A Wonder Fair

One of our favorite deep-dive explorations this fall was into the novel Wonder by RJ Palacio. We read carefully for symbolism, character change, and analysis of theme. Together we've discussed our ideas with evidence from the novel, often returning to the book to reread a passage to answer our questions about character motivation or various perspectives. We continued our journey into the sequel novel, Auggie & Me, as we read the Julian Chapter and sought to understand the antagonist's point of view. Reading about Daisy's death, the family pet, we cried together and asked the ourselves about the author's choice. Attending the premiere of the movie was another highlight, one that led to many discussions, additional insight, and a general feeling that the book is better than the movie.

Our concluding experience with this book was to create a claim statement and support it with evidence from the book. We used active listening skills to help each other find the heart of our claim by asking questions that caused the speaker to dig deeper into their thinking. A few of our claims were: Julian's actions reflect his family's values; There is more to Auggie than his appearance; Bear symbolizes a new start; and Auggie is like the sled. We created models to represent our claim and evidence and then presented them to Mrs. Duden's class. Our greatest challenge was presenting them to our parents at home, and asking them to engage in one of our Thinking Routines.

Always finding our parents' voice as a source of insight into our learning, we reflected deeply on our parents' thoughtful and authentic questions and statements. Below are some examples of how we were inspired by our parents' thoughts around our learning.

"My mom's question, 'Is the book about friendship?' makes me think the book is only focused on Auggie. It is also focused on keeping friends and making the right friends."

"Mom's statement, 'It doesn't matter how you look, there is no connection between how you look and who you are.' It makes me think, how am I going to apply this to my life?"

"My mom's statement, 'I normally think of family values as positive, and your first three examples are negative. I'm wondering why that stuck out to you?' My first thoughts lead me to agree with my mom. Family values are usually positive. Once I thought like them, I understood that their family value are positive in their eyes. I wonder if everyone in the book knew each other's values and why they were their values, if everyone would be a little kinder to each other."

Secret Friends

We've really enjoyed the homemade gifts from our Secret Friends. Today we shared the puzzles we've made for each other. There were lots of word searches, crosswords, and a couple of creative marble rolls. The most challenging puzzles were the actual puzzles that we had to put together. It is such a gift to hear their genuine joy and appreciation for each other's thoughtfulness and creative efforts.

Off to the Theater

As we continue to explore how to tell stories, and with our love of theatrical arts, we attended the NWCT production of Cinderella. We enjoyed all the tap dancing feet, costume changes, and theatrical elements. Mostly we loved the miles of sequins and feather boas used to tell the story of a tap dancing prince and a very feminist and independent Cinderella.

Giving Chapel

After several months of learning, we used our hands to share the OES heart at Giving Chapel on Friday. Prior to the special chapel, the kids kicked off their learning about the agencies with a conversation about our values around education. Together we visited Woodburn Learning Center with Maestra Kelola and explored our love of language with the preschool students. After our visit, we worked to present our understandings to the Lower School, created several sets of bilingual learning games for the school, and welcomed the organization into our school. 

Giving Chapel day saw us all a buzz with plenty of energy and excitement. We helped carry gift bags and wrapping paper to the service, presented the agencies during the chapel, and then began to sort all of those gifts given. Sorting proved to be a bit daunting as we unpacked over 250 bags of gifts. Our favorite part was loading all of those gifts into the waiting vans and cars to be delivered to the people in our community. In reflecting on our experience we wrote, "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."

"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."

Reflecting & Listening

We have been working hard on listening deeply to each other for understanding. In this short clip, you will see two girls sharing either their reflection or a synthesis of what they heard their partner say. The most powerful part of this learning experience happened when the kids reflected about how much they learned from listening to each other. Enjoy!

Curtains Up!

Lights, sound, costumes, and actors worked hard this week to bring our story, Oh My gods! to life. The best part was listening to the kids share compliments for 35 minutes after our show today. They had heartfelt appreciations to share with each other about their acting, enunciation, and support of each other backstage. As a teacher, I sometimes think that no complaints or problems must mean things are ok, but listening to our kids talk about how each person really supports everyone else warmed my heart today. They shared that some are very congratulatory to everyone when they exit to backstage, while others are flexible and supportive when lines or cues are forgotten. They talked about how they help each other remain calm and remind each other to breathe while backstage. It is heartwarming to see a community of kids who reach out to lift others when they are feeling stressed, instead of lashing out. How blessed am I to be included in their journey through this year. Enjoy some beautiful moments captured by Nellie Hester. Thanks!

Backstage Nerves

Glowy moments

Taking the golden thread to Arachne

Deciding how to hoard the power

The Concluding Battle

Our Quilt & take a bow gods, goddesses & Mortal!

Our Journey in Video

Here are the two videos that capture a few snippets of our journey as writers, actors, set builders, costumers, fabric artists, and problem solvers. Enjoy a glimpse into our learning and thinking.



Writing Oh My gods!

Creating Oh My gods!

Cast of Oh My gods!

As we move into our final rehearsal days before our performances, we are excited and a buzz with plans, ideas, and energy. Our last quilt squares are finished and ironed, our costumes are receiving their final touches, the fog machine is up and working, we constructed a stage, and are learning our final cues. Next step... To The Stage!

Celebrating Our Veterans

Last week we were blessed with a visit from John Knight to talk a bit about serving in the Navy. The kids loved listening to his experiences, and sharing about the veterans in their own families. Thank you John for sharing your memories, photos, and medals with us!

Duty, Honor, Country

The Greek Quilt of Mythology

Our nimble fingers are hard at work creating a stunning piece of art for our class play. From the onset of our project, we knew there would be a quilt as a central part of our story. We've dug into the finer arts of embroidery, applique, and puzzle making. Each square represents each character through a symbol of their heavenly powers and a symbol of their emotional experience. Here is a peak preview of the 3 Fates quilt squares.

Playground Construction

Watching the construction of our playground is an event most kids devote a few moments to during their recess, and many confer with the construction plans posted on the cafeteria windows to better understand the construction.

Today, while watching the excavator dig a hole for tree stumps, the kids noticed the construction workers were excavating and reporting numbers read from an interesting technology device attached to a tripod. 

They had lots of questions, and learned that it communicates with 16 satellites, including one in Russia. The satellites give various height and depth readings and create an exacting measurement, working to ensure our new playground will be level. This geospatial science sparked a lot of imagination and conversations, and helped them better understand the science behind the construction. To think Russian satellites helped build our playground is a mind boggling connection.

More Math Exploration

Our weekly 15 minute math tasks bring us a lot of joy as we explore them together at school. We love talking about our thinking with classmates, sharing ideas on observations and organization, and then choosing a new method to continue our learning. Many choose to act it out, build models, or create organized lists. Before returning to work on the problem, the kids reflected on their learning from homework. These wonderings included looking for an algorithm and a pattern, making connections to the previous Locker Problem, and determining that there is a need for organizing thinking. When we finished for the day, it was clear everyone was thoroughly enjoying the problem, and was reluctant to put it down. Thinking as mathematicians!

Playwrights!

We have been deep in collaboratively writing a play together. Together we've explored our story ideas through writing, creating tableaus, writing, reflecting on our story after reading, and more writing. We've written a ton! And the good news, our script is finished, and will soon be published! Writing with eighteen authors is challenging; it is difficult to have your idea be heard, to agree on a plot, and to discover the heart of our story. Nonetheless, we have 18 sassy Greek characters that are beginning to live within our community. In fact, kids are thoroughly enjoying speaking as these characters, and trying on some of their more lively lines in daily conversation. Now to the stage!

Deciding which Greek characters represent light, dark and both. Acting it out allowed us to write from our characters' perspective better.

Writing, editing, revising, and reading lines together.

After reading a rough draft of our script, we reflected on the symbolic meaning of our quilt, the heart of our story, and what we hope the audience learns from our production.

Class Preamble & Bill of Rights

It is here! We have worked hard to research, write, listen, and agree on our class constitution. All of the learning began by thinking about our values, and what we value in our community. We talked with our parents about rights and how the US Constitution impacts their lives. We studied and made sense of the Preamble, and then wrote our own. Once we had a rough draft, we worked in partners, then in groups of four, then in groups of 9 to revise our drafts, striving to create a document that reflects our intentions for the community. Coming to the conference table, we began to understand how challenging it is for our ideas to be heard and accepted in a large group, which we could easily parallel to Congress. Finally, we had to create a name. After researching our own names, we believed that a name must: represent our personality, tell our story, and reflect our identity. Much creative conversation ensued, voting occurred, and the results declared we would be called The K-9s in Shades. It was established that K-9s are smart, loyal, good at digging things up, and amazing. It is hard to argue with that!

The real learning happened though after the vote, when 8 won, and 10 were spread amongst four other ideas. We asked, "How do we celebrate when we also realize that more than half our class did not feel victorious?" Regardless, a declaration to take selfies with our favorite four-legged family members wearing shades quickly spread throughout the class. Stay tuned for a collage of the upcoming photo op! Below is our Preamble and Bill of Rights.

Researching Characters

Knowing the kids' knowledge of Greek myths and characters surpass my own, we needed to do some research. Armed with sticky notes, note cards, and questions, we dove into encyclopedias, mythology reference books, and mythological anthologies. We ran to the library when we reached the limit of our resources, and even started creating our own drawings of these characters. As we learned more about these characters, we added our understandings to the shared collection. Our thinking has exploded!

Using Parent Voices

Last week we kicked off an exciting 5th grade event, our class play! We began by reflecting on our previous drama experiences, thinking about interesting ways to tell stories, and by creating goals for what we want to explore next. Then our brainstorming began. Greek Mythology, a clear passion for many students in our class, became the conduit to telling our story. Together, we engaged in many brainstorming sessions about conflict, character, and theme. We interviewed our parents about the possibilities around using Greek Mythological characters to explore current events. Our parents' voices gave us new vocabulary words and ideas to consider. Suddenly, we needed to know definitions for hubris, narcissism, and allegory; these new words began to be peppered into our conversations and our ideas. Our next step was to play with some of the conflict ideas by creating tableau scenes with Emily Stone. Below is a scene that began with Zeus lying on the floor with Kronos fighting him. Our next step is to begin researching all the different Greek Characters we want to include, and find the right point of conflict we are wanting to explore.

Meeting Our Buddies

Our class spent September exploring our love of school with Ms. Kucera's first grade class. As a group we built mandalas in the woods, gazed at clouds and created shapes, read together, and used our power for good. With much excitement, we met our individual buddies for the year. The buddy pairs created a piece of black line art that shared what each duo have in common. We left the space with exclamations about how much we love our buddies!

We've Got Spirit...Yes We Do!

Our class kicked off Homecoming with excited attendance at the all school pep rally this morning. We loved hootin' & hollerin' for our Varsity athletes, our school, and Aardy! Go Aardvarks!

15 Minute Math Task

This week the kids embraced the challenging math problem about lockers. They began by spending 15 minutes working on it at home, and then came to our math forum ready to talk about their first 15 minutes with this very challenging problem. They all struggled at home, and had to remind themselves that learning happens when things aren't easy. Together they shared thinking strategies, organization ideas, and asked each other questions about their next steps. With a very excited air, they left the forum ready to tackle the problem with new strategies. Some started taping together huge sheets of paper to draw their ideas, others settled in with partners to share their charts and tables, while others made models out of colored pencils and acted out the problem using the closet doors in our classroom. Whatever strategy they chose to try, they were all engaged in the new thinking they acquired from their peers. They are excited to see what new understandings they can find in their work with this problem next week.

Building Math Understanding

This week we explored different box sizes for a box of eggs Mr. Arensberg saw on his summer travels through Mexico. We used cubes to explore all the possibilities, and then considered the surface area while calculating which would be the most cost effective box to use. Making models of our thinking helped us understand our ideas and communicate them to each other.

Fun at Walk For Fun

We had a great time, despite the rainy day, walking and running on the track. Our greatest number of laps was 29! That's 7 1/4 miles. Go kids, go!

I Am From

This week we dove into speaking about our identities through imagery, story, and metaphor. We began with an inspiration poem about asking the world to notice us, and then dove into writing about ourselves. We shared our rough drafts with each other, seeking feedback on the mental imagery, sense of story, and beautiful language we used to craft our poems. The revision process took us through many drafts trying to create lines that spoke about our true selves while leaving the reader curious to discover the story. Below are two samples of all the stunning poems written. Be sure to ask your 5th grade author to share theirs.

We Are A Community Of...

This week we created self-portraits that portrayed who we are as individuals. Together, they offer a powerful statement of who we are as a community. We are a community of dreamers, artists, builders, soccer players, writers, problem solvers, gymnasts, football and basketball enthusiasts, programmers, dancers, creators, and believers. Stop by our classroom to see these stunning examples of who we are.

Team Building Day

We spent Friday morning working together on different challenges in the woods. Together, we decided our goals were to focus on communicating by listening to each other, supporting and including everyone, learning from our mistakes, and allowing all voices to be heard.  We kicked off this week by watching a video of ourselves and reflecting on the new perspective and insight to our teamwork. It was a challenging conversation that required us to have trust and faith in each other to honor our emotions. We did it! And will be a stronger community for having done so.

Creating Community with our Buddies

Beginnings

Together, we will create something good.

Something good that will be carried in our heart always. 

Opening Days

Our 5th graders warmed up their wrists and shoulders before heading off to the opening Bell Tower Ceremony where they rang the bell 148 times collaboratively. It was a great kick-off to an exciting year in 5th grade!

2017 - 2018 5th Grade Welcome!

School Year Kick Off

Today our kids expressed how they were feeling about starting the new school year. According to them they feel confident and excited to be fifth graders! What a great year we are going to have!

Lights, Camera, Action!

Below is the video we made of our time at camp. It is our personal reflections accompanied with video footage and photos of our adventures. Enjoy!

Raccoons, Eagles, and Orcas....Oh My!

We are freshly returned from our adventures on Orcas Island. And what adventures we had! We learned about ourselves, each other, and the world around us. We encountered challenges daily that caused us to change and grow into more perseverant and courageous people. Together we thrived as we encouraged each other through these challenging tasks, and learned that with encouragement, we can do things we thought too difficult.

Hiking Mt. Constitution was a major challenge we faced. And yet, we ALL MADE IT! Even though many of us wanted to quit, wanted to homestead right there on the steep hillside, we made it to the top. Each of us found different ways to embrace the challenge. Some found a natural strength that pushed them to the summit, others found empowerment in each other, while others found the surrounding beauty enough motivation to carry them upward. All of us had to dig deep, and find an inner strength that drove us to the summit.

Our other challenges included experiencing and conquering many natural residents on Orcas Island. That included the fearsome night time visitor, the beady-eyed raccoon. Each of us have our own raccoon adventure stories to tell, and love playing out the drama those nocturnal beasts caused. Others kept count of how many bald eagles we saw on a daily basis. Our favorite was the eagle who sat nestled in the treetops of Mt. Constitution, and hovered over us as we sang the preamble to the Constitution. One of the best encounters was the rare sighting of an Orca Whale pod breaching and spouting around in the Orkila bay.

While we may have returned a bit stinkier and dirtier than we were on our departure, that is not all that changed for us. Inside ourselves we discovered a source of bravery, courage, and determination to thrive at camp. Each of us left our comfort zones, and entered the challenge and learning zone. We made new friends and found new depths in our old friendships. Together we found and appreciated not only the natural beauty around us, but also within us, and within each other. We carry our camp memories in our hearts.

Next Stop, Amtrak Train Station!

We spent the afternoon attending a series of Camp Orkila preparation workshops in our train/ferry travel groups. We met with Tom Handel and discussed our gear, personal challenge levels, and how to support each other. Mrs. Clark helped us practice a conflict resolution protocol to use at camp. With Ms. Peterson we made name tags that included our funny camp names. Hundreds of questions were asked and answered, and we are ready! All Aboard!

Zen Ensō Meditations

These last two months we have practiced mindfulness through art. This week we began exploring the Zen meditation practice of drawing the ensō, a circle painted in one stroke and using a complete breath. Each ensō represents our uniqueness and individuality in its imperfection. Our next step is to use true Chinese calligraphy brushes to create an ensō and expand it with additional art that represents ourselves. We found this Zen mediation to be restorative and beautiful in their simplicity.

MHCSD Experiences

Our class had a great time serving our community on MHCSD this week. The kids chose one of four different ways to serve our community. Some of our students visited Medical Teams International where they learned about other world communities who receive medical help. They also helped pack medical supplies for the teams. Another group of students sorted and delivered nearly 6,000 pounds of food to Neighborhood House from the Project 2nd Wind food drive. One group of students created beautiful art pieces to sell at the Refugee Care Collective Art Fair fundraiser. The last group of students chose to host a reflection booth on campus collecting stories and reflections from all other OES students. Of course we ended our day with cherry popsicles.

Revising & Editing for Excellence

This week we've been hard at work writing essays about the central conflicts in our Revolution novels. We began with a brainstorm map to discover the central conflicts, transformed those ideas into an outline, and then constructed well organized essays. In our ongoing discussion of "How do we achieve excellence?" we created a revision & editing checklist with agreements from our class. Today, we worked independently and collaboratively to ensure our essays were polished examples of excellence.

Building Community

In understanding how much work it takes to create a class play, our class wanted to honor the 5th grade production of Romeo & Juliet. The kids made bobbleheads for each of the actors and left a message wisdom and luck. We loved making them and the grateful reaction from the actors. Break a leg!

What is Excellence?

Together we are working to answer this question, and answer how can we help each other achieve excellence? We practiced this while holding our own Council of Excellence with peers. In continuing to analyze and catalog historical artifacts through creating art, we paused in the middle of our work to join small councils. In these councils we stated our observations of the work, asked questions of the artistic historian, and shared our suggestions to create excellent work through accuracy. After our council conversations, we returned to our work as artistic historians. In reflecting on this question and our process, the students felt that their conversations encouraged them work for more accuracy and return to really look at their own work. They also enjoyed using that level of accuracy to look at others' work.

Drawing Breath

This year we've shown great dedication to practicing mindfulness daily. We've participated in a number of courses, including learning about how mindfulness impacts the brain. Together we've learned about mindfulness through visualization, breathing, focused listening, reflective thought, power of smell, and practicing stillness. Our current course is about mindfulness through drawing. Inspired by Sam Winston's art piece Drawing Breath, we've worked on our own pieces of mindful art. Each line represents a breath, an inhale or an exhale. Over the length of a week, we've added to our pieces, which now represent over 40 minutes of breathing. This process, we've discovered, "invites us to discover awareness, not just with our minds, but also through our bodies."

Examples of students' work in drawing their breath. Our breath comes from our center, and that is where we started.

Who Is In My Family?

This past month we've been busy researching our families. We asked ourselves a question to guide our familial research, and then set out to interview our family members. Some of these questions included:

• What was everyone's passion?
• Where did everyone live?
• What was everyone's professions?
• Did anyone have my birthday?
• What does everyone's name mean?

Researching our family trees inspired many of us to dig deeper and deeper. Some kids returned to school with scrolls of information. The trouble with that much information? New inspired questions always rise up, and inspire us to dig deeper into our family histories.  

Archeological Dig

In trying to understand life in the colonies, and knowing the best history comes from interpreting primary sources, we experience an archeological dig from Williamsburg. Constructed from actual artifacts from the colonial town, we tried to hypothesize the relationship between the objects. First we analyzed the artifacts by looking closely and measuring them. Then, using primary source photos and advertisements, we began to identify the artifacts. Finally, we built hypotheses about what could have existed in the area 250 years ago. Our next step, researching interesting trades.