Giving Chapel

Giving Chapel

       My first giving chapel was very exciting! The day was a flurry of carrying, sorting, more carrying and sorting and delivering. I was so proud of the students efforts in this exciting day of service. They were leaders and learners all day long.  Here are the students hard at work sorting the gifts from the Lower School Community.

      After sorting for an hour, the students were tired. 

     But, we still had work to do. After sorting, the students had to deliver the bags to the agency piles and then ultimately to the agency cars.

       

     We then had donut holes and cider (thank you Giving Chapel parent committee) and reflected as a whole 5th grade group.

     Here are some of the reflections we heard from our 5th graders:

I was surprised that the donations were bigger than the car space

I was surprised that some kids don’t wake up to a great Christmas morning.

I was surprised that our gifts added up to this giant pile.

Now that I’m in fifth, I feel like I understand the big change that these tiny toys create.

I was surprised how much stuff was brought. And it was stuff that made you really think about who was receiving it.

I learned how fortunate we are and how important it is to share. It isn’t that hard to make someone's day. Even the smallest gifts add up to so much that it doesn’t fit into cars.

Everyone had to work together to be part of the bigger community. Whoa that is a lot of giving, then whoa that is a lot of sorting!

I wondered what if these people don’t get something they need? But then I realized we didn’t need to worry, these organizations  make a big difference in our community. It was a surprise to hear how happy the agencies were.

As teachers and parents alike, we should be very proud of these students!

Canoeing Adventure: Saving the Bird!

       It was rainy and grey as we set out to the wetlands on Thursday afternoon. You might wonder, why canoeing so late in November? The purpose of our canoeing trip was to think about writing a story from perspectives. How would those on land tell a story of the canoe trip and how would it differ from the story of those people in the canoes. We quickly realized the benefits of choosing to visit the wetlands on a rainy day: wildlife sightings.
      Our first sighting was of two Great Blue Herons. One in the creek as we entered the wetlands, the other across the pond. 

        Even more exciting was the sighting of a family of what we believe to be River Otters swimming right in front of the second Blue Heron. They were too far to see but you can take a peek of them swimming by clicking here. 
        All of this, before we ever set foot in a canoe. 
        Full of excitement from our wildlife sightings, the groups set off into canoes or settled into camp chairs to observe and collect details for our perspective stories.

         That is when the adventure really began. The second group of canoes embarked on their canoe turn. At this point, it may be easier to learn the story from the students themselves. Read the story of the Grebe we saved from the perspective of the people watching from the shore and from the perspective of those in the canoes.

          Perspective One: On the Shore, by Bridget Murphy

It started when I had just finished canoeing with Tom Handel. We were all sitting down and preparing to write about our partners. It smelled like rain and my toes were all numb and curled in my too small boots. My pants were soaked from kneeling in the wet canoe. I was just turned around getting my pencil. When I turned back, I noticed that Ada, who was my partner, seemed to be stuck. I could tell because she was the only person in the canoe I could see. It looked like she was trying to paddle her way out but the canoe wasn’t moving at all. I felt a little confused, how did she get stuck like that? I thought as I wrote some stuff on my paper. I wrote that she was probably stressed and receiving a lot of instructions from the adult in the canoe. Awhile later, I was very sure that they were stuck because they were sitting there for very long and all the other canoes were around them. When they came out, I was relieved for them and I assumed they were too, so I wrote that on my paper. This is where it got confusing. I was just about to sit down when all of a sudden, a canoe came up to the dock and Mrs. McClellan said something to Mrs. Duden. She looked a little frantic, everybody in the canoe looked serious. Mrs. Duden nodded, went and grabbed a backpack, and quickly handed it to Mrs.McClellan. I was so confused, Why would they need a backpack? I asked Mrs.Duden, she said there was a baby duck that had gotten stuck in a net.

“Where?” I asked her.

“In Tom’s hands.” She replied quickly.

WHAT!? I thought as I tried to get a look. That’s when I noticed Tom was crouched down in the canoe as if he was holding something and was telling the kids what to do. Everyone on shore was crowded by the dock.

“Where’s the duck?” someone yelled. Tom lifted up his arms so we could all see, that’s when I saw the poor shivering duck, with a net wrapped around his head. Right then I couldn’t feel my cold cramped feet or my wet soaked pants anymore. I only cared about that scared trapped Duck. I started to worry. Will the duck be alright? How will they save him. I saw that people were taking bags out of the backpack and handing them to Parker. I got even more confused, Why don’t they just take out the thing they needed from the backpack instead of emptying everything else out? The canoes all stopped and crowded around something I assumed was the duck. I staired, hopping the duck would be alright. They all stopped and cheered. I was so happy! The duck was okay, everything was alright.

Perpective Two: In the Canoes by Ada O'Hare

As we glided away from the dock, our paddles swished through the water, We were going canoeing you see, we had seen otters earlier that morning and decided to go see if we could find them. Heading toward where the otter was last seen, there was a sudden flurry of splashing water. We decided to get a little closer to see what is was. An otter? A bird? It stopped moving altogether and we saw that it was a bird. Is it dead? We were about to leave because we thought it was dead, It was so sad.

       Then it started splashing again. It’s alive! But it's stuck! I thought. Tom Handel asked us if we wanted to save it. “Yes,” I felt like screaming but I didn't. And so we did, Tom Handel put one foot in the water and reached over to grab the duck. He had to really work and try to detach the stick. Then he saw the netting. He said he needed scissors to cut it free so he took the bird and we paddled out we had to get to shore so he could get his backpack (which had the scissors in it.) We got the bag and found the scissors then we cut the bird free and released it into the wild!

          Wow! What an exciting day! I could not have asked for a better opportunity to write a story from two angles. Next week we will be visiting some classes in the Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd Grade classes to share our story and our writing. Stay tuned for all the perspective writing to be shared!

Digging Deep into the Meaning of Symbols and Repeated Ideas

Digging Deep into the Meaning of Symbols and Repeated Ideas

         Last week as we prepared for our Wonder projects, we spent some time thinking about symbols and repeated ideas in literature. What do they mean? Why are they important in the story?

          We read a crucial point in the story and listened for when these ideas came back up and what we thought they meant. Here are some of the students ideas.

The students then discussed what they thought was the larger meaning of these ideas might be.

Below are the students summaries of some of the meanings of repeated ideas and images!

       

Heart Maps and Bridges to Neighborhood House

             A few weeks ago, the students were asked to create a map of what weighs heavily on their heart or what issues are they most concerned. These maps were the product of their thinking: 

   

     We then returned to the maps in order to research and learn about what services Neighborhood House provides and where we can find bridges to our own hearts. After researching, we then generated questions we could ask on our field trip. Here are some of the questions:

        Now that we have visited and learned more about Neighborhood House, we can link 3 major issues from our heart maps: Poverty, Hunger and Homelessness. Stay tuned for more learning as we dig into these issues. 

Neighborhood House Head Start

      Last week, we had our first visit to Neighborhood House. The students visited the Head Start program in small groups of 6 and spent time in the classrooms. They were given a directive to try and model and encourage students to use as much language as possible as many of the students are recent immigrants from all over the world. The 5th grade students enjoyed playing with the younger students and are excited to go back!

Wonder: Right vs. Kind

       When Given the Chance between being right and being kind, choose Kind. 

         This is the September precept from Mr. Browne, August Pullman's English teacher, in the Wonder novel study.  Students put their writing side by side with the So  parents responses to make better sense of the meaning of this precept and whether they agree with the precept. The conversation became quite philosophical. Here are some highlights:

"If you are on a bike and somebody tells you, you are going to fast, they are being right. But, then you fall off your bike and the person who told you that you were going to fast checks on you then their being kind. It's good to be both." Quinny

"It really kind of depends on what right means...like how you would define right because right could mean being truthful or it could mean being kind and lying. Then I would go with right because it's always good to tell the truth...sometimes being kind is right." Bridget

"It doesn't matter if your right or wrong. If your right just keep it to yourself. You could warn them, but if - like Quinny says - if they get hurt when they are biking too fast and they get hurt, you don't just say 'I told you so'. You say "Oh!' and you help them." Sebi

"Sometimes you might want to be right, like say in Ga Ga ball, when what they (the other person) is saying is upsetting to other people. Like say for example in Ga Ga ball when people don't get out, it may be upsetting to them when people say that they are out, but I know it's upsetting to a lot of people if [the person] still doesn't get out. In that case, I would be right, because even if I am not exactly being right to the person, I am still being kind to other people." Parker

Quite the philosophical discussion.

     

Buddies and Nature

      The Dudicorns took advantage of this fine fall day to head outside with our buddies. Inspired by the art of Andy Goldsworthy, we took a walk around campus to collect natural materials and create works of art.

       To see more of the photos, you can connect to this       link https://photos.app.goo.gl/Xi3h772C3bwyYzXK2.

Creating a Class Constitution

Please Welcome the Dudicorns...

It is true. We have chosen a class name! By a vote of 10 to 8 we have become the Dudicorns of room 27 over the Taffy Tigers. We discussed the meaning of such a close vote and whether or not this negates the vote. One person even suggested that we add in the third most popular name choice and vote again so the votes will be spread out more. Hmmm....

Can all of us live with our community name? We will continue to ponder....

The choosing of the name was just the start of our week of building a constitution. We started by doing some thinking and journaling about values and what values Mrs. Duden brought into the classroom. We had discussed values before, but this served to  deepen the student understanding of what it means to value ideas rather than things. This was the basis of the classroom values that students chose. 

Parent Values

Then we turned to the parent values that were brought in through the Parent Survey. We spent some time sorting and deciding whether these parent values were represented in the student values that were already chosen.

Below you will see the document we created from the convergence of student values and parent values. You can listen in on an amazing class discussion about Growth Mindset here.


The next step was to do some learning about why we are talking about a constitution. What is a constitution? Why was it created? It may seem backward to start with the end, but I wanted to draw students attention to the history we were going to study. Who were these people in the 1600's and 1700's ? What do we notice about their agreements? What do we notice about that time? We ventured on a Museum Walk of primary source documents to get some ideas. 

Using Visual Representations to Find New Patterns 

           This past week we started practicing the thinking habits that mathematicians use. The students were given this problem:

The Painted Cube

A 3 x 3 x 3 cube is dipped into paint. How many of the 1 x 1 x 1 cubes 

would have 3 sides painted? 2 sides painted? 1 side painted? 0 sides painted?

What if the cube was a 4 x 4 x 4? A 5 x 5 x 5?

           

           By the end of the first session most students were able to come up with the number of cubes for each of the categories, and some students had creative ways to track how many cubes would have 3 sides, 2 sides, 1 side or 0 sides painted. Most could find some patterns, but for some of the numbers the patterns were challenging to discern.

         The next day, we talked about creating and recording visual representations and connecting them to numerical or symbolic representations. We created these visuals  in order to look for patterns that would help us come up with Generalizations for a 4 x 4 x 4, a 5 x 5 x 5 or a cube even larger. The challenge was to come up with the patterns that would help students to determine how many cubes would fit in each of the categories without building and counting cubes. 

         Different teams came up with some helpful visual representations that helped everyone continue looking for patterns. 

Student Voices Describing Patterns

After creating more systematic visual representations, students were able to describe and Justify the patterns they were seeing and how they would grow to larger cubes. Listen to Emily and Jonathan

share their arguments.

        Listen to Matthew as he describes an equation he sees for any size cubed. If y = a side length, then (y-2) x 12 will calculate all the cubes that have only 2 sides painted. 

         Ask your child to share some pattern they saw in the cube patterns. I have included a visual representation to help them share their thinking.

Leadership Day Challenge Activities

Leadership Day in the Woods

On Thursday, we went out to the woods and engaged in a series of challenges. For this day we split the boys and girls into two groups. It was a great opportunity to learn about the communication styles in the classroom and to watch how the students were able to negotiate with their classmates to solve problems collaboratively. It wasn't easy, and some tasks took more times than others. 


The following day, the students watched a video clip of themselves working on one of the tasks and reflected on what they might have done to contribute to the group and what they might have done that did not contribute to the group. What we learned about ourselves and how we work together and communicate as a community will now be incorporated into the classroom work. Students will offering their voice into the group more or holding back their voice and allowing room for others to add ideas. In the end all students walked away smiling...even those with some new bruises.