Spelling Bees and Balderdash

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

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!

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

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)

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)

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

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!