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!