Week 8 -- Myth and culture

Juna, a Summers-Knoll alum, visited us recently. She was part of the class that started our monarch and milkweed project, so we ceremonially tagged her with a monarch sticker before sending off on her way. 

Our reading of Napoleon Chagnon’s writing on the Yanomamo continued to inspire spirited conversation this week, as we learned more details about their customs and beliefs. As we discussed aspects that we disagreed with, or found uncomfortable (gender roles, for example, are much more strict and immutable than in our own culture), we began exploring toward the question “what is the function of a culture?” This line of inquiry dovetails with our examination of the purposes of stories and myths in different cultures. To this end, we also took a closer look at a more commonly known myth: The story of Demeter, Persephone, and the changing of the seasons. We also read one of the Grimm fairy tales, called The Seven Ravens. It’s not one of the well known ones, and it has some peculiar twists.

This is the result of a "chalk talk," during which a question is posed, and then people silently respond on the board. Conversations develop, ideas are floated, grievances are aired. 

A landmark moment occurred on Thursday, when I handed each student a folder full of all of the writing that I’ve been collecting from them from the first eight weeks of school. They spend some time rereading what they’ve produced, and selected items that they were proud of, things that they thought were funny, and pieces that they’d like to either continue, or begin a second draft of.

In our math group, we spent Tuesday practicing the strategy of looking for patterns to solve problems, Thursday was devoted to math games, and Friday found us back at work in our Singapore books.

Week 7 - Where we've been, where we're going

We go outside unless the weather is truly dangerous, which means we endure the occasional rain shower. This inspired some kids to come up with a hands-free way to hold umbrellas. 

Much of this week was spent reflecting on what we’ve done this year to inform what will come next. The monarchs have flown, and planting season is far away, so our milkweed and monarch thoughts have turned toward what next steps we’d like to take in this developing program. On Monday, we shared our brainstorming for what we’d like to do during this year (make videos, write guides, author books), and what we’d like to see happening with the project five years from now (S-K families making gardens at their homes, collecting scientifically useful data, partnering with other schools and organizations). Some of these projects will be completed this year, others will be things that we build toward over time.

We’ve also shifted the focus of our study of the Yanomami, turning toward the myths and legends of their culture. This year’s school play will have a mythology theme, and our class will be adapting one of their myths for our portion of the script . To that end, we’re also learning about what myths are, especially in terms of how they are passed down to teach the values of a culture. Studying the stories that a culture shares can give insight to what that culture values. (If you dare, ask one of the students about the story of how humans first obtained fire.)

As always, we’ve also had a couple of writing prompts. In our journals, we responded to the Theodore Roosevelt quote, “Knowing what’s right doesn’t mean much unless you do what’s right,” while our creative writing prompt was, “You are a dragon raised by a family of turkeys. Describe the moment that you discovered your true identity.” Responses varied.

In math, we continued to work with Sam’s math group on learning the various ways to plot data about monarch development, while also devoting two days to work on our individual Singapore progress.

Week 6 -- Milkweed hunt, rising tigers, and graphing caterpillars

Scenes from a milkweed scouting mission

We finished reading The Tiger Rising this week, analyzing its rich figurative language (we’ve been focusing on metaphor and personification), as well as the author’s use of parallels and imagery. We’ve discussed the book extensively as a group throughout our reading, and now students are reflecting on it individually through a series of questions. We also had opportunity to sample some novels individually this week. I gave very brief introductions to about a dozen novels that the class was unfamiliar with, then they each picked one and read it for about thirty minutes. Afterwards, they wrote a quick review of their thoughts on it, indicating if they might like to continue reading it, or move along to something else next time. (Ask your child what they sampled and how they felt about it!)

Our journal writing prompt this week is “do you enjoy sharing your writing with other people?” As you might imagine, opinions vary. Another writing prompt this week was “describe a day in class from the teacher’s point of view,” which has given them all a chance at expressing some empathy for their teacher. Through it, I’ve learned that they have some strange ideas about what I actually think from moment to moment.

We also returned to reading Napoleon Chagnon’s Yanomamo: The Fierce People, which always leads to rich discussions about how complicated it is to examine a culture that is very different from your own. The class delighted in hearing how the Yanomami subverted Chagnon’s attempt to create detailed genealogies of the villages he visited. Ask your child why they didn’t want to help, and how they tricked him. It’s a pretty good story.

In math, our group has merged with Sam’s to do some graphing work on the data that the 5th and 6th graders have been collecting about their monarchs. We worked in groups to accurately graph the growth rates and pupation point of several of our caterpillars, then began discussing how we can draw conclusions from those graphs when viewing them.

Week 5 -- Monarch release!

This week saw a grand finale of sorts as we assembled the combined 5/6 classes on the playground to do a mass release of the many monarchs that we have shepherded from caterpillar to butterfly. This is the generation of monarchs who will work their way all the way down to Northern Mexico, where they will spend the winter. When spring arrives, their offspring will begin working their way north again. All of the monarchs released from Summers-Knoll have been tagged by students, so our fingers are crossed that we may one day get word of where they end up.

These are the tags that we put on the wing of each butterfly released from Summers-Knoll. Keen-eyed butterfly observers along the migration route sometimes come across tagged butterflies, and report the sighting to Monarch Watch. 

As we conclude this phase of the project, we are turning our eyes toward the future, participating in a brainstorming session to envision where we’d like the project go from here. What do we want to accomplish with it by the end of the school year? What might it look like one year after that? What should it look like in five year’s time? The ideas that we generate and agree upon will inform what our next steps will be with this exciting endeavor.

Feeding a monarch before release

Meanwhile, we are rapidly approaching the climax of The Tiger Rising, a novel that we’re reading together as a class. We generally have a brief discussion at the end of each chapter, discussing the text and making observations and connections. On Monday, one such discussion ballooned to a remarkable degree as kids started debating the ethics and morality of zoos. This led to Tuesday’s journal writing prompt, “How do you feel about zoos?” Many kids filled pages with their thoughts, and the conversation is clearly far from over.

Our math group met only three times this week, on account of our Professional Development day, so Monday was devoted to a group problem solving activity focused on creating an organized list and using it to analyze data (ask your kids about glass fish, gouramis, and neon tetras), while Tuesday and Friday were both spent working independently in math books for some, and continuing assessments for others.