Renata's classroom

Our final week!

2011-06-06T16:36:00.002-04:00

School is almost over! We have several special events this week, and I want to keep everyone appraised:

On Tuesday, June 7, our class will be walking over to the new school building, just the other side of the park, to look around a help clean up the outside a bit.

On Wednesday, June 8, we will begin the day with a fun math class, and then have our annual class auction. The children don't need real money for this; fake Summers-Knoll money will be provided. It's a great way of divvying up classroom supplies, relics of group projects, etc., and everyone has a great time.

Wednesday afternoon, at 2:00 p.m., is Graduation! Come join our whole school at the pavilion just around the corner in County Farm Park, as we congratulate our 4th and 5th graders before they move on to middle school.

On Thursday, June 9, the children will receive their portfolios. We'll spend some time reflecting on the year, and then we'll all go to the park.

It's going to be a fun, crazy few days!

Quick trip update!

2011-05-27T17:58:00.002-04:00

It's our last full day in Chicago! I'm online at the Apple store, posting a quick summary of the trip so far:

Museums/points of interest visited: Shedd Aquarium, Museum of Science and Industry, Institute of Art, Millennium Park, Buckingham Fountain

Exotic cuisines tasted: genuine Mexican food (that didn't look at all like what the kids expected!), Russian/Eastern European food (a huge success, from the blinis to the chopped liver), sushi, and Chicago deep dish pizza

Private learning experiences: The children cooked spring rolls, chicken and vegetable stir fry, and candy sushi—delicious!

We are tired, but what fun we've had! We'll be back tomorrow...

Beautiful writing

2011-05-17T18:23:00.003-04:00

Over the last week (and continuing) in Language Arts, our class has been focusing on descriptive, eloquent, articulate, affecting writing. The children were given the choice of writing a paragraph (complete with proper sentences, correct spelling and punctuation, etc.) on one of four topics:

1) something that you're excited about,

2) something that scares you,

3) something you love, or

4) something beautiful.

After rough drafts, and editing, the children are writing their final drafts on special paper in their best handwriting. Some of the writing I'm seeing is astonishingly expressive and passionate. The topics range from beautiful or dangerous tropical locales, to favorite stuffed animals, to the slow dragging of time until the start of summer vacation. It's wonderful to see the children inspired to put their efforts toward creating writing that will convey to their readers exactly how they feel.

Slope

2011-05-06T08:11:00.003-04:00

In math, recently, I've been working with the children in both my math group and Jesse's on the concept of slope. This is not something that is covered in the Singapore books, and it came about because some of my students had questions about the section on parallel and perpendicular lines in the 4B books. I started explaining how to draw parallel lines on a grid... and then thought, "Why not take this just a little farther and really talk about coordinate grids and finding the slope of a line?" That line of thought took us farther than I expected, into the land of formulas and Greek symbols: Δy/Δx is now a familiar set of symbols in the classroom, and we all know that it stands for the change in y (subtracting one y coordinate point from another), divided by the change in x (subtracting the corresponding x coordinates). While I'm not good at figuring out how to type mathematical formulae, here is the formula as it's properly written:

The children have been doing wonderfully. It's an interesting topic to study with children who are at this math level, because on the one hand there are a lot of new concepts to assimilate (coordinate planes, axes, plotting coordinate points, even discussions of different dimensions), and on the other, the math skills required are not beyond anyone's reach. It's been challenging in some ways, but the kids have risen to the challenge. They've practiced finding coordinate points, drawing coordinate grids, finding the slope of various straight lines, and creating challenging slope problems for their classmates. With Jesse, they've measured the slope fo their own bodies in various positions. They've even begun speculating on what it would take to find the slope of a curved line... and that's gotten them all excited about studying calculus, one day!

Food science experiments

2011-04-29T17:44:00.004-04:00

We have had some great experimental sessions this month, in and out of the kitchen. Here's a picture of one easy-to-duplicate science demonstration:

Having combined lots of baking soda and vinegar in a tank—thereby releasing a great deal of carbon dioxide—we saw that if you blow bubbles over the top of the tank, those that drift into the tank wind up resting, stationary, on a cushion of carbon dioxide. It creates a great chance to observe the bubbles more closely than is usually possible. In our discussion afterward, the children did an incredibly impressive job of applying their minds and their previous experience to the question of why, when two bubbles are joined together, the smaller bubble seems to push into the larger bubble. They figured out the right answer with hardly any help from me. Ask your child why it happens that way!

This morning, Zachary Williams came into the school (with our own Jesse, his co-mad scientist), and amazed us all by demonstrating electrolysis, separating out the hydrogen and oxygen gases in water. The children were fascinated, and so was I. After we'd finished with the electrolysis itself, Zach went on to demonstrate what happens when a match is inserted into a bottle full of hydrogen, or into a jar full of carbon dioxide. We have a melty soda pop bottle that we're keeping in the room as a souvenir. Don't try this one without supervision, anyone! (Full directions for the experiment, and safety tips, will be available on Jesse's blog: A Medley of Mathematics.)

And, this afternoon, we began an experiment for which we will need chicken bones. So, I picked up a couple of chickens from Whole Foods, and the children were responsible for extracting the bones. We're still working on it, but we had a lot of fun getting our hands dirty and seeing the inside of a bird this afternoon!

Exquisite Corpse

2011-04-21T08:16:00.003-04:00

There's a great writing exercise called "Exquisite Corpse" that the children and I have been having fun with in class recently. It's a group storytelling game, in which each child adds a sentence to a story. The sentences are written on a sheet of paper... but the catch is that the paper is folded down so that you can only see the single sentence just before your own. All earlier parts of the story are hidden, and that one sentence is all each student has to go on in understanding what the story is about. The results, of course, are often hilarious and unexpected.

After our first round of Exquisite Corpse, we took some time to discuss what makes a complete and proper sentence—according to our class's version of the game, each contribution must be a complete sentence. I copied one of the twelve stories we'd created onto the board and we all examined it, piece by piece, to see whether it was truly composed of complete sentences. The check marks on the left side of the blackboard indicate proper sentences. The checks on the right side of the board indicate whether or not each sentence follows logically from the one before—even if it bears no relation to previous sentences that the author couldn't see.

Once there was a man named Fran, who wanted to fly to Japan.

He did not have enough money and he needed a new job.

So he went to a school where people studied bones.

The school was a giant skeleton.

It was the skeleton of Elmo the stupid dragon.

The town took them.

Or, more accurately, the town stole them.

Then they sold them and spent all the money on apple pie.

They hated apple pie more than anything.

So they flew to space and ate cheese.

The End.

As you can see, we have some fun with these!

(For the curious, the name "Exquisite Corpse" apparently derives from an early round of the game, played by members of the Surrealist movement.)

Poetry month

2011-03-30T18:39:00.002-04:00

Well, here we are wrapping up our poetry theme already! It seems like March has just flown by. Instead of choosing a particular poet or poem form on which to concentrate this month, the children and I have been exploring a variety of poetry ranging from "Jabberwocky" and its made-up words, to Middle English and its half-familiar words, to limericks and haiku. The children have been writing their own short poems—quatrains, limericks, haiku, and styles of their own choosing—and we'll be compiling the poems written by our class into a booklet for the children to take home.

Yesterday, we took a short walk through the County Farm Park to search for signs of spring. The season certainly isn't in its full bloom, yet, but the children spotted mud and grass, and even some more human signs of the season such as cyclists and the ash from a controlled burn in the park last week. Some of the seasonal haiku that the kids were writing today were especially beautiful, and gave me the chills when I read them. We're all waiting for warmer weather and flowers, but in the meantime, we're happy to see the sun.

We've also been on a few visits to Ann Arbor preschools, to share the Summers-Knoll poems "Salmon of the Sun" and "Moon Wolf" with the little ones. My students have loved the experience, I know, and the preschoolers were very excited to see such big, grown-up kids!

Festifools studio visit

2011-03-10T08:20:00.005-05:00

Yesterday, Ruth took her art classes to the Festifools puppet studio to get some inspiration, and the teachers got to go along!

Invention Convention photos

2011-03-09T08:32:00.003-05:00

Transitioning between themes

2011-03-02T08:35:00.005-05:00

It is the first week of March! That means we switch it all up and start a new theme... but sometimes last month's theme isn't quite finished as the new month starts.

The old theme: simple machines. This week will culminate with our school-wide Invention Convention, and I'm hearing lots of great things from the kids about the inventions in progress (or already completed!) at home. In school, we're taking some time this week to work on big Rube Goldberg machines, in groups: the creativity and problem-solving that go into this—not to mention the teamwork—are beautiful to watch!

Here are some photos of the machines as they've come along:

The new theme: poetry! The kids and I had a fun discussion of "Jabberwocky" on Tuesday, identifying invented words and talking about onomatopoeia. As we move into this new month, we're going to explore all kinds of poems, and have lots of fun playing with language.

Valentines

2011-02-12T18:11:00.002-05:00

This morning, instead of doing a traditional exchange of valentines in our class, we began by rereading Norton Juster's wonderful picture book The Dot and the Line: a romance in lower mathematics. Norton Juster was also the author of The Phantom Tollbooth. The Dot and the Line is the story of a staid and rule-bound line who falls in love with a perfect dot... but she only has eyes for an unkempt squiggle, "who never seemed to have anything on his mind at all." The book is both mathematical and a beautiful love story; it subtly extolls the virtues of effort and self-control in choosing who one would like to be. We first read it at the beginning of this year, in math, but I've been getting requests to hear it again, and Valentine's day seemed like the perfect occasion. We all enjoyed reading it again!

After our reading, we had a talk about each person's character in the play, and who that character loves. There are many kinds of love: romantic love, filial love, parental love, the love of old friends, the love of teachers and students, the love of loyal allies... The children made valentines to give to the different people their characters love, and passed them around. Some children even drew from their own lines in the play to find expressions of the way they felt about someone, or to get inspiration for describing another character. It was interesting to talk about which characters have only a few ties of affection within the story, and which ones seem to have ties to nearly everybody...

Math and science, part 2

2011-02-03T16:36:00.003-05:00

By a fun coincidence, we discovered that in the last couple of weeks, Mrs. Carpenter's math group has been studying probability, while Jesse had also been doing some interesting probability exercises with my group. So, my group took the activities they'd been doing with Jesse, plus a few of their own invention, and we took them in to share with the younger kids. We spun the globe to see where it would wind up, flipped pennies, played a version of red light/green light determined by dice, and "danced by chance"—assigned a movement to each number on a die, and rolled to create choreography! Today, my group finished graphing and discussing our results, and we took our findings in to share. We even videotaped ourselves performing some of the dances, which was lots of fun!

Math and science, part 1

2011-01-28T14:27:00.005-05:00

We have had some interesting things going on in math and science, this past week! On Friday, we had the great good fortune to spend over an hour with George Albercook, who is an amazing science teacher. George happened to be at the school that afternoon, and offered to teach the kids about the interaction between heat and changing states of matter: specifically, the amazing fact that when you heat a panful of snow on the stove, the temperature rises steadily to around 32ºF.... and then stays at that temperature for some time, although the burner is still on. Ask your children why! And from the same causes, you can even boil water in a paper container, directly on the stove. The kids pretended to be molecules, and felt with their bodies the difference between being connected in a solid, a liquid, a gas, and even a plasma! The kids were fascinated, and believe me, so was I.

Solid...

Liquid...

Gas...

Boiling water in a piece of paper!

the Mahabharata—a play

2011-01-25T15:44:00.004-05:00

Our class will be putting on a play again this year! Last year, we had a huge success with our production of Shakespeare's As You Like It. This year, we're not doing Shakespeare; we'll attempt, instead, the Mahabharata, one of the great Indian Hindu epics. The class has been listening to the stories that compose this myth since before our winter break, and it is a long story all together! We'll have to compress it for our production, and to that end we will be incorporating both puppets and live action, and even masks.

We began the real work of the play in the first week of January, deciding which scenes to include, discussing the design of the production, trying out scenes and characters and designing puppets. Although parts aren't assigned yet, today we had our first scripted rehearsal, with everyone trying out the same scene in different ways. There was some beautiful acting on display!

We don't have a fixed venue or performance date yet, but Joanna and I are working on it. Our goal is to perform before the SK midwinter break begins on February 20th.

Dreamland Theater

2011-01-10T11:03:00.006-05:00

What a fun field trip we had today! In keeping with our "theater and puppetry" theme, the whole school went to Dreamland Theater in Ypsilanti, where we got to see a puppet show and have a question-and-answer session with the puppeteers. Everyone really enjoyed the show; during each scene change, there was an enthusiastic burst of chatter and laughter from the audience as the children processed what they'd just seen. There was also some in-seat dancing to the scene-change music!

Back in our classroom after the show, it seemed like everyone had a favorite puppet or two that they'd seen, and some ideas about what they'd liked best in the production. It's great to hear the children's opinions on what they've experienced.

Many thanks to everyone at Dreamland for sharing their art with us!

A New Year!

2011-01-03T15:45:00.005-05:00

Our class welcomes a new student this week: Laurea Wright, who is in 3rd grade, will be with us for the rest of the year, and we are very happy to have her. Welcome, Laurea!

In other news, here are just a few reading photos, from our read-in in December and from a short buddy reading session with Elaine's class today.

Salt activities

2010-12-16T21:14:00.007-05:00

Many, many thanks to Caroline Richardson (Max's mom) for coming in to talk with our class on Tuesday. Our class learned some fascinating things about salt and the human body, and the necessity of maintaining a precise concentration of salt in ourselves. There were some fascinating stories told!

The children have also been conducting some exciting cooking projects with salt. Two variations on an old-time catsup recipe are awaiting their taste trial tomorrow, and I expect they'll both be delicious. Yesterday, the class was served a scrumptious salad seasoned with lime juice and black lava salt—I highly recommend it! On our trip to the Spice Merchants store in Kerrytown last week, the children chose five varieties of salt to use in their projects, and the differences in taste are fascinating. And after break, we'll find out whether or not some brave students have managed to effectively preserve beef and salmon using various salts and herbs.

Yankee Air Museum

2010-12-15T15:41:00.003-05:00

Photos

2010-12-09T15:48:00.004-05:00

Here are just some lovely classroom photos from today, and some that I couldn't get to format properly yesterday:

Crystalline experiments

2010-12-08T08:28:00.017-05:00

There have been wonderful scenes of unrestrained curiosity this past week, all related to crystals. To begin with, salt forms crystals, and last week the children got to examine salt crystals through magnifying glasses. We had two types of salt crystals, sea salt and Himalayan pink salt (both bought at Trader Joe's), and after the children had observed them at their desks for a few minutes, I mentioned that if anyone wanted to undertake an experiment using regular school materials, I'd be glad to help... That was all the input I gave. What followed was a burst of classroom-wide creative curiosity that was entirely student driven! Some of the experiments that have been completed (or are still underway) include—but are not limited to—:

— testing the properties of salt as an antifreeze, by placing two cups of water, one salted and one fresh, in the freezer

— sprinkling the two kinds of salt on different ice cubes, to see which cube would melt first

— dissolving the salts together in a pot, and letting the water evaporate, to see if the two salts would be combined or separate in the residue, and to see what form (separate crystals? a solid lump?) that residue would take

— taste-testing salt water to see if the two salts could be reliably distinguished by taste

— placing large salt crystals in a cup of water, without stirring, to see what would happen

— testing to see which type of salt dissolved faster

— finding out whether warm or cold water dissolves salt faster

As to other types of crystals: the beginning of our salt theme coincided with the first snow of the year. We've taken the magnifying glasses outside, examining and drawing snowflakes on different days and at different temperatures. I've heard exclamations from all around the playground: "Oh I found a really good snowflake, come look at this!" "I think they're made up of tiny crystals, in strings..." "This snow is totally different from yesterday! It's like balls instead of snowflakes... almost more like ice than snow."

And yesterday, I got called over to the sandbox at recess to examine a piece of sod with ice crystals hanging below it. It is absolutely wonderful being around these observant, curious children.

December

2010-11-29T12:23:00.001-05:00

We are ready to begin a new theme! Although the Summers-Knoll classes usually follow a common theme each month—each in our own ways—this month, our class is departing slightly from that tradition. While the rest of the school does author studies, we will be studying salt.

There are so many possibilities! Salt is (and has been) a crystal; a chemical compound necessary for human life and the functioning of our bodies; an economic staple of more than one civilization; an object of superstition; a symbol of social standing; and one of the most commonly used ingredients in cooking throughout the world. In the next three weeks, we're going to discuss salt in all of these contexts! We've begun already, and today the children plumbed some of their own knowledge about salt: that it is a rock, that it was used to pay Roman soldiers, that it is tasty, that our bodies require it and expel it, that it can be gathered by causing sea water to evaporate, and much more. As you can see, they are well prepared for this theme. The plans for salt month include a visit from Caroline Richardson (Max's mom), who will be coming in to talk to us about salt and the human body, and a class trip to Spice Merchants in Kerrytown, to see the many kinds of salt for sale there (and, perhaps, to buy some for a project...). I'm also looking forward to studying Gandhi's march to the sea with the children, in part because we've been hearing stories from the Mahabharata, one of the great Hindu epics of India, and it will be nice to tie that in with a more modern story.

There are several other field trips and special activities coming up this month, as well, including a school trip to see the Carolina Chocolate Drops perform at the Michigan Theater this Friday. On Wednesday, December 15, we will all be going to the Yankee Air Museum (harkening back to flight month); and on Friday, December 17—which is an early dismissal day—our class will have a read-in! Those students who were in my class last year will remember that on read-in day, everyone comes in pajamas and brings blankets and pillows... but most importantly, everyone comes with lots of books to read. Except for snack and recess, we'll spend the whole morning reading together.

This is going to be a tremendously fun and busy month in the classroom. I am looking forward to it!

Peter Pan

2010-10-25T11:49:00.003-04:00

Since we finished Gwinna a few weeks ago, I've been reading Peter Pan aloud to the class. I love this book, and the children are really enjoying it. But it is startlingly different from the Disney movie! One of the first things the children noticed was that Peter himself is not always a kind or thoughtful character; while he is brave and fun and in some ways principled, some kids have already mentioned that he sounds like a bit of a bully. There are also all sorts of adventures in the book that never made it into the Disney film.

One question I've been asking the kids to consider as we go along is, "In what ways is this book different from a book that might be written today?" We began simply, noticing that the language is a bit different from ours, the people wear different clothes and have different routines (much earlier bedtimes for children!)... but gradually we are approaching some of the points that make this book slightly tricky for modern readers. Women and men are not treated equally. English people and Native Americans are not treated equally. And, as one child remarked today, a modern book might have characters who doubted or questioned themselves more, and had internal conflicts to address. We've begun writing journal entries and having class discussions on these topics, and it's possible that they may come up at home as well.

This is a wonderful book, despite its political incorrectness. Shakespeare also had standards and beliefs that don't align with our modern culture; all these works are worth enjoying with children, but they do need to be set in context and discussed. The children are bringing a good deal of perceptive attention to my questions about the time when this book was written, and it's a joy to see their focus deepen and their understanding broaden.

Christian Bök (Tuesday's visit)

2010-10-19T17:09:00.019-04:00

Today, we were honored by a visit from Christian Bök. He gave a thrilling performance of three sound poems: "Seahorses and Flying Fish," part of a sound poetry sonata, and"Synth Loops". The children were electrified—we all were! Afterward, he taught us all how to begin beatboxing. After some enthusiastic applause and thanks, our class returned to our room and had a short discussion about the nature of Dada art. Ask your children what they thought!

With Christian's gracious permission, I took a short recording of his performance, with the intent of posting it here. Unfortunately, I can't get it to load—but you can easily check out his work (sound poems, univocalic poems, and his xenotext project) on YouTube. I recommend it!

Christine Hume (Monday's visit)

2010-10-18T09:16:00.012-04:00

Our school has two special visitors this week: Christine Hume (Juna's mother), and the Canadian poet Christian Bök.

Monday

Today, Christine came into our room during our usual math session and gave the children an introduction to the sorts of constraint poetry Christian Bök uses in his writing. We looked at two univocalic poems (each of which uses only one vowel or pair of vowels throughout): "Ants and Aardvarks" and "Fireflies, Spiders, Crickets". The children then got to write univocalic poems of their own using the letter "i" (some of which were read to the class)! Christine also played a recording for us of Christian performing a sound poem: a poem containing no words at all, but only evocative sounds. The rhythms of that performance were so compelling that some of the children got up and started dancing! After Christine went on to the next class, we wrote a sound poem of our own together, and the children even thought of including elements that would be impossible in a solo performance; the final line is split so that one half of the group makes one sound, and the other utters two sounds in sequence. Our sound poem is entitled "The Snake, the President, and the Dodo Bird":

ptc rrr hhh

stoorB eeeeeeee

_______ whistle

ffffffffffffffff rrrps—hhhh

The Physics of Flight

2010-10-13T08:29:00.015-04:00

Our class had a special visitor yesterday: Jamie Saxon, who is a graduate student in physics at the University of Pennsylvania, came in to talk with the kids about some of the physics behind flight. Last Friday, the whole school had watched a DVD called The Way Things Work: Flight, which mentioned that it is the faster movement of air over the top of a wing that creates lift. So, Jamie spoke with the children about the nature of pressure and force, the energy contained in objects of various masses and positions, and the conservation of energy. In the end, we had arrived at a simplified form of Bernoulli's equation, which describes the relationship between high speed (velocity) and low pressure: P + ¹/₂ρv² = Constant

(P = pressure, ρ = density, v = speed)

Understanding pressure by experimenting with lifting a table in the kitchen:

it was much easier when more people helped, spreading the force required over a greater area!

We pushed around a desk to learn about the nature of work (being force multiplied by distance)...

and in the process learned some things about the nature of equations.

Using balloons, funnels, and ping-pong balls, we learned that by blowing or pushing air through an inverted funnel, you can hold a ping-pong ball up inside the funnel—despite the fact that you're blowing down on it! The ball is held up by the low pressure area created by the fast movement of the air on either side of it. You can try this at home: all that's really needed is a funnel and a ping-pong ball!

In the end, each of the children got a strip of paper to take home, with Bernoulli's equation printed on one side and the terms of the equation defined on the back. If you blow across the top of the strip when it's hanging in your hand, the paper will rise—not because the air is slipping around to push it up from the bottom, but because you're creating a low-pressure zone above it!

Field work

2010-10-07T14:22:00.005-04:00

Our class has had so many special events this week!

On Tuesday morning, we took a trip to the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA). Two museum docents were kind enough to take us on an hour's tour, focusing on Renaissance art, and on some works that didn't come from that time or place at all, but which might—or might not!—have been influenced by the Renaissance. On Thursday afternoon, some of the children made collages based on favorite works of art they'd seen at the museum. I heard a number of children say they'd like to go back sometime...

On Thursday, we were joined at Summers-Knoll by a class from the University of Michigan for a special playtime adventure. The children and students chose new names and powers for themselves, and rushed into a magical other world (sometimes known as County Farm Park) to embark on several quests. Most barely made it back through the gate in time!

On Friday, Mark Moellering was kind enough to take us to the Detroit Masonic Temple for a tour of a few of its historical rooms. How lucky our class was this morning, to tour some of the private parts of such a beautiful building! We saw a Renaissance ballroom, a medieval chapel, and more... It was a long tour, but the children were interested and polite throughout; I was very proud of them.

It has been a great (though exhausting) week—and this Sunday is Curious Epicures! We look forward to seeing you there!

EcoFair!

2010-09-30T12:24:00.004-04:00

The annual Summers-Knoll EcoFair is at the end of this month: Friday, Oct. 29. For those who are unfamiliar with this tradition, the EcoFair is an all-school activity party, held on the Friday morning closest to Halloween. There will be multiple stations/activities for the children to participate in, but perhaps the most fun of all is in the costumes. Everyone—staff, teachers and students (and any parents who'd like to help out)—is encouraged to come to school in a hand-made costume manufactured from recycled/reused materials. Many of the children design and make their own costumes, which of course is an excellent learning experience. Feel free to be creative! The "recycled materials" part of the costume can seem intimidatingly restrictive, but remember: not all recycling is in the form of old cans! Hand-me-downs, thrift-store purchases, ScrapBox finds... all are excellent possibilities.

Gwinna

2010-09-28T09:08:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, I finished reading The Wizard of Oz aloud to the class. In preparation for the theme that starts next week—flight—I offered the children a choice of two books, both of which center around children who can fly: either Peter Pan, or Gwinna, by Barbara Helen Berger. They chose Gwinna. It's a beautiful book, though not much known. It's not as long as some chapter books we'll read, so perhaps we'll have time for Peter Pan, too.

We're going to try a new reading system (new to me, too!). I'll be reading aloud to the children at the beginning and end of each day, and so we need the chapter books we're reading to be in school each day. However, if any child wants to take the book home to keep reading in it, that will be allowed for one night, on one condition: if that child reads ahead at home, then he or she needs to pick out a couple of favorite pages from that reading to share with the class. This will be good practice reading out loud, and will allow the children to share their favorite moments in the book with one another. I am discussing with the children the importance of practicing their readings out loud at home before bringing the book back. I look forward to seeing what moments in the story strike them!

A lovely outdoor day...

2010-09-24T13:12:00.005-04:00

The kids have such good ideas! This morning, after we'd listened to The Wizard of Oz some more and practiced our gavotte on the playground, I asked the children to settle in for some quiet reading time... and Melissa immediately suggested that we do our reading out-of-doors. What a brilliant suggestion for a beautiful breezy morning!

After a little while spent indoors writing sonnets, horseback riding continued the outdoor trend, and we ended the day by heading over to sit in County Farm Park while creating personal coats of arms for our Renaissance Feast. What a beautiful Friday.

Pendulums

2010-09-21T11:38:00.004-04:00

Last week, we put our best feet forward for the beginning of a year of scientific exploration. First, the children read a short illustrative story, and then engaged in discussion about the necessity of experimentation to prove one's ideas. We learned a bit about the scientific method... and then we began. Following in the footsteps of Galileo Galilei, we created pendulums out of beads and string, and set them swinging. The children showed immense patience and dedication as we timed the pendulums to see how long it would take for them to come to a halt. I was quite impressed!

Renaissance men and women

2010-09-10T11:13:00.005-04:00

We are well launched on our Renaissance theme! This week, we have learned a little about the nature of the Renaissance, and my mention of humanism led the children to initiate a very interesting conversation about the nature of religion on Wednesday. They were both respectful and articulate, and listened to each other very well; it's an excellent beginning to a year of intellectual exploration!

We've also written sonnets (with Joanna), and learned a few rhetorical devices which we've applied to self-introductory speeches. Rhetoric was widely taught in the Renaissance. I think we'll devote some extra time to spelling, this month, too, since the codification of English spelling was a Renaissance phenomenon. And this afternoon, we began learning to dance the gavotte!

First day of school!

2010-09-07T16:24:00.003-04:00

As you can see, we are off to a good start!

Themes for the year

2010-09-03T16:55:00.002-04:00

Welcome to our class, everyone!

Here is the list of the Summers-Knoll themes for the coming year:

Sept: Renaissance
Oct: Flight
Nov: Leonardo da Vinci
Dec: Salt
Jan: Theatre and Puppetry
Feb: Simple Machines
March: Poetry
April: Food Science
May: American Prairies

The December theme is different from that which will be followed by the rest of the school. This occasionally happens at Summers-Knoll, and when the theme of "salt" was proposed last year, I got much too excited to give it up. I think we're going to have a fantastic time!

Gettysburg, Pt. 1

2010-05-27T22:04:00.002-04:00

Well, here we are, in Gettysburg, PA! It's the end of the second day of our big field trip; we are exactly half way through. It's going really well! So far, we have toured the Julius F. LeMoyne House in Washington, PA (the home of a prominent Abolitionist and a member of the Underground Railroad), visited the Gettysburg Visitor Center and Museum, taken a 2-hour-plus horseback tour of the battlefield, and visited with Max's grandparents in their beautiful home in the Pennsylvania countryside. Still to come: further battlefield exploration, recitations of the Gettysburg Address, an Underground Railroad tour and a scavenger hunt!

Posting photos will unfortunately have to wait until we're back in Ann Arbor (I forgot the connecting cable)...

I hear that the rest of the school is having a lovely time, including a trip to the Arboretum in Ann Arbor. Our thoughts are with all of you, and we can't wait to see you next week!

Outdoors and in...

2010-05-14T16:36:00.008-04:00

The Categories of Life

2010-05-06T16:21:00.003-04:00

As we move into plant month, the children have been sketching different sorts of roots, bark, and leaves each morning, and as a class we've discussed what we already know about plants. Tomorrow, we'll begin delving more deeply into the question of what makes a plant a plant, by learning about taxonomy. Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species will all come into play! I'm looking forward to wowing the children with trees of life that show what a tiny fraction of the world's genetic diversity is contained within plants, animals, and fungi. Soon, we'll be classifying flowers by their morphology, inflorescence, and more. We'll begin learning about cell structure, too, as that is one of the areas where animals and plants most clearly differentiate. I've been looking forward to this month!

We're also taking our spring nature walk with Faye, tomorrow. Here's hoping it's a beautiful day!

Weekly Shakespeare

2010-05-03T13:07:00.002-04:00

One of my favorite traditions in our class is our weekly Shakespeare play. Ever since our production of As You Like It, the children have been deeply excited about Shakespeare. So, as we read The Wednesday Wars during February and March, we began learning about one Shakespeare play each week in an effort to keep up with the references the book's protagonist kept using. It has become a beloved tradition: each Friday, I tell the children one of Shakespeare's tales, while they act it out. We all look forward to our weekly Shakespeare sessions; it's even common for spelling bee winners (who have the option to post heroic pictures of themselves on the wall, or have a parade around the classroom in their honor) to name the right to choose their characters in that day's play as their chosen prize. I do most of the speaking and storytelling, but we try to hit all the most famous lines of each play, and afterward, we sit for 10-15 minutes and talk about the themes and characters of the play. Thus far, we have done The Tempest, The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Taming of the Shrew. My favorite part are the discussions afterward: the children have engaged deeply and shrewdly with such diverse topics as gender roles over the centuries and the relationship of power and choice (The Taming of the Shrew), the nature and pathos of tragedy (Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet), anti-Semitism (The Merchant of Venice), the pastoral tradition (As You Like It), and the results of revolution (Julius Caesar). I am continually astonished by the children's profound understanding of the events, characters and ultimate impact of each play.

This Friday: A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Water cycle

2010-04-25T13:38:00.006-04:00

This past week, the kids accepted a challenge from me: they had to design a water cycle system, that could reasonably be built in the school with easily attained materials, that would include the following elements: evaporation, condensation, precipitation, infiltration (water absorbing into the ground, or dirt), and runoff. Within a few minutes, the class had begun to put together a design for a system involving a boiling pot of water, some plastic tubing, and a container of dirt with a filter beneath it... On Friday morning, we built it in the kitchen. Alas—the evaporation worked, and we saw some condensation in the tubing, as well—but our water never quite made it all the way through the tubes to the precipitation/infiltration stage, despite an effort to expedite the process by adding ice packs to the tubing. This is one of the things I love about the Summers-Knoll way of learning: it's all right to fail. It can be very instructive! After our water cycle didn't work the way the kids planned, they took some time to write in their theme notebooks about what went wrong, what went right, and how they thought they could improve the system. Perhaps we'll try again, sometime, with a few modifications!

Spelling Bees and Balderdash

2010-04-16T12:43:00.004-04:00

As you may be aware, our class has a spelling bee every morning of the week, every other week. The children are sometimes in teams, while other weeks each child attempts the words individually. I announce each word; the words are spelled out on the blackboard; and I award points to everyone who spells the word correctly.

Some weeks, the spelling bee has been structured around words that are unfamiliar to the children, but are spelled precisely the way they sound. Other weeks, there have been particular patterns or roots the children have to identify to improve their chances of success in their spelling. Since this is water month, last week's bee was based on the prefixes "hydro-" and "di-" (the better to understand "dihydrogen monoxide"). Here are some of the words that everyone got right last week:

hydrography

hydroelectric

dimorphic

hydrophobic

Pretty impressive!

As this is not a spelling bee week, we used the interval between 8:45 and 9:00 to play a round of Balderdash, which we haven't played for a while. Mike found our word in the dictionary: "sullage." Here are the possible definitions:

—an old type of sewer that made the waste go into rivers and/or lakes, producing unclean water

—the remains of metal after it is scraped up and thrown away

—a silt deposit in water or river or stream

—the kind of sulphur that infiltrates sewage

—a form of sewage that is filled with litter and waste

—to sull someone

—the spoiling or ruination, "sullying," of a reputation

Three Cups of Tea, and Pennies for Peace

2010-04-14T08:28:00.004-04:00

Before spring break, our class began a new read-aloud book. It's not a children's book, and before we began it I told the kids that I thought this was a book they would enjoy, but that it might be difficult for them. We talked about it, and agreed that we would try the first chapter, and then take a vote as a class on whether we wanted to continue reading. The book is Three Cups of Tea, the true story of Greg Mortenson's efforts to build schools in the farthest reaches of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and at the end of the first chapter, the children voted strongly to continue reading. It's an inspiring and exciting story (but if you've read it, please don't tell the kids what's going to happen!). If you haven't read it, I recommend it highly. The young Balti students with whom Greg Mortenson began his work provide a challenging example for anyone to live up to: before their schools were built, many of them conducted classes on their own, on the four days a week when they had no teacher.

Our reading is connected to a whole-school project: Summers-Knoll is joining the Pennies for Peace program. Over the next couple of months, there will be jars set out in each classroom, collecting pennies to contribute to the education of children in central Asia. The program accepts only pennies—no quarters, dimes or nickels—and everyone is encouraged to bring in whatever they can contribute. I've been saving up my pennies for this! The jars will be set out after the whole school meets to talk about the program today, and everyone can start bringing in pennies next week. This is a wonderful way for the Summers-Knoll kids to connect their love of learning to a broader understanding of the different situations of other children's lives.

Festifools parade!

2010-04-13T16:00:00.005-04:00

Oh, the parade on Sunday was splendid! So many interesting puppets to see, and rhythms to hear! The Summers-Knoll kids did a great job of keeping those puppets in the air!

The first arrivals...

Preparing to march...

Taking over Main Street!

And the weary but satisfied aftermath...

Scavenger Hunt

2010-03-29T17:22:00.004-04:00

Last Thursday (March 25), our math class embarked on a grand scavenger hunt. There were 12 clues, each a math problem, and each had to solved to find out where to go for the next clue. Every clue involved fractions, division, protractors, and scientific measurement. It wasn't an easy hunt: for each clue, the kids had to solve a fractions problem, and take the fraction that resulted and apply it to the number of degrees in a circle (e.g. 1/6 of a circle is 60º). That gave them the angle at which they had to set off to find the next clue. So, they'd measure the angle with a protractor, and then use the scientific measure of distance on the clue to learn how far they had to go. Here are a few examples of the problems they solved:

6) 8/15 – 13/30 = [answer: 1/10]

Give the number of degrees that make up that fraction of a circle: [answer: 36º]

Distance to travel (measured along the ground): 25m x 10^0 = [answer: 25m]

To the left.

7) Walking along the shore, Melody likes to pick up interesting shells and rocks. Of the things she brings home to show to her grandfather, 5/8 are shells. 1/3 of the rocks have fossils. What fraction of the found objects Melody will lay before her grandfather are rocks without fossils?

[answer: 1/4]

Give the number of degrees that make up that fraction of a circle: [answer: 90º]

Distance to travel (measured along the ground): 1.1m x 10^1 = [answer: 11m]

To the left.

The class was divided into two groups for the hunt; I went with one, and Jesse went with the other. At the end, there were prizes! Each child who reached the end of the scavenger hunt received a Rubix cube, balloons, and some of the pellets that transform into sponge dinosaurs when dropped into water. The kids liked the prizes a lot, and they said they liked the scavenger hunt, too. When I asked if the questions were too easy, too hard, or just right, the class agreed on the following answer: "The questions were just right for a scavenger hunt. But if they hadn't been part of a game, they would have been too hard." Quite a testimonial to the power of fun to motivate learning!

Scale (March 12, part 2)

2010-03-15T18:14:00.008-04:00

At the end of last Friday, I introduced my class to a flash animation called The Scale of the Universe (the link is at the end of this post). It is fascinating to see! Once my students had a chance to explore the images on their own, we took the computers over to Elaine's room to show the Kindergartners and first graders. Each of my kids had two or three younger students crowding around to look at their computer, and it was their job to explain what the animation shows. I heard delightful lessons going on all around the room: "Do you know what a nebula is? Well, it's this big cloud of dust and gas in space, where stars form..." "See how my fingers are touching? But they're not, really, because the atoms aren't touching because there's so much space inside an atom..." The parts of an atom are certainly are a lot smaller than the atom itself!

Watching my class teaching the younger kids all about what they were looking at—hearing the quiet excitement in the room, and the exclamations of, "That's so cool!" and seeing the instant rapport that sprang up between the different ages as they explained and learned—was one of the most beautiful moments I think I've seen in any classroom.

Here's the URL for the animation they were looking at:

http://www.freeworldgroup.com/games8/gameindex/scaleoftheuniverse.htm

Clocks (March 12, part 1)

2010-03-15T18:12:00.003-04:00

Last Friday was a particularly lovely day for our class. We finished writing our cave reports, but we also had two special events.

Firstly, Jesse Metcalf-Burton's younger brother Justin came in on Friday morning to read James' Thurber's book The Thirteen Clocks aloud to our class. I heard Justin give a reading of that book in January, and immediately asked him if he'd consider reading to our class sometime! He gave us a beautiful dramatic reading (I know that he's worked particularly on his rendition of the Duke's evil laugh), and the children listened with intense focus for almost an hour and a half. We had discussed Justin's visit as a class beforehand, and the children requested clay and drawing materials to help them concentrate on the story. They produced some gorgeous drawings and sculptures based on the story!

(I unfortunately was too wrapped up in the story myself to think of taking a photo at the time, but Justin was kind enough to forward me this picture of himself telling stories in Washington, D.C.)

Short Stories

2010-03-10T16:07:00.003-05:00

This month is our Book Study theme, and our class—returning to a topic we touched on earlier in the year—is studying short stories. This study is taking several forms: The kids are reading their way through stacks of short stories, and checking off the ones they've read on a list I've printed out. When they finish one story, before they begin the next, they come find me to read me their favorite sentence in the story they've read, and explain why they like it so much. Some reasons I've heard so far: the sentence is funny, it contains new words, it sets up a whole sequence that's going to follow in the story, or it's just very clear. In the end, each student will be asked to pick one sentence they've liked better than any other this month—so we call this the Hunt for the Perfect Sentence.

The children will also need to pick one story each—a story no one else in the class has checked off—to read out loud. They'll be able to take their chosen story home to practice reading it before they read to the class. (In fact, all the books of short stories are available to be taken home.) If they have time before the end of the month, they may also move on to create their own art based on stories they've read; they'll be able to make a drawing, a painting, a poem, another short story, a play, or even a movie if they choose.

On Tuesday of this week, we learned about story arcs. We had a short discussion at the board about the arc of a story, and the different paths that different stories may take. Then, the children got out big sheets of graph paper, and we settled into our sunlit classroom to map the arcs of stories as I told them. We started with a few short practice tales, and then the kids had to map the arc of a 15-minute story as I recited it. I think everyone had fun!

And this Friday, Jesse's younger brother Justin will be coming in the morning to give us a special reading of James Thurber's The Thirteen Clocks. I was privileged to hear him read this a few months ago, and I immediately asked if he'd be willing to give us a performance—I can't wait to hear it again!

Festifools studio

2010-03-03T16:34:00.006-05:00

Today, the whole school visited the Festifools studio, to get some inspiration and context for the giant puppets the children will be constructing with Ruth. The studio was amazing! Here are some pictures...

Origami for Haiti

2010-02-03T15:43:00.003-05:00

Caroline Richardson, Max's mother, will (hopefully) be leaving for Haiti in a few weeks to help provide medical care during this time of crisis. Knowing how much our class loves origami, Caroline has asked Max to head a class project: making colorful origami containers that Caroline will be able to fill with candy or small treats, and give to the children she'll be working with in Haiti. We are using the modular origami that Jesse taught us to make lots of folded box sides, which will travel well, and which Caroline can assemble when she unpacks her suitcase.

The children are very excited about this project, and rightly so. Origami is something they love, and the gift they are sending has real value in their eyes. I know the other SK classes are contributing to the Haitian relief effort in their own way; some may even be sending other gifts along with Caroline; but this is our way. Many thanks to Caroline for allowing us to send something so personal with her!

Here is the box we are filling with origami pieces. Each of these colored lines is a square composed of three origami papers folded around each other. Unpacked and rearranged, each little square will make a three-dimensional hollow shape that can be filled with small treats.

Bats!

2010-01-29T16:33:00.004-05:00

Today, the Organization for the Conservation of Bats came in to give a presentation for all the Summers-Knoll students. It was terrific! The kids got to see five live bats, each of a different species, as well as seeing lots of pictures and learning about the habits, abilities, and usefulness of bats in our world. I'm so glad we had this wonderful opportunity!

Ladysmith Black Mombazo

2010-01-27T10:41:00.004-05:00

This coming Monday, February 1, our school is going to see a special performance at Hill Auditorium, by the famous South African group Ladysmith Black Mombazo. I am personally very excited about this, since I have always loved their music, and they have a reputation for being amazing performers. The performance is from 11am to noon; we will leave the school around 10:20 and return around 12:30. Ruth Marks and I will be taking the 3rd, 4th and 5th grades on the city bus to get to and from the concert, so please send your child with $1 in quarters on Monday, to pay for bus fare. (I will put this in an email, as well.)

Improbable inventions

2010-01-25T10:49:00.003-05:00

This month, I've been reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy out loud to our class. It's a funny and exciting book, but it's also got a lot of interesting scientific, philosophical and mathematical content that engages the kids on a different level. Some of it is over their heads, but most is just within their comprehension, and I think that's a good mix: they're getting to encounter some new ideas, ideas they can play with, and they also have the sense that there is more here waiting to be plumbed, so they pay close attention. The adventurous plot helps, of course.

One of the main ideas we've been exploring is improbability. The Heart of Gold spaceship is run on an Infinite Improbability Drive, which causes all sorts of bizarre coincidences to occur within the story. We've had a lot of fun toying with improbable ideas, and it's been interesting to hear the kids discussing the difference between "probable," "improbable," and "impossible." We made a chart on the board one day: I asked them to give me a probable event, and then we changed the same thing to make it improbable and then impossible. The first example I got was "Christmas will come next year." That, we all agreed, was probable. The improbable version was that Christmas would not come next year. The impossible version (contributed by Mike) was to say that Christmas is always, definitely coming.

The kids have all drawn Scenes of Improbability, which are arrayed on the classroom wall as you walk in the door. Each picture is accompanied by an improbability factor, in the style of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, such as "two to the power of six hundred thousand thirteen to one, against."

As a class, we've written limericks about improbable things!

If humans could live on Neptune

Then they would all live in cocoons.

Oh, it would be cold there

Pears wouldn't grow there

All pianos would be out of tune.

This book has provided a lot of worthy avenues of exploration, but I think improbabilities have the most potential for fun!

Specials

2010-01-19T11:52:00.003-05:00

I'm sure everyone knows what a wonderful job our specials teachers do—Imogen, Ruth, Jan, and Shan—and sometimes I am absolutely taken aback by the fascinating dolls I see when I pass through the art room. I walk into my room at the end of a French class and find webs of related words (in 3 or 4 languages) on the board:

So I just wanted to send a quick thank-you to all the kids' amazing teachers! You do such incredible work with them.

Some recent photos...

2010-01-12T13:00:00.005-05:00

From math class:

From a visit with Elaine's class, to decorate bags for MLK Day:

From Friday's science experiment:

(an explosion of corn starch!)

Caves

2010-01-05T15:10:00.003-05:00

Welcome back in the New Year!

Our first Summers-Knoll theme of 2010 is Caves. This will be another science-oriented theme for our room. We'll be taking our study of caves (our speleology) in several directions, looking at different types of cave dwellers, the formation of caves, and the underlying structure of our planet. Today, we watched the Planet Earth episode "Caves" with Mrs. Carpenter's class. In class this week, we'll be doing some individual experiments in preparation for a group project: building a scaled model of the earth's layers. Both at school and at home, the kids will be working on a small-scale research project on the cave system or cave-dwelling organism of their choice. This will be more closely supervised and structured than our previous research this year, with a strong focus on the stages of developing a research project. It's going to be a great theme, I think!

Masterclass

2009-12-14T11:44:00.003-05:00

As many of you may know, Greenhills School has also been putting together a production of As You Like It, which was performed (by 12th graders) about two weeks ago. On Friday, our class was fortunate to be visited by the Greenhills director, Ben Cohen, and two of his star actors, Amy and James. They came to school around 9am on Friday, and stayed with us for an hour, working on character and line interpretations. I believe they were quite impressed with our actors! This was a great opportunity for the kids; Ben is a very experienced director, and Amy and James are both terrific actors, and all three of them gave a lot of energy and enthusiasm to working with the Summers-Knoll crew. I was very proud of my students, who absolutely held their own in the presence of these visiting stars.

Word roots

2009-12-14T11:26:00.003-05:00

Last week, I presented the kids with the following challenge: Imagine that a new element has been discovered. It was found on a fragment of meteorite; it is solid at room temperature; it is slightly radioactive; and it has a greenish hue. Invent a scientific name for this element.

We completed the challenge as a class, brainstorming words we knew in French that related to the characteristics of this imaginary element, and consulting a Latin-English dictionary to find helpful word roots. We also looked at the Periodic Table to see what element names usually sound like. The goal was to come up with a name that gave hints to at least a few of the characteristics of this imaginary element. Here are some of the root words we discussed (the ones we wound up using):

xeno—alien

terrestrial—earthly

ver (vert, verde, verdant)—green

saxum—Latin word for rock

And here are the element names we finally settled on, with endings taken from the Periodic Table:

Xenoversaxon (or Xenoveraxium or Xenoversaxum)

Xenoterrestrion

Read-in!

2009-12-08T12:37:00.004-05:00

On Friday, December 18—a half-day at Summers-Knoll, and the last day before our winter break—our class will be having a read-in! Please send the kids to school with pillows, pyjamas, sleeping bags or blankets, and a BIG STACK OF BOOKS. With one break for snack and recess, we'll be spending the whole morning curled up, snug and excited, with our favorite books. I'll provide hot chocolate, too!

Note: This is still school reading, so I'm going have a rule that the books the kids bring in cannot be comics or picture books. This is a chance for everyone to really sink into some good books. Of course, the school's books will still be available, too.

It should be a nice, relaxing morning; I'm sure we'll all have some resting to do after our play performance next week. Read-ins are a very fond memory from my own school days!

Balderdash

2009-11-24T13:37:00.003-05:00

Another stunning couple of rounds, today:

Xanadu (picked by Stanley):

- a super rare element that is found in thin layers of rock

- a time or place that cannot exist because of a paradox

- a place of idyllic beauty

- an authentic doodoo

- a type of dew

- a crystal whose exterior is very valuable

- a rare type of Mediterranean flower, ranging in color from dark blue to dark purple

afterclap (picked by Mike):

- the echo of a gunshot

- a clap after a marvelous production or play

- a sarcastic type of clap that shows disliking

- applause slightly delayed after the line or action being applauded, which interrupts a continuing performance

- an earthquake that hits right after the first earthquake, and is twice as dangerous

- a clap of thunder that happens moments after a flash of lightning that strikes a tree

- clapping multiple times

- the round of applause used to get an encore in a big theater

- an unpleasant squeal

As You Like It performance

2009-11-23T16:53:00.002-05:00

We have a date, a time and a venue!

Our class's production of As You Like It is scheduled to take place at 7:00 on the evening of Wednesday, December 16, at the Kerrytown Concert House (415 N Fourth Avenue). There will be a dress rehearsal earlier in the day (during school hours). Parents and friends are all invited to attend!

This does mean that we have a lot of rehearsing and line-learning to do in the next three and a half weeks. Please help your children to practice at home (as they need). I'm also wondering whether the children might be available for some after-school rehearsals in the coming weeks. Is there a day of the week that works best for everyone? I'm quite open after school, most days.

I will put this in an email, as well...

A story of apples

2009-11-23T13:29:00.001-05:00

"There once lived in Damascus an enterprising peasant who had three daughters. One day, the peasant told a qadi, a judge, that his daughters were not only very intelligent but blessed with rare skills of the imagination. The qadi, a jealous and stingy man, was annoyed at hearing a peasant speak so praisingly of his daughters' talents. [...] The qadi had the three girls brought before him. Then he said to them, 'Here are 90 apples for you to sell in the market. Fatima, the oldest, you will take 50; Cunda, you will take 30; and Shia, the youngest, you will take 10. If Fatima sells the apples at a price of 7 to the dinar, you other two will have to sell yours at the same price. And if Fatima sells her apples for 3 dinars each, you two will have to do the same. But, no matter what you do, each of you must end up with the same amount of money from your different numbers of apples.'

" 'But can I not give away some of the apples that I have?' Fatima asked.

" 'Under no circumstances,' said the wretched qadi. 'These are the terms: Fatima must sell 50 apples. Cunda must sell 30 apples. And Shia must sell the 10 apples that remain. And all of you must sell your apples at the same price, and all of you must earn exactly the same profit in the end.' "

Such was the problem posed to our class by The Man Who Counted this morning. The kids ultimately came up with three solutions, and while none were the same as that presented by Beremiz, in the book, each was an example of creative and intelligent problem solving:

— The girls could sell their apples in unequal lots of equal price. So, Fatima could sell all her apples in a single lot of 50 for any price she chose; 15 dinars, for example. Then Cunda would sell her 30 apples in a single lot for 15 dinars, and Shia would do the same with her 10.

— The girls could combine their apples into a single lot (e.g. 90 apples sold en masse for 30 dinars), then split the profits evenly.

— Owning and selling are not the same thing. The girls could, on leaving the presence of the qadi, divide the apples evenly among themselves, deciding that each sister owned 30 apples. Upon arriving at the market, Shia could then hand 20 of her apples to Fatima to sell, on the understanding that the profits of the same would be handed back to Shia, the owner of the apples. Then, Shia would sell 10, Fatima would sell 50, and Cunda would sell 30 apples, and each receive the same profit.

What ingenious solutions!

For the curious, here is the solution presented by Beremiz:

"Fatima starts selling her apples at a price of 7 apples for 1 dinar. She sells 49 apples at this price, but keeps back 1.

"Cunda sells 28 of her apples at this price, but keeps back 2.

"Shia sells 7 of her apples at this price, but keeps back 3.

"Then Fatima sells her 1 remaining apple for 3 dinars. In accordance with the rules of the qadi, Cunda then sells her 2 remaining apples for 3 dinars each. And Shia then sells her 3 remaining apples for 3 dinars each. [...] Therefore, each made a profit of 10 dinars, and thus the problem set by the envious qadi of Damascus was solved."

Casting

2009-11-19T07:56:00.003-05:00

We have our parts for As You Like It—check it out!

Maria: Rosalind

Mike: Celia, Adam

Alec: Phebe, Duke Frederick, Corin

Max: Orlando, Touchstone

Parker: Silvius

Peter: Oliver, Charles the Wrestler

There are a few parts still to be assigned (Jaques, Duke Senior, various attendant lords, etc.), and we will have to ask for some volunteers from Mrs. Carpenter's class to take on smaller roles, requiring less rehearsal time—but we'll get to that after our class is a little more firmly grounded in the play.

Since I've never produced Shakespeare with this age group before, I'm still uncertain of how long it will take before we're ready to perform; the show will be either just before the winter holidays, or in January. I'm expecting to make that decision in about two weeks. I also need to talk with Joanna about possible performance spaces—but I will keep everyone updated on our plans!

Poses of many kinds...

2009-11-11T18:55:00.004-05:00

Last week, when the kids were teaching each other about math concepts they'd recently learned, one of my students had to teach me. He was showing me how to make parallel lines on a grid, and I realized... we were tiptoeing right on the verge of the concept of slope. Slope is something that's usually studied rather later in mathematics, but this seemed to me like one of those wonderful Summers-Knoll moments when one can take an idea and run with it. So, I made sure to introduce the concept with each group, last week, and today I wanted to review it with them a bit, just to solidify the idea. It's a bit of a tangent right now, but the concept will come up again, and not too long from now, for some of them. So, we began by reviewing on the board, but then we started looking around the room for something with a slope we could measure. It was Jesse who presented us with an option:

We measured her from her head to her heels, and found the slope she formed, using the floor and the table as our X and Y axes. (If I'm remembering right, her slope was something like 113/-120.) Go Jesse!

And here's just a taste of our ongoing dramatic efforts: Alec and Mike expressing unrequited love.

Science

2009-11-03T14:31:00.002-05:00

This month's SK theme is "electricity and magnetism": our first scientific theme of the year! We began, today, by discussing the scientific method, since we'll be careful to use that in all our experiments. I gave the kids an example of an explanation arrived at without using the scientific method by writing a short story about a farmer in the middle ages who leaped to the conclusion that rats were spontaneously generated from the corn he'd spilled in his barn. We then talked about the story, our impressions of the farmer, and our own beliefs about where rats come from. The kids made some fascinating comments about the character of the farmer and his process of deduction; they said he "didn't think it through, just went with his first thought," "didn't go to school," and that he was "religious." These were particularly interesting comments because I hadn't put any information about the farmer's background into my story!

I want to find out a little more about what the kids already know about electricity and magnetism, and then we'll begin some experiments. Hopefully, that will include a trip to the Hands-On Museum in a couple weeks.

Epistolary novel

2009-10-28T14:07:00.002-04:00

As your children may have informed you, our class has undertaken the group project of writing an epistolary novel (or, at least, an epistolary short story). The students have been taking turns writing letters in the novel; while the individual letters are left to the discretion of each student, the whole class is responsible for editing the novel for coherence and narrative flow. Thus far, I think the kids are doing a good job of striking a balance between enjoyably silly material and a serious concern for the progress and form of the novel; they've all participated quite passionately in our class discussions about where the story is going.

We've also been studying the difference between 'S's on the end of words that indicate plurals, and 'S's that indicate possession (basically, which words need apostrophes and which don't). To that end, yesterday I handed the kids a brief plot synopsis of our epistolary novel, with a number of errors to be corrected. I chose to use a plot synopsis for the exercise because I thought it would get them interested. They were even more interested than I anticipated, and have been talking about using this synopsis for the back cover the of the novel, should we ever bind and/or publish it! So here, for your reading pleasure, is the plot synopsis I wrote (without errors):

"If Aloha's pills aren't taken, her crazy spells may get worse. But, if the company of devils and skeletons gets its way, she'll have to take those pills! The location of her headquarters is hidden. Will all her enemies find her there? Will her schemes succeed, or will she be foiled by her enemies' plots?"

As You Like It

2009-10-26T16:11:00.003-04:00

Our class has begun work on a production (to take place at some unspecified point in the future) of Shakespeare's As You Like It. I firmly believe that students should be introduced to Shakespeare much earlier than high school, since it is rather like learning a new language: best done young. Thus far, we have acted the play through once without Shakespearian dialogue; I told the story, the kids acted it out. Today we began using an abridged version of the script, and we'll be working our way slowly through over the next few weeks. Here are some rehearsal pictures:

Group rehearsal...

Rosalind and Celia

Drama games

Acro-balance

2009-10-20T15:04:00.005-04:00

I'm not sure everyone knows that I've been doing some acro-balance with the class over the last several weeks. Acro-balance is a fairly obscure form: it is, essentially, a series of two-person acrobatic poses, one passing into the next. It's almost all a function of counterbalance, rather than muscular strength. I'm using it as an additional form of physical education, and as a trust-building exercise within the class, since partners and spotters are to some degree responsible for other people's safety. Thus far, we begin our (brief) sessions with some stretching, to get warmed up, and then proceed to two or three ground-level counterbalances. I'm hoping that if we stick with this over the year, by the end we may progress to slightly more advanced positions. We are taking it quite slowly—partly due to the difficulty of finding time to spend on this during the school day—but the kids seem to enjoy it a great deal. Here are a couple pictures of myself doing acro with some friends near the start of the year, so you can see what I'm talking about (the kids are not doing this sort of thing, yet):

One group finished some work early, yesterday, and had time for a brief round of Balderdash. It was a fascinating set of definitions:

Obsequies

- to squeeze an obtuse triangle

- funeral rites or ceremonies

- a group of objects that are transparent

- a sequence of identical objects

- something with no symmetry

the Mahabharata

2009-10-14T14:51:00.003-04:00

Over the last few weeks, as some parents may have heard, our class has been listening to snippets of the Mahabharata whenever we have a few spare moments. The Mahabharata is one of two great Hindu epics (the other being the Ramayana), and of the two, the Mahabharata is the longer and the less clearly compiled. To the best of my knowledge, it is originally an ancient Sanskrit poem, some 15 times as long as the Christian Bible. The version I grew up on is the one I'm sharing with the kids: a 9-hour stage script by Jean-Claude Carrière and Peter Brook. (There is also a 6-hour film version.) I've told the kids some parts from memory, and some have been read from the script. It's a powerful story, with equally powerful language, and the characters often make strange choices even as they state their own profound and particular beliefs about the order of the world. We have not finished the story yet; we are still caught in the great, world-ending battle that takes up the last third of the script.

I'll include a passage here, simply because I love this poem and I want to give you a taste of the kind of lines we've been hearing and discussing during class and during recess.

(Yudhishthira, son of the god Dharma, unknowingly is examined by his father:)

VOICE: What is quicker than the wind?

YUDHISHTHIRA: Thought.

VOICE: What can cover the earth?

YUDHISHTHIRA: Darkness.

VOICE: Who are the more numerous, the living or the dead?

YUDHISHTHIRA: The living, because the dead are no longer.

VOICE: Give me an example of space.

YUDHISHTHIRA: My two hands as one.

VOICE: An example of grief.

YUDHISHTHIRA: Ignorance.

VOICE: Of poison.

YUDHISHTHIRA: Desire.

VOICE: An example of defeat.

YUDHISHTHIRA: Victory.

VOICE: Which animal is the slyest?

YUDHISHTHIRA: The one that man does not yet know.

VOICE: Which came first, day or night?

YUDHISHTHIRA: Day, but it was only a day ahead.

VOICE: What is the cause of the world?

YUDHISHTHIRA: Love.

VOICE: What is your opposite?

YUDHISHTHIRA: Myself.

VOICE: What is madness?

YUDHISHTHIRA: A forgotten way.

VOICE: And revolt? Why do men revolt?

YUDHISHTHIRA: To find beauty, either in life or in death.

VOICE: What for each of us is inevitable?

YUDHISHTHIRA: Happiness.

VOICE: And what is the greatest marvel?

YUDHISHTHIRA: Each day, death strikes and we live as though we were immortal. That is what is the greatest marvel.

An unusual week...

2009-10-12T12:24:00.003-04:00

This is an exceptional week for Summers-Knoll in many ways, and especially for our class: the Tantre Farm field trip is tomorrow, the Howell Nature Center trip is on Thursday, we're gearing up for the Curious Epicures this coming weekend, and POOT is launching. It seems as though ordinary school work will have to be crammed in around the edges for the next few days; among other things, we're still creating our North African tiling to help decorate Cobblestone Farm on Sunday! All of the madness notwithstanding, I am bursting with pride over the résumé drafts that were brought in this morning. I see the kids taking great care with the style and content of their POOT writings, and I was overjoyed to hear their thoughtful contributions to our discussion of free speech on Friday. Our kids are doing a fantastic job of entering into the world of this Place Out Of Time, and I know they're going to hold their own admirably in the coming weeks.

The Man Who Counted

2009-10-06T16:35:00.004-04:00

Each morning, as we begin math class, we've been reading a short selection from The Man Who Counted, by Malba Tahan. The book, written by a Brazilian mathematician, is a series of Arabian Nights-style stories that center around the character of Beremiz, a brilliant mathematician who is also known as the Man Who Counted. In each story, Beremiz solves at least one difficulty put before him by the beleaguered inhabitants of Baghdad, and explains the mathematical and arithmetical relationships through which he sees the world, as well as demonstrating principles of friendship and charity. As we get further into the book, we've begun trying to solve the problems in advance of Beremiz, and I was particularly pleased by everyone's efforts this morning. Beremiz was explaining that using four fours (the numeral 4, four times), and no other numbers, it is possible to create a set of equations that yield each number from 0 to 10. For example, (4/4) — (4/4) = 0. I'm including the photograph of the equations we came up with for each of the eleven numerals. The kids did a great job!

Brave Balderdasheries

2009-09-30T13:56:00.002-04:00

Balderdash is a game wherein one person picks an unknown word out of the dictionary, and challenges everyone to create a plausible definition of that word. The person with the dictionary writes down the real definition, and shuffles it in with everyone else's submissions. That person then reads out all the definitions, and the class votes on which one they think is real. You get a point for voting for the real definition, and a point for each person who votes for your own. We played a round this morning, and included all those who come in for math (Jesse, Stanley, Lukas, and Selden). I was fascinated by the entries today, I think they show some interesting perceptions of the word, so I'm sharing them here:

The word was "virgule" (chosen by Parker). Here were the submissions:

- an irritated microfiber

- a type of material that's on a badge

- a person scared of depth

- a miniscule object

- a particle of living matter

- separates successive divisions in an extended date

- to have happiness

- a tiny person

- a green bud on a plant

- something vile

Can you guess which one is the true definition? Or who wrote the others?

Teaching Arabic

2009-09-29T12:49:00.005-04:00

Here are some photos from our visit to Elaine's and Mrs. Adhikary's classes last Friday. I was incredibly proud of my students; they worked well with the younger kids, and I know they all put in real effort for this lesson.

Learning to Teach

2009-09-24T14:47:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow our class will be visiting Miss Elaine's and Mrs. Adhikary's classrooms, with the aim of teaching the younger kids how to count in Arabic. We had a long brainstorming session this morning to create the lesson plan, and the kids took it quite seriously and came up with some lovely ideas. They'll spend some of tomorrow morning putting together the materials required for their plans... and after lunch, we'll head over to K-1 and they'll have a chance to try their hands as teachers! This will be the beginning of an ongoing relationship with Miss Elaine's class, and I'm looking forward to its flowering.

North Africa projects

2009-09-22T12:55:00.002-04:00

As some of you know, our class has two main projects going on as part of our North Africa theme this month. We've been doing some independent research on aspects of the region or the history that interest us, and presenting that research in the form of letters to the Moroccan explorer Ibn Battuta. Last Friday we took a research trip to the Mallett's Creek branch of the Ann Arbor library, and I was immensely impressed by the children's independence and excellent time management. It's a small library, so it wasn't easy finding all the information we needed, but almost everyone did a great job of staying on track and being self-reliant about seeking out the information. At this age, I hadn't honestly expected that level of self-motivation, and it was a joy to see!

We're also just beginning a mapping project, wherein we'll be drawing blueprints/maps of a North African city as it develops through the ages (this is based on a wonderful picture book called "Umm El Madayan"). We've planned the stages our city will be undergoing, and today we began the process of creating the basic layout of the land on which the city will be built. Both discussions were fun and engaged, with the children presenting lots of well-reasoned ideas about the layout and progress of the city. We should be starting the real mapping process on Thursday.

Our first read-out-loud book of the year was The Magic Pudding, by Norman Lindsay; as we've now finished that, we're moving on to a book set in Tunisia called Benny and Omar, by Eoin Colfer. All in all, our North African theme is pulling us in some fascinating directions, and I couldn't be more pleased with the children's involvement.

Corpses and Calligraphy

2009-09-15T15:15:00.004-04:00

Perhaps you're all familiar with the writing game "Exquisite Corpse", but in case you're not, the rules are simple: each person writes one sentence of a story. The trick is that you can't see anyone else's sentence, so when the story is read out, it's nonsense. (There is another version of the game wherein you can only see the sentence directly before the one you're writing, which makes for an equally disjointed but more more traceable outcome.) The kids wanted me to post our first attempt at Exquisite Corpse:

Once upon a time, a frog jumped out of a pond into a tree.

So Esibella said whatcha doing to Pheanis. And Knorm was like whatcha doing to do Fingeberge.

I was almost killed by the last shot.

Today was the day I went to the museum.

All of a sudden the Princess got hit by a wrecking ball and went flying over the cliff and drowned in the sea.

And so he hopped on his old donkey and rode off into the moon waving panty hose.

Everybody died.

The End

We also tried to make our names into different shapes, today, in the tradition of Arabic calligraphy—see if you can figure out whose names are embedded in these drawings!

Subscriptions

2009-09-11T20:32:00.003-04:00

We've had an awfully fun week; I must say I'm really enjoying being part of Summers-Knoll. This week we've begun our North Africa theme by learning the Arabic numbers to ten, spelling our names in Arabic, and doing a little bit of reading about Ibn Battuta, the great 14th-century traveler from Morocco. We've solved riddles, and made our own (cleverly hidden inside Origami), and had a few interesting conversations about numbering systems, mathematical bases, and transliteration. We've started the math assessments, though those won't be finished until next week; hopefully, we'll also get those desks raised by then! The kids played a couple of really impressive rounds of Dictionary (also known as Balderdash) this morning, with some interesting definitions of 'villify' and 'zooanthropy' offered for our common perusal. We've also been reading The Magic Pudding, by Norman Lindsay, and I have to say that's been a lot of fun.

A couple of parents have let me know that they're having trouble subscribing to the blog. Thank you for telling me, since I'm new to this and not apt to notice missing features! I'm emailing Mrs. Carpenter to find out how she set up her subscriptions (since I can't seem to figure it out), and hopefully that'll be up tomorrow.

I look forward to seeing everyone at the picnic!

A great first day!

2009-09-09T07:52:00.009-04:00

We had a fun first day of school: we solved riddles and then created them, measured ourselves for desk-fitting purposes, and searched our minds for any information they might contain about North Africa.

Morning snacks

2009-09-08T15:01:00.002-04:00

Would it be agreeable to everyone if we took weekly turns at bringing in snack this year? Since there are only six children in the class, I’m certainly willing to take a turn with snack, as well, so we’d be on a seven-week rotation. (That would come out to about two turns each before the winter break.) We'll be eating morning snack every day, but I'm not as firmly attached to the idea of afternoon snack; it's harder to fit in, and it won't always be necessary. I had been intending to provide snack this week, since I hadn’t sent out any notice about it; however, Parker’s father was kind enough to bring in a big tub of pretzel sticks anyway, so perhaps that family would like to take a turn this week? It’s pretty much taken care of with the pretzels, anyway… No matter what we decide, thank you for the pretzels, Ron! That was very thoughtful.

I’m therefore proposing the following Schedule of Snack Rotation (currently randomly ordered; just let me know if you’d rather have a different week!):

9/8 - 9/11 Parker’s family

9/14 – 9/18 Peter’s family

9/21 – 9/25 Max’s family

9/28 – 10/2 Alec’s family

10/5 – 10/9 Maria’s family

10/12 – 10/16 Mike’s family

10/19 – 10/23 Renata

10/ 26 – 10/30 Parker’s family

11/2 – 11/6 Peter’s family

11/9 – 11/13 Max’s family

11/16 – 11/20 Alec’s family

11/23 – 11/27 Renata (Thanksgiving week)

11/30 – 12/4 Maria’s family

12/7 – 12/11 Mike’s family

12/14 – 12/18 Renata

Does that work all right? Tthere are only six kids in the class, so providing snack shouldn't be too onerous a burden.

I believe everyone's dealt with snack before, but here are some suggestions for healthy foods (shamelessly borrowed from Mrs. Carpenter's blog):

Fruit - strawberries,bananas, apples, grapes, raisins, applesauce
Vegetables - mini carrots, celery, cucumbers
Cheese and whole wheat crackers
Nutragrain Bars
Pretzels
Pre-popped plain popcorn
Yogurt
Bagels

Please remember to check for peanuts and tree nuts, including snacks made in a shared facility. Check labels for transfat and high fructose corn syrup and avoid those foods whenever possible.

Weekly schedule

2009-09-08T14:56:00.001-04:00

Here's our daily/weekly schedule for this year, in case it's helpful to know:

Monday through Thursday, we’ll begin each day with one hour of math (along with the rest of the school), from 9:00 to 10:00. Snack/recess is 10:00-10:30. From 10:30 until lunch begins at 11:00, we’ll do more language arts-focused work, some of which will be tied in with our theme. On Monday, Tuesday and Thursday I have one hour with the children in the afternoon, and we’ll use that time to explore the current theme from other angles.

Our class’s specials are all in the afternoon this year, as follows:

Monday: Music, Art

Tuesday: French, P.E.

Wednesday: Music, Art, Latin

Thursday: French, P.E.

Please make sure the kids have appropriate clothes on P.E. days—thanks!

Fridays are left open for projects, field trips, etc.

Back to school!

2009-09-04T11:04:00.003-04:00

I'm excited to see everyone on Tuesday, Sept. 8! I've met half of our wonderful group, and I can't wait to meet those I haven't seen yet. There are lots of exciting ideas floating around the school this year, and I'm eager to see what the oldest kids in school are going to think about it all.

See you soon... (don't forget your passwords...)