Esperanza Rising update

We're reaching a climax in Esperanza Rising, which has prompted some good conversations in class. Part of the plot involves the labor force organizing to protest low wages and living conditions at the farms and ranches in California. There are no easy choices for the characters: some band together to strike, others opt to keep working, for fear of loss of income. Some of the language of organized labor was familiar, but the concepts were a little shaky. We talked it through partly through the use of doodles, including the one below. 

(Lest this appear too politicized, I'll mention that this specifically represents the workers and management in the book.)

In the story, some of the strikers take steps to slow down the people who have opted to keep working, hoping that slowing the harvesting and packaging will force the management to give in to demands before their product wilts and rots. One of their methods is to slip "surprises" into the crates of fruits and vegetables that are to be packed. Workers open crates to find rats, broken glass, razor blades, and snakes awaiting them. This understandably causes the workers to move extremely slowly. The tactic inspired some heated debate in our class when someone labeled it as a form of terrorism. Some students had been philosophically aligned with the striking workers, so to hear their actions characterized with such a loaded term was troubling to them. It was a spirited conversation about a difficult concept. 


Much less controversially, Eva followed the directions in the back of the book to craft one of the yarn dolls that features into the book: 

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On an unrelated note, this is Lisa showing us an x-ray of school rabbit Kelsey. Ask your child about the white oval in the image. (Hint: It tied in nicely to our ongoing study of body systems.) 

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. 

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Juna is camera shy. 

Her classmates are not.

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Henry!

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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

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Nick!

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

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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.

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Silent reading time:

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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.

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Using the windows as a giant light box for tracing.

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Bora!

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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.

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We led the school assembly on Monday, November 23rd. We opted to talk about our three class values, demonstrated by brief skits.

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Grandfriends Day!

Here we are playing 'Jenkins Says' with our Grandfriends. (Ask your kids/Grandfriends about the rules. It's fun!)

Giving the Grandfriends a tour of the school. "The Cove" is always a popular stop. 

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Preparing scenery for the school play:

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Winter is coming. 

Week 12: Baa baa, black sheep. Have you any wool?

Lisa, Sam, and I meet weekly to talk about plans for the 5/6 science program. We've been working through the human body systems for the first half of this year, and while we have done a number of cool demonstrations and simulations, it can be difficult to reconcile abstract images with the reality of flesh and bone. Our brainstorming eventually turned to the idea of dissections. It's hard to get more hands-on and experiential than an actual dissection. 

Lisa, the consummate biologist, had no qualms at all. Sam and I, however, were the kids who opted out of the dissection labs as squeamish high schoolers. (See last week's blog entry on fear.) We have a particularly sensitive and thoughtful group of kids, so we naturally assumed that many of them would take issue with the notion of dissection for a host of reasons, ranging from ethical to squeamish. We decided to ask them if they were interested. 

In our group, the answer was a resounding and unanimous YES. They were very excited about the prospect, and when Lisa arrived with a lamb pluck, they were very eager. 

Visit Lisa's Science Blog for her entry (featuring a few graphic photos. Be advised!) on the activity. (She gets points for the best blog title as well: Hearts and Minds.)

I also got some fly-on-the-wall video footage. Take a look: 

Science: Building the digestive system

As part of our Identity theme, we're learning about the different human body systems during our Science classes with Lisa. Check out her recent blog entry to see how we're learning about the digestive system!

Measuring and recording the lengths of our innards

If we could stretch our digestive systems out, they'd be about this long (and much bigger and messier).

In addition to the yarn models, we created models of our stomachs using plastic bags, complete with juices to replicate the conditions inside of them. We inserted torn up ("chewed") bread and corn, then spent some time mashing the food up to observe the results. It was both interesting and gross!