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.

Week One -- Yanomami, magic, milkweed, and monarchs

We began our year by exploring the difficulty in remaining objective when learning about something new. To illustrate this, we delved into Napoleon Chagnon’s infamous field work with the Yanomami tribes of the Amazon rainforest. How can one accurately study a culture that is entirely different than the one that they were raised in? Was his study ethical? Are his findings biased? Closer to home, what biases do we bring to our current political debate?

We also began writing stories based on the Arthur C. Clark assertion that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” (What would your great-great-great grandparent think of an iPad? What would someone from the stone age think of a flamethrower?)

We’re also writing and performing short skits for each other illustrating our three classroom guidelines: Awareness, Communication, and Everything Gets Respect.

Playing Factor Tag in Math class. 

Playing Factor Tag in Math class. 

Meanwhile, in our math group, we began talking about polling, and exploring how a sample of a population doesn’t necessarily provide an accurate picture of the whole group.

Our week concluded with an exciting find in the milkweed garden created by our class last year: A monarch caterpillar in "hanging j" position, which we watched transition into a chrysalis: 

We also found other caterpillars, which we took collected to raise in the protective environment of our classroom. 

Monarchs & monarchs

The last several weeks have been informed by learning about two types of monarch, both of which have been cast aside by Americans. One was intentional (King George III, during the American Revolution), the other has been an unintended consequence of the rise of industrialized farming in the United States (the migrating monarch butterfly). 
You may recall some of our work earlier in the year inspired by Last Chance to See, a powerful and entertaining book by Douglas Adams. In it, Adams and naturalist Mark Carwardine travel the world in search of some of the most endangered animals on the planet. 

It is a sad truth that there are endangered species in every region of the world, including our own. Rather than view this as an immutable fact beyond our control, our class has opted to actively work to reverse the fortunes of a familiar, but threatened species: the migratory monarch butterfly. 

The monarch is striking and iconic. If asked to picture a butterfly, most people will likely conjure a monarch in their mind. It is a widespread species, but the insects that we see in Michigan are part of a remarkable annual migration that becomes more miraculous and mysterious the more you learn about it. 

There is (of course) a Wikipedia article about this migration, but in brief: Monarch butterflies take part in a migration that begins in the mountains of Mexico, passes through the continental United States, and concludes in Canada, where they reverse course and head back South. The remarkable thing about this is that the annual migration takes five generations of monarchs to complete. The butterflies that start out in Mexico are not the ones that arrive in our state months later, but their grandchildren. How these butterflies know to consistently follow these paths of their ancestors is a mystery to science.  

It's also a phenomenon that is in danger of disappearing. 

Monarchs are wholly dependent on milkweed, on which they lay their eggs during this long journey. Familiar caterpillars soon hatch, feast on the leaves, create a chrysalis, and emerge in their adult stage two weeks later. 

Milkweed, formerly quite plentiful, is being wiped out en masse as an unintended side effect of the proliferation of industrial farming. Pesticides meant to protect crops have eradicated milkweed populations, significantly fragmenting and reducing a vital resource for the monarchs. 

Happily, there are simple things that people can do to help. 

The most passive is to learn what milkweed looks like, and take care not to remove or poison it if you happen to have it on your property. Milkweed has a bit of a public relations problem. It has the word "weed" right in its name, and it tends to grow in unpredictable places from year to year, confounding gardeners of a more controlling nature. One of the many things we hope to do is to work to rehabilitate the reputation of this important plant. 

A screenshot of recently spotted monarchs.
Visit this link for an interactive version. 

Our class has opted to take a more proactive approach. We have spent the last several weeks researching and planning a monarch waystation, which we're developing on the campus of Summers-Knoll. It is taking shape just outside of the windows of the 5/6 classrooms. As of today, there are two raised beds (constructed by Chris Swinko and his 3/4 class) that will eventually be stocked with native flowering plants that will bloom throughout the spring and summer, and milkweed that has been cultivated from local sources. 


It has been quite a project. This is an interdisciplinary affair, born in Science class, but taking significant portions of our homeroom time. Science Teacher Lisa has a certified monarch waystation at her home, and she has served as an inspiration, mentor, and guide in this endeavor. 

Our grand plan goes beyond simply creating a waystation at school. We also hope to cultivate and distribute milkweed to all who are willing to grow it at their homes. This means that we've been trying to grow our own milkweed from seed. Teams of students have been attempting to cultivate seeds in our classroom and in the greenhouse, experimenting in order to determine the most effective ways to grow milkweed from seed. 

We've also been tracking existing monarchs. Studying monarchs is an excellent way to engage as citizen scientists, with enthusiastic hobbyists and naturalists collecting and sharing data about milkweed and monarch sightings. Kids can be found checking this site daily. (Ask your child about it!) 

The project has offered many authentic opportunities for genuine science. For example, rather than simply buying topsoil from a retailer, we are trying to "mine" our own campus for material. One day found all of our students working in teams to collect soil samples from various places on the Summers-Knoll grounds to determine the best site to take soil. 

When it was determined that the most fertile soil seemed to be in our woods just beyond the playground, we decided that we needed to do a mini-environmental impact study. What would it mean for us to move into a previously undisturbed area to remove several dozen cubic feet of soil? To find out, we trekked carefully into the woods to see what was living back there. 

What we found surprised us all. 

We are currently attempting to identify the source of a clutch of eggs found beneath a log near our vernal pool. Our initial suspicion is that our small woods may be home to a population of reclusive salamanders. We are trying to verify this through online research and reaching out to herpetologists. Stay tuned for updates! 

---

I also mentioned that other monarch earlier in this post. As part of our background preparation for our upcoming Spring trip to Philadelphia, we have been studying colonial America and the American Revolution. We've been using a number of sources in order to get a well-rounded look at this period of history. We have read selections from Joy Hakim's A History of US series, watched selections from the HBO series John Adams, and listened to selections from the recent Broadway phenomenon Hamilton. We've also done a close reading and discussion of the United States Declaration of Independence, and we've been barreling through our current read aloud book, Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson. 

Taking stock of the greenhouse inventory

Researching milkweed, native plants, and monarchs

Attempting to grow milkweed from seed, attempt #1

Moving the raised beds to their new homes

Searching for ideal sources of soil

Soil samples settling for close observation and study