are spent working toward those goals, others are spent playing math games. Here are a couple of moments from a class game of Farkle, which is a favorite.

There have been a number of presentations lately. We've been learning about the American Revolution, and Nick prepared a lecture on the military tactics of that time.

Later, Miel and Bora presented on guinea pigs, complete with a guest appearance by Miel's pets.

Oliver the human meets Oliver the guinea pig.

Our milkweed & monarch project continues to require a significant amount of work. The good news is that our beds are almost prepared.

This was on Juna's birthday. This probably wasn't how she planned on spending it.

Rest for the weary.

Our impact study. We delicately examine logs, looking to see what might be living in the area where we were digging.

Here's what we found! These are the mystery eggs discovered beneath a log (pillbug provided for scale). Any ideas on what they are?

This is the site where we harvested soil for our beds. What is the impact of our actions? What did this site look like before, and what will it look like after we've gone? Now that we've seen the small impact that we made, we were led to wonder where soil purchased from stores comes from?

When we return from our spring trip, we'll be forging ahead to get things planted and established before the end of school.

The last several weeks have been informed by learning about two types of monarch, both of which have been cast aside by Americans. One was intentional (King George III, during the American Revolution), the other has been an unintended consequence of the rise of industrialized farming in the United States (the migrating monarch butterfly).
You may recall some of our work earlier in the year inspired by Last Chance to See, a powerful and entertaining book by Douglas Adams. In it, Adams and naturalist Mark Carwardine travel the world in search of some of the most endangered animals on the planet.

It is a sad truth that there are endangered species in every region of the world, including our own. Rather than view this as an immutable fact beyond our control, our class has opted to actively work to reverse the fortunes of a familiar, but threatened species: the migratory monarch butterfly.

The monarch is striking and iconic. If asked to picture a butterfly, most people will likely conjure a monarch in their mind. It is a widespread species, but the insects that we see in Michigan are part of a remarkable annual migration that becomes more miraculous and mysterious the more you learn about it.

There is (of course) a Wikipedia article about this migration, but in brief: Monarch butterflies take part in a migration that begins in the mountains of Mexico, passes through the continental United States, and concludes in Canada, where they reverse course and head back South. The remarkable thing about this is that the annual migration takes five generations of monarchs to complete. The butterflies that start out in Mexico are not the ones that arrive in our state months later, but their grandchildren. How these butterflies know to consistently follow these paths of their ancestors is a mystery to science.

It's also a phenomenon that is in danger of disappearing.

Monarchs are wholly dependent on milkweed, on which they lay their eggs during this long journey. Familiar caterpillars soon hatch, feast on the leaves, create a chrysalis, and emerge in their adult stage two weeks later.

Milkweed, formerly quite plentiful, is being wiped out en masse as an unintended side effect of the proliferation of industrial farming. Pesticides meant to protect crops have eradicated milkweed populations, significantly fragmenting and reducing a vital resource for the monarchs.

Happily, there are simple things that people can do to help.

The most passive is to learn what milkweed looks like, and take care not to remove or poison it if you happen to have it on your property. Milkweed has a bit of a public relations problem. It has the word "weed" right in its name, and it tends to grow in unpredictable places from year to year, confounding gardeners of a more controlling nature. One of the many things we hope to do is to work to rehabilitate the reputation of this important plant.

A screenshot of recently spotted monarchs.
Visit this link for an interactive version.

Our class has opted to take a more proactive approach. We have spent the last several weeks researching and planning a monarch waystation, which we're developing on the campus of Summers-Knoll. It is taking shape just outside of the windows of the 5/6 classrooms. As of today, there are two raised beds (constructed by Chris Swinko and his 3/4 class) that will eventually be stocked with native flowering plants that will bloom throughout the spring and summer, and milkweed that has been cultivated from local sources.

It has been quite a project. This is an interdisciplinary affair, born in Science class, but taking significant portions of our homeroom time. Science Teacher Lisa has a certified monarch waystation at her home, and she has served as an inspiration, mentor, and guide in this endeavor.

Our grand plan goes beyond simply creating a waystation at school. We also hope to cultivate and distribute milkweed to all who are willing to grow it at their homes. This means that we've been trying to grow our own milkweed from seed. Teams of students have been attempting to cultivate seeds in our classroom and in the greenhouse, experimenting in order to determine the most effective ways to grow milkweed from seed.

We've also been tracking existing monarchs. Studying monarchs is an excellent way to engage as citizen scientists, with enthusiastic hobbyists and naturalists collecting and sharing data about milkweed and monarch sightings. Kids can be found checking this site daily. (Ask your child about it!)

The project has offered many authentic opportunities for genuine science. For example, rather than simply buying topsoil from a retailer, we are trying to "mine" our own campus for material. One day found all of our students working in teams to collect soil samples from various places on the Summers-Knoll grounds to determine the best site to take soil.

When it was determined that the most fertile soil seemed to be in our woods just beyond the playground, we decided that we needed to do a mini-environmental impact study. What would it mean for us to move into a previously undisturbed area to remove several dozen cubic feet of soil? To find out, we trekked carefully into the woods to see what was living back there.

What we found surprised us all.

We are currently attempting to identify the source of a clutch of eggs found beneath a log near our vernal pool. Our initial suspicion is that our small woods may be home to a population of reclusive salamanders. We are trying to verify this through online research and reaching out to herpetologists. Stay tuned for updates!

I also mentioned that other monarch earlier in this post. As part of our background preparation for our upcoming Spring trip to Philadelphia, we have been studying colonial America and the American Revolution. We've been using a number of sources in order to get a well-rounded look at this period of history. We have read selections from Joy Hakim's A History of US series, watched selections from the HBO series John Adams, and listened to selections from the recent Broadway phenomenon Hamilton. We've also done a close reading and discussion of the United States Declaration of Independence, and we've been barreling through our current read aloud book, Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson.