Week 36 -- We have begun our final descent

As I’m sure you know, we had an amazing trip last week, and I heartily recommend you take a look at the previous entries to see what we were up to. We’re not taking a break now that we’re back!

First of all, we’ve clearly wanted to reflect on our adventures in Kentucky (and Ohio), so our warm-up on Monday was to draw a comic depicting one (or more!) favorite moment from the trip. (We also spent some time reflecting on the experience in a more hands-on way: Thoroughly cleaning out the bus that we spent so much time in.) The rest of our homeroom time has been spent either finishing up projects (we ordered our final set of biome game cards!), or enjoying the fruits of our labor (we’ve been able to play several rounds of the completed biome games.)

Much better...

We’ve also spent some time looking through our writing portfolios. Students in our group do a lot of writing over the course of the year, which is often done in small increments. I collect dozens of writing responses from them over the year, then periodically hand their entire folders back so they can see just how much they’ve produced. This week, kids are revisiting their old work one last time, selecting pieces to polish and/or share with the group.

The entire 5/6 group also spent part of Thursday composing group poems (in which multiple people are required to recite the piece), then spent part of Friday performing them for Elaine’s class.

In our math group, we’re also winding down, with some students finishing assessments before the summer begins, and others making progress in their Singapore sequence.

Performing this year's greatest hits in Music

Week 30 -- Choose your own adventure

This week has been a whirlwind of collaboration. On Monday, we began working on an all-class choose-your-own-adventure story. We began by composing the first portion together as a whole-group activity, projecting the story on the big class TV. We took turns offering ideas for plot points and dialogue, finding our way to the first big branching point. We continued on and wrote the first parts of each branch as a group. At that point, we had four stories to continue, so we broke into smaller groups. Those groups continued autonomously, each coming up with their own subsequent branching points and splitting into smaller and smaller groups as the stories progressed. Eventually, everyone will be writing endings individually (and contributing to other storylines as they develop). It’s all being recorded in a crazy shared Google document. It's been a delight to see how the kids have taken the stories in radically different directions. You can sneak a peek of it here, with the caveat that it has not been completed or edited yet.

Thursday was a day that was particularly full of excitement, as we had two dramatic arrivals in our classroom. First of all, sturdy new tables arrived to replace the rickety ones that we had been working with. The class reacted passionately against them. (They sometimes fear change.) Eventually, an elite tiger team of go-getters took it upon themselves to start cleaning the tables off and getting them integrated into our space. Then, at the very end of the day, the very first sets of professionally printed cards from our Into the Biome game project arrived. They look great, which was a powerful motivator for the other three groups to get theirs completed and ordered as well. (Everyone is getting very close!)

Rachel works with the combined 5/6 grades every Thursday for library and technology. Here, they are discussing an article on the appropriation and alteration of Michelle Obama's image for a mural. 

An assortment of other things filled in the rest of the week, including a visit from Violet and Abe (complete with age appropriate read alouds), some background on how caves form, and a decidedly odd writing prompt about a unicorn head mask. Responses varied, as you would imagine.

A pick-up game of soccer with the 1/2s. 

In Math group, we spent Monday and part of Tuesday going through A Parable of Polygons, which is a fascinating interactive blog post written by Vi Hart and Nicky Case that creates a model society that values diversity, yet harbors a small bit of inherent bias (sound familiar?). By reading through and interacting with it, you start to see some interesting patterns emerging. It’s a thought-provoking post for young and old, and I heartily recommend exploring it on your own. We also read another chapter of The Number Devil, and devoted a couple of days to Singapore work time.

Week 22 - Archigram and ice capades

This week, we began digging into the issue that will drive many of our Place Out of Time conversations over the course of the semester. It concerns an Italian court decision that overturned the conviction of a homeless man who had shoplifted a small amount of food. The court declared that his act couldn’t be considered a crime because he was in a state of need. To unpack the issue a bit, we went through an extremely simplified example of how societies function. (Ask your child about the desert island example.)

On Wednesday, we took a field trip to see the Archigram exhibit in downtown Ann Arbor. It was recommended to us by Amy Kulper, who met us at the exhibit, sent us on a scavenger hunt, and guided us around some of the work. Take a more detailed look at some of the work we saw here. The exhibit ends this weekend, but we’ll be processing some of what we learned in the weeks after the break.

We also spent some time writing this week. Everyone has posted their Place Out of Time resumes on the site, and have moved on to responding to some prompts. One asks each character to talk about a turning point in their lives. Another asks what they brought with them to this strange (and imaginary) gathering. We also responded to a journal prompt, considering this quote from Albert Einstein: “It’s not that I’m smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”

In math group, we wrapped up with Flatland, celebrated some math milestones with a game day, and spent some time working on our Singapore progress. Students are more than welcome to take their books home over the break to make further progress, if your/their plans allow it. Have a wonderful break!

Week 16 -- Writing stories, making art, bowling, and sledding

The week before a big break is one that always threatens to descend into chaos. Happily, we have a few projects that have kept us busy and engaged in these last days of 2016.


The artwork for our biome games is coming along marvelously, but it’s a lot of work. Each team needs to make a total of 41 cards, each with unique artwork, and each student has taken responsibility for some portion of that. We’re also in the process of assigning point values to each card, which need to accurately represent the organism’s place in the trophic level of the biome, while also being a functional card in the mechanics of the game.

Artwork for Into the Great Barrier Reef 

Artwork for Into the Great Barrier Reef 

Everyone also started a new story from their choice of one of the following writing prompts; “Write a story in which a young superhero gets a part-time job to support his/her secret identity. Unfortunately, s/he is hired by a super villain.” “Write a story about a magician who has a terrible act… until s/he discovers a mysterious portal to another dimension.” “While digging in the woods, a child stumbles across five ancient dragon eggs…”

The rest of the week was peppered with other activities. We made more progress in When You Reach Me, which is our current read aloud book. The highlights of the week, however, are both the work of PE superstar Shan Cook, who arranged an all-middle school bowling trip on Wednesday morning, and a sledding trip for us on Friday. Here are 45,000 photos for you to peruse (it's difficult to shoot photos in a bowling alley):

Finally, we kept things simple in our math group, devoting one day to Singapore work, and the other to a spirited session of math games. Have a lovely break!