Week 27 -- Cover your cough, wash your hands

Checking on the tulips that we planted earlier this year

As I’m sure you’re aware, our class has been ravaged by illness for the last two weeks, making the daily taking of the attendance a somber affair. Happily, we have plenty of ongoing project work that lends itself well to independent and small group work.

Recess across the street at County Farm Park

Place Out of Time is, of course, an ongoing concern, and there has been plenty of (make belief) drama in the simulation in general, and among our class in general. On a grand scale, a photo has emerged of the shoplifter at the center of our case dining at a very expensive, exclusive restaurant with Mr. Steven Spielberg. What are we to make of the supposedly homeless, impoverished Mr. Roman Ostriakov dining on a $600 dinner? Opinions varied, as you might imagine. More specific to our classroom, three of our students have been selected as justices in the trial, which makes them focal points in the online conversations. As a result, we’ve spent a lot of time reading messages and posts from other participants, trying to parse useful, if pointed questioning from things that feel more antagonistic, and then crafting appropriate responses. The Place Out of Time banquet will be on the Monday afternoon when we get back from break. Costumes are optional, but encouraged, so if you’re so inclined, it might be worth having a chat over break about how to best represent our characters for Monday. Some people go all out, others simply wear a name tag (and perhaps carry something that indicates who they are). Take a look at this blog entry from a few years ago to get a sense of the range of what people have done.

There's a lot of dancing in our group. 

Kids also spent time working on their biome games, most of which are nearing the home stretch, as well as squeezing in some work on our art projects.

There's also a fair amount of singing. 

It was a short week for math groups, which was spent doing a combination of Singapore book work, math games, and trying out a new math game called Prime Climb.

Have a great break!

Week 26 -- Tom Joad and dying houseplants

Place Out of Time remains in full swing. On Monday, we went over the transcript of court testimony of Mr. Tom Joad (the fictional character from The Grapes of Wrath) who spoke on the topic of human dignity. Meanwhile, the justices for the trial have been chosen, and they are all now vying for “votes of confidence.” It’s a concept too involved to explain here, but ask your child about it. On a less intense level, one of our warm-ups this week was to draw (or write about) our POOT characters doing something typical. For example, what was something that Stephen Hawking might be doing regularly?

Hedy Lamarr acting

A fun writing prompt this week was “a houseplant is dying. Tell it why it needs to live.” Kids write letters, short scenes, and impassioned speeches, some of which were then delivered to an actual dying houseplant that I borrowed from the science room. The prognosis for the plant is, I believe, quite positive.

Working on luminaries in Art

We also made progress in our current read aloud, which is Code Talker by Joseph Bruchac. It tells a fictionalized account of the true story of the Navajo code talkers of WWII. It’s a remarkable story that’s worth learning a little more about.

We also took an all-middle school field trip to Hill Auditorium to see the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra perform a number of pieces, including a portion of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite. It’s a piece that is familiar to our class because we watched an animated interpretation of it from Fantasia 2000 earlier this year.

In math group, we’ve been doubling down on making progress in our Singapore work, focusing on making individual progress in our books, while occasionally taking breaks to play math games like Farkle and Uno.

Week 25 -- Pi, pi, shoplifting, and justice

Recording our gravity car trials in science 

The Place Out of Time trial has begun in earnest, and we spent part of this week unpacking the opening arguments of the plaintiff and the defense. As mentioned previously, our case involves the true story of the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation overturning the conviction of a homeless man who shoplifted approximately $4.70 worth of food because he was in “a state of need.” It’s a very interesting story, and it’s well worth reading a little about it. It captures a lot of what’s in the political climate of our country at the moment, while being far enough removed to allow some perspective.

Our trial in the Place Out of Time courtroom is a fictional extension of the story. The plaintiff in our case is the shopkeeper whose merchandise was stolen in the first place. She asserts that human need and dignity are obviously important matters for a society to address, but the fact remains that it was her store and property that were affected. A law was broken, and she was directly impacted. Doesn’t this ruling send a message that anyone can come in and take her property? She makes a compelling argument, and the defense has the job of convincing us that the court’s ruling should stand. Everyone is wrestling with this issue, both in-character and as themselves.

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Winter came back for a bit this week:

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Henry pits readers against each other. 

Meanwhile, a conversation that began during our weekly library time with Rachel led to this week’s journal prompt: “Novels versus Graphic Novels!” Students were encouraged to explore the pros and cons of each as a storytelling medium, and to write about how they interact with each. It was a unique prompt, in that kids were given the option of responding in prose, text, or some hybrid of both. Some kids who enthusiastically leapt to respond in a comic format realized that it can take a lot longer to write and draw a story than they realized. Many of the responses were playful and clever. Ask your child how they responded!

Joey had the books themselves fight it out. 

In math group, we spent some time working in our Singapore books, but as with every March 14, pi was front and center. On Tuesday, 3/14 (Pi Day), we watched some videos about pi, including one of Vi Hart’s infamous anti-pi rants.

One of the points of her video led us down a bit of a rabbit hole, as we started talking about scales of magnitude and the spaces in between things. This was vividly illustrated by playing with the very illuminating internet tool/toy The Scale of the Universe. Please do yourself a favor and spend several minutes playing with it right now. We also watched the classic Eames film Powers of Ten.



Of course, we are essentially obligated to bring in some sort of actual pie as part of all of this, a task that Sam dutifully took on as our school’s foremost expert on pi, pie, and homophones.

Week 24 -- Greetings from Livonia

Middle school trip to Livonia 

If you encounter one of these brave fifth or sixth graders, be sure to ask them about the food-related science experiment that they participated in at the hands of seventh graders Nick and Owen. (This is their reactions to eating haggis, but before being told what haggis actually is.)

We began the week on Monday digging further into Place Out of Time. We had an interesting in-character conversation (ask your child about "the POOT switch") about their thoughts and experiences breaking social and/or legal boundaries. The issue we're examining with Place Out of Time is if it should be socially and/or legally acceptable to steal something in order to survive. Most of our characters seemed to be in favor of breaching social boundaries on occasion. Transgender activist Jazz Jennings, for example, had thoughts about the social norms that she has felt compelled to break, based on her gender identity. Al Capone felt great about violating legal boundaries, as doing so made him quite wealthy.

Out of character, we had a discussion about the the differences between the ideas of nationalism versus global citizenship, which are two concepts that have been discussed a lot in the world lately. We specifically talked about the nature of the relationship between the United States and Mexico, as well as the role that China (and other parts of Asia) plays in manufacturing things inexpensively for the world. Our journal prompt this week also related to the discussion. Kids were asked to respond to the following quote:

"Poverty is like punishment for a crime you didn't commit." — Eli Khamarov

Responses varied, as you can imagine. These are thorny issues that don't have easy answers. Exploring them together gives us much to think about as we increase our awareness of the nuances of a complex world.

Though this sounds like this may have been a pretty heavy week, our work and conversations have been spirited and engaged.

Spirited and engaged were taken to a new level on Thursday, when the entire middle school traveled to Livonia for a day of socializing and activity at the Recreation Center there. It was a make-up trip for our canceled snow tubing trip (thanks for nothing, global climate change!) and the kids had a great time swimming together, playing basketball and other games, and more. It was a great bonding day, and an excellent way to celebrate a three day weekend.

Week 23 -- Filling in the gaps, fear is a LIAR.

In science, we're continuing to work with our gravity-powered cars. 

After a relaxing week off, we got right to work with an extension to our Place Out of Time timelines project. By now, almost everyone has a detailed timeline of the life of their character posted in the appropriate spot on our giant timeline in the middle school commons. However, most of our characters are clustered in the twentieth century. This week, we have spent some time populating the gaps in our huge timeline to provide more context for the scope of human history. For example, before this week, there were no events recorded in the entire 1400s. Now, there are notes about the world-changing voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492, and another noting that the game of chess was in its modern form by 1475. Each student has been tasked with putting up at least five cards on the timeline this week, with more to come in the weeks ahead. Also POOT-related, Sam led the entire 5-6 group in a discussion about dignity, which is a concept that is the heart of the issue framing Place Out of Time this year.

Calculating averages for each of our trials

We also concluded our read aloud on Monday afternoon. The climax of When You Reach Me is mind-bending and unexpected, revealing the fact that many tiny details along the way were actually clues, laid out like breadcrumbs for the reader to discover. It’s a lovely book that tightly-plotted and bittersweet. Ask your child about “the Laughing Man” and see what they’ll reveal about the story.

Our journal prompt this week was “fear is a liar.” Kids were asked to respond to the idea, considering what it might mean, evaluating the validity of the statement, and coming up with examples that might argue the point either way. Students wrote about how fear was both useful (it keeps you from harm), but also occasionally counterproductive (roller coasters are fun, planes are useful).

Of course, the impending Music Cafe tends to take over the week, so focus quickly shifted toward that by the end of the week.

In math group, we celebrated a couple of kids completing assessments and moving into new books, worked collaboratively on some problems (ask about Danielle, her pet crocodile, the parrot, and the monkey), and had an always-popular math game day.