Week 23 -- Filling in the gaps, fear is a LIAR.

In science, we're continuing to work with our gravity-powered cars. 

After a relaxing week off, we got right to work with an extension to our Place Out of Time timelines project. By now, almost everyone has a detailed timeline of the life of their character posted in the appropriate spot on our giant timeline in the middle school commons. However, most of our characters are clustered in the twentieth century. This week, we have spent some time populating the gaps in our huge timeline to provide more context for the scope of human history. For example, before this week, there were no events recorded in the entire 1400s. Now, there are notes about the world-changing voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492, and another noting that the game of chess was in its modern form by 1475. Each student has been tasked with putting up at least five cards on the timeline this week, with more to come in the weeks ahead. Also POOT-related, Sam led the entire 5-6 group in a discussion about dignity, which is a concept that is the heart of the issue framing Place Out of Time this year.

Calculating averages for each of our trials

We also concluded our read aloud on Monday afternoon. The climax of When You Reach Me is mind-bending and unexpected, revealing the fact that many tiny details along the way were actually clues, laid out like breadcrumbs for the reader to discover. It’s a lovely book that tightly-plotted and bittersweet. Ask your child about “the Laughing Man” and see what they’ll reveal about the story.

Our journal prompt this week was “fear is a liar.” Kids were asked to respond to the idea, considering what it might mean, evaluating the validity of the statement, and coming up with examples that might argue the point either way. Students wrote about how fear was both useful (it keeps you from harm), but also occasionally counterproductive (roller coasters are fun, planes are useful).

Of course, the impending Music Cafe tends to take over the week, so focus quickly shifted toward that by the end of the week.

In math group, we celebrated a couple of kids completing assessments and moving into new books, worked collaboratively on some problems (ask about Danielle, her pet crocodile, the parrot, and the monkey), and had an always-popular math game day.

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 21 -- Writing resumes and eating cake

The focus of our homeroom time remains learning about our Place Out of Time characters. Over the course of the week, the timelines of our lives have been completed and posted in the Middle School Commons, allowing us to see how our characters relate to one another in time. We also began speaking in character with one another, having first learned a little about the rules of improvisational acting.

Ella and company fixing our class decor

We’re also wrapping up the composition of our character “resumes,” which are brief (about 3-4 paragraph) introductions written in the first person. These will be posted on each character’s profile page on the Place Out of Time website.

One of the many ways that we’re learning about these figures is by seeking out documentaries and docudramas that feature them. Since we happen to have both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs in our class, we watched some key selections from the 1999 film Pirates of Silicon Valley. The entire class learned about the birth of the personal computer (as well as a bit about how stocks work), and we got to see how actors dramatize people who actually exist.

Scenes from our weekly cleaning of the lunchroom 

We also got to spend some time with the 7/8s this week. They’re engaged in a unit about food, and they baked a variety of cakes from historic recipes. They were kind enough to invite us to sample their efforts, while telling us a bit about what they had learned.

In math, we continued exploring the concept of Flatland, this week moving to an adaptation that hews a little more closely to the original novel, including aspects that parody social conventions and stereotypes. We also spent two days this week working in our Singapore books.

The daily lunch session of Magic: The Gathering 

Week 20 -- Snow, poetry, timelines, and Flatland

We had Monday off, and we were all greeted on Tuesday morning with a blanket of snow, but no snow day. Instead, our warm-up was “write a poem about what you would have done/how you’d be feeling if today had been a snow day.” Responses varied, and I was a little surprised to find that not everyone loves snow days. (Others, of course, decidedly do.) I didn’t specify the form, so there were rhyming couplets, acrostics, haiku, and acrostic-haiku, which may be something that was just invented. The bulk of our homeroom time was devoted to Place Out of Time research, including creating a timeline of the major events of each character’s life. The finished results will soon be going up on the wall next to our classroom, so the next time you’re in the building, come take a look and see how the lives of Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, or Jazz Jennings line up with one another.

Bora/Peter Jackson posts the timeline of his life (so far).

We’ve also been making quick progress through our current read aloud book, When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead. The mystery is getting…substantially weirder, and only Evie has a good handle on what might happen next (because she has already read the book.)

This week also saw the return of our weekly journal prompts. We responded to the quote, “Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” We respond to these quotes completely individually and in (relative) silence, so I was surprised to see how many kids ended up using math problems to articulate their interpretations. Without consulting each other at all, several students talked about knowing how to solve a math problem is a good thing, but understanding how the math actually works is also very important.

Speaking of math, we spent one session of our math group watching a short film adaptation of the novel Flatland, then another class session discussing it. Flatland is populated by two dimensional creatures who are largely oblivious to the the heretical notion of a mysterious third dimension. A couple of rabble-rousing free-thinkers defy the powers that be, with the help of a unique guide. After the film, we spent time thinking through what it would be like to live in a two-dimensional world. Can a Flatlander tie a knot? How would you play tennis? What would a picket fence look like? How can a Flatlander have a digestive system without being completely bisected? We also dipped our toes into the idea of what four dimensional objects might look like, which strained brains mightily. On Friday, we retreated to our Singapore books to rest our brains and exercise our skills.

Week 19 -- Introducing our Place Out of Time characters

We received our Place Out of Time character assignments back from the University of Michigan on Monday, so we have spent the majority of our homeroom time digging into them. Students are focusing on getting a broad overview of their characters, creating timelines of personal and historical milestones, while slowly filling in the massive P.O.O.T. research log. What were Ella Baker’s parents like? What did Heddy Lamar keep in her pockets? What is George W. Bush’s greatest regret? Does Peter Jackson have allergies? Some of the questions they’ll be asked will be unknowable, but by the time we peak with the Place Out of Time simulation, everyone will be able to make educated guesses on how their character might react to a wide variety of situations. Our next big assignment will be to compose a “resume” for their character, written in their voice, which will be posted on their profile page on the Place Out of Time message board.

Our cast of characters:

Hedy Lamarr

Stephen Hawking

Ella Baker

Emma Watson

Robert "Bob" Ufer

Bill Gates

Peter Jackson

J.K. Rowling

George W. Bush

Jazz Jennings

Steve Jobs

In math group, we have spent the week focusing on making progress in our Singapore books, balanced with math and strategy games.

Week 18 -- Move-up day, leading assembly

Demonstrating "Mystery Person."

This was an unusual week in a few ways. First of all, between the holiday and the ice day, it was quite brief. Second, Thursday was our annual “Move-Up Day,” during which everyone is temporarily promoted to the next grade level and spends the day in the appropriate classroom. Our sixth graders all became seventh graders and joined Karl and Rachel upstairs. In their places, we welcomed visitors from Chris and Spencer’s classes and made them honorary fifth graders. It was a novel way to spend the day, and everyone got a glimpse of what next year might look like for them.

Finally, our class led the weekly all-school assembly on Friday, and planning it took most of the small chunk of homeroom time that we have on Wednesday. For this assembly, it was decided that the kids would organize and run everything, and that I would be completely, 100% silent for the proceedings. (Apparently, I spoke a little too much at the last assembly we were in charge of. Ahem.) Assemblies are partially intended to give a view into the happenings of each classroom, and our class decided to spotlight two things. The first was Sana’s S-K myth (accompanied by an interpretive play), and the second was “Mystery Person,” which is a brief, collaborative game that we regularly play at the end of the school day.

Meanwhile, our math group met twice this week. On Thursday, we combined with Sam’s math class to play math games with our guest students, and Friday was devoted to work in our Singapore books.

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.