Week 11 -- Myth, music, and math

There was a big focus on performance this week. The most public example of that was a substantial amount of preparation for the Friday night’s Music Cafe. Keyboards, drum sets, music stands, and the occasional harp were dragged to and fro as kids found places to practice their pieces for the show. We also received our parts for the school play, and we began our first proper run throughs of the script. We also began reciting our Summers-Knoll myths to each other. You may recall that we’ve been writing stories that convey some aspect of the culture of Summers-Knoll. Now, we’re telling them to each other and seeing what aspects resonate with people and survive later retellings. In addition to being audiences for each other, we were able to spend part of Wednesday morning attending the poetry exhibitions of the 7/8s to see what they’ve been studying. Finally, some we were visited by some actors from the Stratford Festival, who engaged the entire middle school in some acting exercises. 

Our journal writing prompt this week was, “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” It’s a thought that speaks to the spirit of risk-taking and courage that emboldens these kids to stand up in front of each other and our community to tell stories, sing songs, and share themselves so openly and publicly with the world.

In math, some students took a risk of another sort by participating in the AMC-8 math competition on Tuesday. Math competitions aren’t exactly a common occurrence at Summers-Knoll, but they are certainly an interesting thing to opt into for a unique experience. Meanwhile, our class began investigating the concept of multiplication, discovering that there are actually dozens of ways to perform this seemingly mundane mathematical operation. It’s an investigation that we’ll be continuing in the weeks ahead, learning different methods and then evaluating them for precision and speed.

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There was some time after Science class for some fall fun on Friday:

Week 10 -- The votes are in

Our warm-up for Wednesday morning. There was a lot of stress in the air.  

A few minutes before school began on Wednesday, one of the students in our class said, “I have a feeling that today is going to be a very odd day…” It was indeed. One thing that I think most people of all political leanings can agree on is that this has been a notably odd presidential cycle. 5th and 6th graders, even the ones that seem savvy and sophisticated about such things, can have a difficult time processing it all.

Leading up to the election, we talked a bit about political parties and how they work. The general idea was that not every Democrat believes the same thing as every other Democrat, nor does every Republican believe the same thing as every other Republican (and the same is true, of course, for other political parties). This drawing illustrates the way different platforms are created, and how coalitions are built. 

Rather than doing a post mortem on the late night results of the election while emotions were still so high, I opted to address the matter in a more roundabout way. We spent most of our homeroom time on Wednesday watching the 1957 classic 12 Angry Men. It’s an excellent film, and it was a soothing balm for anyone who was feeling unease about people in general, and the United States specifically. It portrays unconscious prejudice, overt bigotry, and casual indifference to others, then counters them with a passionate rebuttal of reason, logic, and decency. The trajectory of the story shows that one person of principle can stand up against a crowd and truly make a difference. It happens through reason, patience (along with some anger, which is right in the title), and consensus-building. People find that they are able to work together as they start listening to one another, and ultimately, everyone in the room has valuable things to say. The film is timeless in some ways, and dated in others. The stuff that’s out of sync with us today are things that are useful for driving conversation. Most glaringly, it’s called 12 Angry Men, and indeed, the entire cast is white and male. Were one to imagine casting this story in 2016, it would be a stark reminder of how far we’ve come.

(Here's a blog post from the last time we watched it in class, two years ago.) 

The film also allowed us to get at some very basic aspects of our judicial system, such as “innocent until proven guilty,” “a jury of one’s peers,” and “burden of proof,” and we spent part of Thursday reflecting on it through a written assignment.

Our journal writing prompt for the week 

We balanced out the week with some less intense stuff, such as a journal prompt (“In what ways is writing a more effective communication tool than speaking?”), play rehearsal, and good old Scholastic News.

We only had two days of Math this week. One day was devoted to Singapore work, and the other was spent practicing some problem-solving strategies that we’ve learned this year. Some students are opting to take the AMC-8 next week, so part of Thursday was spent registering for them for the test next Tuesday.

Week 9 -- Yanomami mythology

Mythology remains on center stage for us this week. On Tuesday, we got our first look at our section of the annual all-school play. Our section is an adaptation of two Yanomamo myths. One tells the tale of humans stealing the secret of fire from the mouth of a great caiman, the other explains the concept of Moon’s blood. We read through the script as a class, then spent the next day making note of striking imagery in the tales (there’s plenty), as well as the clues that reveal aspects of the values of the Yanomamo culture.

We also did this exercise after a birthday-inspired viewing of the Twilight Zone episode “After Hours.” There’s plenty of striking imagery in that as well, and we examined what messages we could discern from from what we found funny and/or unnerving.

These studies are all culminating with an examination of our own culture here at Summers-Knoll. What values do we share? What customs do we have? What are useful lessons that our community passes on? We brainstormed a giant list of these along with a list of striking, Summers-Knoll related imagery. Students are now working on creating myths that incorporate some sort of S-K cultural belief or story, punctuated with striking imagery that will help reinforce the tale. If we start hearing strange stories trickling through the various homerooms in the weeks ahead, we’ll know that we’ve been successful.

We created a huge list of striking imagery and cultural values related to Summers-Knoll. This is part of it. 

Bora choosing how we will celebrate his birthday. 

Our journal prompt for the week

Math got off to an exciting start this week with our annual school Halloween parade. By the time we had marched to County Farm Park and back while admiring and showing off our costumes, there wasn’t much time for math. Instead, we watched a brief episode of the “educational” series Look Around You. Ask your child about “Maths,” and at what point they realized their math teacher was pulling their leg. The remaining days this week were devoted to Singapore work.

Week 8 -- Myth and culture

Juna, a Summers-Knoll alum, visited us recently. She was part of the class that started our monarch and milkweed project, so we ceremonially tagged her with a monarch sticker before sending off on her way. 

Our reading of Napoleon Chagnon’s writing on the Yanomamo continued to inspire spirited conversation this week, as we learned more details about their customs and beliefs. As we discussed aspects that we disagreed with, or found uncomfortable (gender roles, for example, are much more strict and immutable than in our own culture), we began exploring toward the question “what is the function of a culture?” This line of inquiry dovetails with our examination of the purposes of stories and myths in different cultures. To this end, we also took a closer look at a more commonly known myth: The story of Demeter, Persephone, and the changing of the seasons. We also read one of the Grimm fairy tales, called The Seven Ravens. It’s not one of the well known ones, and it has some peculiar twists.

This is the result of a "chalk talk," during which a question is posed, and then people silently respond on the board. Conversations develop, ideas are floated, grievances are aired. 

A landmark moment occurred on Thursday, when I handed each student a folder full of all of the writing that I’ve been collecting from them from the first eight weeks of school. They spend some time rereading what they’ve produced, and selected items that they were proud of, things that they thought were funny, and pieces that they’d like to either continue, or begin a second draft of.

In our math group, we spent Tuesday practicing the strategy of looking for patterns to solve problems, Thursday was devoted to math games, and Friday found us back at work in our Singapore books.

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.

Week 6 -- Milkweed hunt, rising tigers, and graphing caterpillars

Scenes from a milkweed scouting mission

We finished reading The Tiger Rising this week, analyzing its rich figurative language (we’ve been focusing on metaphor and personification), as well as the author’s use of parallels and imagery. We’ve discussed the book extensively as a group throughout our reading, and now students are reflecting on it individually through a series of questions. We also had opportunity to sample some novels individually this week. I gave very brief introductions to about a dozen novels that the class was unfamiliar with, then they each picked one and read it for about thirty minutes. Afterwards, they wrote a quick review of their thoughts on it, indicating if they might like to continue reading it, or move along to something else next time. (Ask your child what they sampled and how they felt about it!)

Our journal writing prompt this week is “do you enjoy sharing your writing with other people?” As you might imagine, opinions vary. Another writing prompt this week was “describe a day in class from the teacher’s point of view,” which has given them all a chance at expressing some empathy for their teacher. Through it, I’ve learned that they have some strange ideas about what I actually think from moment to moment.

We also returned to reading Napoleon Chagnon’s Yanomamo: The Fierce People, which always leads to rich discussions about how complicated it is to examine a culture that is very different from your own. The class delighted in hearing how the Yanomami subverted Chagnon’s attempt to create detailed genealogies of the villages he visited. Ask your child why they didn’t want to help, and how they tricked him. It’s a pretty good story.

In math, our group has merged with Sam’s to do some graphing work on the data that the 5th and 6th graders have been collecting about their monarchs. We worked in groups to accurately graph the growth rates and pupation point of several of our caterpillars, then began discussing how we can draw conclusions from those graphs when viewing them.

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.