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 17 -- Mr. Thomas Jefferson and the Forehead Game.

We began 2017 with a visit from an especially distinguished guest speaker, Mr. Thomas Jefferson, primary author of the Declaration of Independence, the first Secretary of State, and the third President of the United States of America. We had an informal and wide-ranging conversation with Mr. Jefferson, learning about what schooling was like in his day, what he did in his leisure time, and a bit about his on-again/off-again friendship with fellow founding father John Adams.

If you’re wondering why you didn’t hear about such a momentous visit on the news, or at least on the car ride home from school, it’s probably because it was only me portraying the man, doing my best to accurately portray Jefferson based on what I’ve learned about his life and times. It was our introduction to Place Out of Time (also known as “POOT.” Get used to hearing that term. You’ll be hearing it a lot in the weeks ahead), which is an annual middle school project in which students research and portray a notable figure in a series of in-class and online conversations. It’s a fun and intensive project, and the 5/6s have spent much of the week compiling a list of three different figures who they’d be interested in portraying.

Much of our week was devoted to this assignment (take a look at the assignment here), which was scaffolded with mini-lessons on internet research, the differences between primary and secondary sources, and a host of short conversations about various famous and infamous characters throughout history that kids are considering portraying.

In Math, we introduced two games geared toward practicing our basic math facts. One is called ‘Beat the Calculator,’ in which two students tackle the same problem, one using paper and pencil, and the other using a calculator. The other is called… The Forehead Game, which is a terrible name for it, but it’s fun to play. It’s easier to see it in action than to describe it, so take a look at the video below from my math group last year. We also spent two day working in our Singapore books.

Week Four: POP X, magical items, masters and beginners, and hand feeding butterflies

This week we took an impromptu field trip this week, traveling to downtown Ann Arbor’s Liberty Plaza to visit POP X, an art installation. Students explored the exhibits in trios, making note of what intrigued them, then returned to school and designed their own exhibits in the spirit of what they saw.

In homeroom, we discussed the elements of a story, focusing on what makes writing compelling. We then wrote a couple of lackluster stories together, then worked individually to make them more engaging. We also had a writing prompt about taking ordinary items (flashlights, paintbrushes, etc) and making them magical, and a journal prompt that asked students to consider the quote “the master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.”

We also continued our close reading of The Tiger Rising as a group, analyzing the writing to discern the author’s intent.

On top of all of that, we also had a talk with Rachel about banned books, and toured a project gallery of a recent project by the 7/8 classroom.

We're committed to getting outside as often as possible, which sometimes makes for rainy recesses. 

The muddiest kick line ever 

In math group, we spent two days working in our Singapore books, and spent the other two days playing an assortment of math games, identifying what mathematical concepts were involved in each (pattern recognition, symmetry, arithmetic, etc.)

On Friday morning, we partnered with Sam's class to lead the all school assembly, where we talked about our ongoing work with Lisa and monarch butterflies. 

Lisa hand feeds one of our monarchs. 

Learning to wrangle monarch butterflies safely 

Week Three -- Tigers, monarchs, ethnography, and Farkle

A monarch emerges during Math class. 

Our third week of school has been regularly punctuated by excited cries as caterpillars began pupating (ask your child), and later as butterflies emerged. With Lisa’s guidance, we’ve begun tagging our monarchs with tracking stickers, then releasing them back into the wild. If all goes well, we should be releasing several more in the next week or two. We also began reading a book together as a class called The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo. We’re doing a close read of this novel, taking time to think and talk about the craft of the writing and the intent of the author. We’ve also continued learning about the Yanomami tribe of South America, and got to have a lively conversation with an actual ethnographer who came to speak to the entire 5/6 about her work. In our writing journals, we explored the question, "What is the best way to talk to someone with different political beliefs?” It’s a question that I’m sure we’ll be coming back to regularly in the weeks leading up to Election Day.

Chatting with the ethnographer

Henry leads us through a "Perplexor," one the logic puzzles we do in class. 

Tagging a monarch for release 

Monarchs emerging 

Taking measurements of very hungry caterpillars 

Picture day was also this week! 

Behind the scenes

In our math group, Monday was devoted to practicing the strategy of making a table to organize information when solving certain types of problems. We did one as a group, then another individually. Tuesday was spent working in our Singapore math books, and Thursday and Friday were an introduction to the basics of probability, as experienced through the dice game ‘Farkle.’

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.