Jason's Class S-K Archive : Projects

Showing posts with label Projects. Show all posts

Friday, October 21, 2016

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.

Friday, April 15, 2016

POOT: The Place Out of Time banquet

We began our first week back after Spring Break with a couple of field trips.

The first was to the University of Michigan School of Education for the annual Place Out of Time banquet. There were a couple hundred students in attendance from Michigan and Ohio, ranging from 5th graders through high school. Check out this video to get a glimpse of the event (apologies in advance for the wobbliness of the camera):

Chatting with Joanna at our weekly morning assembly

On Tuesday, we took a trip to Hill Auditorium to hear a performance of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra.

(I confess that this would be much more effective if there was audio.)

Friday, March 18, 2016

Pi, Pie, and Politics

Music Class

We've had a busy week! Here's a sampling of what's been going on lately.

On Monday, our class led the weekly, school-wide assembly. We opted to talk about our work in the Place Out of Time project. After a quick explanation of what Place Out of Time (POOT) actually is, we demonstrated the "POOT Switch." This is the switch found in our classroom that I periodically flip for classroom conversations that are conducted entirely as our POOT characters. It's a fun (and slightly terrifying) aspect of the POOT experience. When the POOT switch is flipped to "ON," kids know that I will only address them as their characters. If they attempt to respond in any way as "themselves," they know that I will treat them as if they are still their character, but having some sort of episode. POOT works best if everyone is buying into the concept, and this is invaluable (and fun!) practice.

We've prepared for this activity in two ways. First, we've learned some of the basic rules of improvisational theater. There are many schools of thought in improv, but there are some fairly universal tenets that are actually pretty useful tools for everyday life. The most ubiquitous of those rules is "Yes, and..."

The basic idea is that when you are improvising, you must accept whatever is given to you, and then build on it. If I address you as if you are former President Richard Nixon, you not only have to accept it, but add to the conversation. You can never "negate" something that's been offered, or the whole thing falls apart.

The second concept that we've used for this activity is "No Permanent Damage." We're all filled with all sorts of fears, both rational and the opposite. How can you distinguish a fear that is keeping you safe, from a fear that is keeping you from experiencing something positive?

Here is a simple test that you can conduct any time you're deciding whether or not to engage in an activity that is causing you apprehension: If you're feeling nervous or unsure about something, ask yourself, "By doing this, am I exposing myself to a risk that could potentially cause me true and permanent damage? Might I lose a toe, go blind, or earn an unsightly scar?"

If the answer is no, go ahead and try it! For example, the worst case scenario of improvising as a historical figure in front of your classmates is that you might be a little embarrassed if you say something truly ridiculous. Embarrassment isn't permanent damage, so you can feel safe giving it a whirl.

Everyone involved did a great job of rolling with the questions that I asked them, and part of the fun of the exercise is wriggling your way out of answering a question that you are unsure about. For example, I asked Kaz (portraying futbol legend Pelé) how his children felt about his fame. Kaz had no idea what the real Pelé felt about this, so he responded with, "I don't talk about my children publicly." Brilliant!

Monday was also 3/14: Pi Day!

We combined our math group with Sam's to discuss the concept of Pi in a number of ways. The most important thing that came from the day was talking about how mathematics is much, much more than arithmetic.

A significant part of elementary and middle school math revolves around learning arithmetic: Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. It gets dressed up a bit the further along you get (fractions, decimals, ratios, percentages, etc), but it's ultimately all still the same thing: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. They are crucial tools to learn, but they're still just tools. Math is much more than that.

Sam returns! He shared photos of his new daughter Maddy, as well as pie!

This election season... Oof. As you might imagine, the kids have it on their minds. We used it this week to demonstrate some applied mathematics that goes beyond simple arithmetic.

The branches of government. We've gone over this a few times over the last few weeks as we've tried to understand exactly what the President of the United States can and cannot do.

We talked about how the United States has a representative democracy, not a direct democracy. A direct democracy would find us voting on each and every single proposed law at the local, state, and federal level. Few of us have the time for this, so we elect representatives to vote in our best interests instead. It's a useful system, but there are issues with it. One of them is that people have been using math to game the system for generations: Gerrymandering.

We talked about gerrymandering as a concept, and looked at some examples of it in action. First up is a very clear model of how it works:

Here's the political cartoon that first articulated the practice:

Here are some notoriously gerrymandered congressional districts in the United States:

Finally, we tried our hands at manipulating elections. Here's one of the exercises we did together:

In this particular scenario, the Democrats outnumber the Republicans. However, it is possible to draw four districts (with six "cities" each) that allows the Republicans to win the election. (It must be noted that all political parties have been guilty of engaging in this practice.)

Math and civics! It turns out that they have a lot to do with one another!

Thursday, January 28, 2016

Week 19: Hodge Podge

We kicked off the week with some highly anticipated news: We received our Place Out of Time character assignments from our friends at the University of Michigan. In our class, we'll be spending the next couple of months getting to know Pelé, Millard Fillmore, Rachel Carson, Henry Clay Frick, Raina Telgemeier, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Elon Musk, Richard Nixon, and Manfred con Richthofen (also known as "the Red Baron").
We're just dipping our toes into the research phase of the project this week, but things will progress quickly moving forward. Everyone is using a fairly comprehensive research log to help guide their inquiry into the life and time of their character. To take a look at the template, click here. Each child has their own copy on Google Drive, so be sure to chat with your child about what they're learning. (They can share their actual research log with you, if you like!) We'll be doing online research at school, as well as attempting to find books at the library, but feel free to help your child seek out material outside of school as well! In addition to the learning about each character, we'll all be learning research skills and strategies, the difference between primary and secondary sources, and the importance of citing sources of information.

We're also continuing with a much smaller scale research and presentation project this week. As mentioned in a previous blog entry, each student was tasked with researching and presenting on a species that is threatened or endangered in Michigan.

Eva presents on the Canadian Lynx.

Ella presents on the Karner blue butterfly.

Nick tells us about the plight of the Indiana bat.

Bora lectures on the rufa red knot.

This project has dovetailed with a project in science class, in which each student has been tasked with creating a new species, drawn from both their imaginations and a real-world understanding of body systems and ecosystems. (And in Latin, the kids have been working to give their animals realistic scientific names for the genus and species of their creation.)

Ask your child about their animal!

We also watched Sticky, which is a dreamy and lovely animated documentary that tells the remarkable story of a species categorized as extinct many decades ago. The first third of the twenty minute film is wordless. It's well worth a viewing:

Sticky on Vimeo.

Friday, December 4, 2015

Weeks 9 - 13: Miscellany

I take a lot of photos over the course of a week. Here's a smattering of odds and ends from recent weeks.

Juna is camera shy.

Her classmates are not.

Henry!

Guest artist Leslie Sobel came to share her work with us several weeks ago. The middle school recently visited an exhibition of her work at the Village Theater in Canton. Monica has an entry up on her Middle School Art Blog as well.

Touring the theater

Nick!

We've been studying body systems in Science. Here are some photos of our class constructing a device to simulate the lung.

And here we see kids puzzling through the muscular-skeletal system. They are attempting to construct a "muscle" that mimics the hinge joint of the human elbow.

Silent reading time:

Each Monday morning, the whole school gathers for an assembly. Here, the student government representatives articulate and demonstrate the rights and responsibilities that they have come up with.

Using the windows as a giant light box for tracing.

Bora!

As part of our exploration of the various body systems, we've been constructing paper models of ourselves with each system taped inside. It's yielded some odd photo opportunities.