Writing Prompt Wednesday

We had an hour of writing this afternoon. I often give students complete freedom to write whatever they like during this time, but I periodically give them specific prompts that they must choose from. I do this for a couple of reasons.

First of all, it's a tremendous relief to some of the more reluctant writers in the room, who often find the freedom of a completely blank slate to be daunting. Giving them a few parameters actually allows their creativity to blossom without the anxiety of having to pick one topic from an infinite number of possibilities.

For others who have wild and unfettered imaginations, a little forced structure can be valuable practice in focusing their creativity in specific directions.

I gave them three options today:

The image is Study of Five Grotesque Heads, by Leonardo da Vinci. There's a close-up below:

Study of Five Grotesque Heads, by Leonardo da Vinci

I gave everyone the option to change various details as they saw fit. For example, some people altered the names, the genders, and minor elements of the prompt to suit their purposes. The hour went by quickly, with everyone writing quietly and with enthusiasm. Most kids wanted more time than we had to write their stories, which is always a good sign!

Discussion questions for home:

Ask your student about their story! 

What prompt did they choose? 

How did they start their version of the story? 

How far did they get in their tale?

What's going to happen next? 

Friday Warm-Up: What Superhero is Lifting the Car?

We have a slightly longer normal morning meeting time on Friday (8:45-9:05), so we used the time for a fun warm-up. Students were given the following sheet:

 They were also asked a few additional questions:

It was a simple and somewhat silly exercise that generated a torrent of ideas and discussion. Some were bizarre, some were clever, some were subversive of the entire activity, and a couple were all of the above.

Here's a small sampling:

The Psychic Eye, created by Aristea. The Psychic Eye is apparently levitating the car above an empty pair of boots.

Henry A. created Invisi-Man, a clever way of getting out of drawing a superhero. Upon further questioning, Henry informed us that Invisi-Man has average strength, but the car is actually a prop made of Styrofoam.  

Melissa's Shnozzilla, a giant, armless, anthropomorphic nose, definitely fell into the bizarre (but certainly well thought out!) category.

Bob, by Noah. Bob has no superpowers, but he can operate a crane, which evidently suits his needs just fine. 

Though this seems like a pretty light activity, these low-stakes, highly-creative and open-ended projects help reluctant writers to begin to think about character and story in a fun, non-threatening way. Sharing their heroes with the class was enjoyable for everyone, but it also served as a sneaky way to warm them to the concept of peer review: When a hero was presented or an origin was explained, the class inevitably had questions for the author. Fun, gentle prodding encouraged each student to playfully try to explain the holes in their hero's story.

We had writing time later in the afternoon, and one of the options given was to write a story involving their hero from the morning. Some students made this choice and began developing a narrative for their characters. In at least one case, one student was surprised to discover that his superhero would actually work better as a super villain!

Discussion ideas for home:

Ask your student who their hero was.

Who was their hero's arch-nemesis? 

What was his greatest weakness?

Even if they don't have immediate answers, you might have success if you playfully prod them to come up with something on the spot!

Math Recap: Reaction Time

Monday will mark our first week in our new math groups, but we've worked on a number of math projects during our first three weeks of school! For example, on Wednesday, we performed an experiment to test our reaction speed when given an audio cue versus a visual one. To do this, students paired up and took turns dropping a ruler through the open hand of their partner:

Students recorded the point on the ruler at which they caught it. In this case, it looks like the ruler was caught at about the six-inch mark. Not bad!

For the visual cues, the person catching the ruler simply watched and waited for the ruler to drop, then tried to catch it as quickly as possible. For the audio cues, the catcher would look away, and the person dropping the ruler would give a quick verbal cue. Each student recorded ten trials of each, then traded roles.

Some students wanted to test other senses as well. We added "touch" as an optional component of the experiment, but opted to forgo "smell" and "taste" on the grounds that devising an effective means of testing them had too great of a potential to be  mortifying.

Each student calculated the averages of their trials, then recorded them on the board:

(It happened to be National Talk-Like-a-Pirate Day on Thursday...)

Some of us were surprised to find that our reaction times in response to audio cues were generally quicker than those of the visual cues. We discussed it as a class and decided that this might imply that the path from our ears to our brain is a slightly quicker jaunt through the nervous system than the path from our eyes, or that our brains might require slightly more time to process visual information than audio. Some students speculated that this might have been advantageous to early humans because they would be more likely to hear a predator that was stalking them than to see it.


It was an engaging discussion, made all the more rewarding because it grew from an activity that highlighted the idea that mathematics is a tool to be used, and not just a set of rules and algorithms to be memorized.   

Scenes from Friday Recess

When I began at Summers-Knoll (three long, delightful weeks ago), I was a little dubious of our playground. While I was impressed with the herculean task that our parents accomplished by clearing the wooded space, I had to wonder, What are the kids going to do during recess?

A blank slate....

I'm now embarrassed by my naivete. The students of Summers-Knoll have spent the last three weeks exploring, shaping, and transforming the space to suit their whims and interests: 

On the very first day of school, students started playing Hot Potato while balancing on a circle of logs. Kids have been playing it with gusto every day since.

Matthew, Lee, and others spent most of recess exploring the different possibilities that a 20-foot length of PVC piping offered (which included yodeling through it, balancing on it, and hoisting it as high as possible.)

Anna began transforming the hollow of a tree into a hidden lair for visiting gnomes or fairies, complete with curtains, chairs, and a bed.

Henry K. had some problems finding an adequate handhold to get started climbing a tree (the same one that houses Anna's fairy hideaway.) After a few valiant attempts, he disappeared. I assumed he had moved on to pursue other activities, but five minutes later, he returned, rolling a stump that he had found on the other end of the playground. With Anna's assistance, he got it into position... 

Henry victorious!

This is just a small sampling of the the activities they've come up with. There are also the daily soccer matches, the industrious bug hunters, and the elaborate tunnel system that's slowly growing through our sandbox... It's all a delight to behold, and it serves as a potent reminder that sometimes the best thing we can do as educators is to give kids a blank slate and get out of their way! 

Our Farm to Table projects: an overview

Part of our curriculum involves moving the students toward a project-based learning model for work when studying our themes. Our first theme, Farm to Table, is a short one. We'll only be working on it through September, so I've been allowing for a bit more open-ended exploration as an authentic assessment of their current abilities to conceive of, develop, and complete a project. Some students are working in small groups, others are working individually. I'm dedicating class time for them to research their topic, and I'm providing feedback and direction in areas as it seems productive.

These are the questions that have been posed to students when planning and researching their projects, albeit in a simplified version:

1.  What is the problem or question that drives the project?  

2.  What will offer students inspiration and prompt lines of inquiry?  

3.  What are the skills the students will develop during the process?   

4.  What are the opportunities for interdisciplinary involvement?  

5.  How will the project be developed and supported on an individual and group level?  

6.  What sort of resources will be needed?  

7.  What  opportunities will there be to collaborate within the school and with the wider community?  

8.  How will the project be presented and assessed?  At what stages will there be opportunities for reflection on the process and outcome? 

9.  What is the value of this project? Why is it worthy of the students' time and effort?

Some of these questions might not apply to each project, and some have been rendered a little irrelevant given the scope of many of the products. But the goal is to develop the sophistication of the projects as the year progresses.

I've allowed each student to choose their end product, and I've been keeping the deadline flexible as each student becomes more concrete in their plan. We're loosely planning on having everyone present something by the first week of October. 

Talk to your student about their project! Encourage them to think through the question that they've chosen to investigate, and to share what they've learned during their class research time. 

Monday in review

Lately, we've been using our math period to collect and examine different sets of data. Last week, each student chose a different question, polled the class, and then graphed their data. Today, the data we collected was the height of everyone in our class. Students used rulers, meter sticks, and measuring tape to find heights, then they were asked to find the range, mean, median, and the mode of their data. We'll continue this project tomorrow, and we'll discuss our results.

Henry K's graph of our favorite video games

Discussion ideas for home: 
Ask your student to explain what range, mean, median, and mode are.

Ask your student how they measured each student (what tools did they use), and if they had any problems doing so.

After recess, art, and lunch, we had free writing time. I gave three different writing prompts as possibilities for those in need of inspiration, but most people chose to begin their own projects. We'll be using these projects for a number of things, including identifying student interests, targeting areas in need of development, generating spelling lists, and entertaining and educating one another.

Ask your student what they chose to write about today. 

Our final block of homeroom time was devoted to research for their Farm to Table projects. These projects are works in progress, so there's plenty of opportunity for parents and families to help discuss them as they take shape!

Ask your student what their project is. 

Ask your student who they're working with (not everyone is working in a group, but many are), and talk about how their group dynamic is functioning.

Ask your student what they've learned about their topic thus far. 

Ask your student what form they imagine their final project will take (a presentation, a model, a film, something else?) 

Week One in Review

I intend to update our class blog regularly with summaries and extensions of our classroom activities. As you might imagine, the first week of school was a bit of a whirlwind, so blogging quickly fell by the wayside. Now that things have settled down a bit, I'd like to give you an overview of how we spent our first week.

Fair warning: I sometimes err on the side of too much information. It's partially to give you a really good sketch of our week, but also because I find it helps me to reflect on where we've been to better inform where we're going. That said, I apologize if this is too much information all at once! In the future, I intend to break things up a bit to make them more digestible. Your feedback on this front would be much appreciated! Let me know what you'd like more or less of! 

Tuesday, September 4:
We began our day with all-school assembly. Joanna welcomed us to both the new school year and our new building, which yielded many rounds of applause. After a quick round of staff introductions, we all went to our separate classrooms to get to know one another. Here's our regular Tuesday schedule, with a few notes regarding how we actually spent our time:

8:45 - Homeroom
9:00 - Math: We skipped math today in favor of a "welcome to the classroom" conversation.
10:00 - Snack/recess: Rain kept us indoors, but students still enjoyed games, drawing, conversation, and exploring our classroom library.
10:35 - Music (be sure to visit Cara's Music Blog!)
11:30 - Recess/Lunch
12:30 - PE
2:20 - Homeroom
2:45 - French/Mandarin
3:30 - Dismissal!

As you can see, Tuesdays are packed with specialty classes, so we had precious little homeroom time. Most of that was spent talking as a group about our classroom and how we'll be using our space to its fullest potential.

Discussion points for home:
- Ask your student about the configuration of our classroom (we don't have assigned seats or desks, so ask them how they've been using our workspace.)

- Ask your child to tell you about their "deskmate" and how they'll be using it to manage their schoolwork in the classroom.

- Ask your student how we take attendance in the morning. 

Wednesday, September 5: 
Wednesday looked a little more like what I imagine a typical day will be in our class. After another all-school morning meeting, we joined Karl's class for a mathematical scavenger hunt. Students worked in groups of three to take a survey of the new Summers-Knoll. They were asked to count the number of rooms in the building (deciding what constitutes a room was the subject of quite a bit of debate, and each group ultimately came up with different definitions), then expressed subsets of rooms as fractions and percentages. (For example, if a group decided that there were 39 rooms in the building, they might say that 7/39ths of the rooms are homerooms.) Each team seemed to work in different ways, and many of the conclusions were quite different from one another, which we talked about in our follow-up discussion on Thursday.

We also worked on a writing exercise. Our classroom library is meager at the moment, and I'd like it to grow in the weeks and months ahead. I asked each student to write a book recommendation for a book that they felt would be a valuable addition to our library. Each student provided the title, the author, the genre, a brief description of the plot, and a paragraph on why it would be a worthy addition to our class. I now have an excellent shopping list for the next time I'm on the prowl for class books!

Later, we had a whole-group discussion about previous Summers-Knoll themes and projects as a warm-up to diving into our theme for this month: Farm to Table. We finished off our day by having students pairing up to interview one another. We'll be using these interviews to introduce ourselves to each other over the next week or two.

Discussion suggestions for home:

Ask your student who they worked with for their math project. 

Ask you student how they decided what would count as a room.

Ask your student about some of their favorite projects and themes from previous years.


Thursday, September 6:
We began our classroom today by continuing with our math project. We finalized results, then compared and contrasted with the other groups. We talked about the mathematics involved (counting, calculating percentages, etc...), but also addressed some of the issues that came from working in a group, like how to share the workload and how each group came to an agreement about the ground rules of the assignment.

Later, we had a group discussion about our first theme, Farm to Table. We talked about our image of a farm. For the most part, we all pictured something like this:

Of course, the reality of a modern farm in the United States is much much different. We talked about how things actually look and operate, and touched on a number of topics along the way; factory farms, organic farming, sustainability, world trade, transportation of food, the history of agriculture, and a number of other subjects. With our heads reeling from realizing how massive this topic can be, each student turned to their writing journal to brainstorm ten questions related to Farm to Table that might lead to a project this month. We'll be examining and developing these questions in the days to come.

Discussion ideas for home: 

Ask your student about their ten questions about Farm to Table. 

Ask you student what interests them about that topic. 

Ask you student what sort of final project they imagine. 


Friday, September 7:
Today we had a follow up discussion about our Farm to Table ideas, and students wrote the questions that they found most compelling on our corner whiteboard. We will use these to hone and focus the interest of the class and begin breaking off to work on individual and small group projects.

We also had a long discussion on manners, classroom etiquette, and basic expectations of school behavior. After observing behavior in my class, Dr. George's class, and Imogen's class, I decided that we needed to reflect on our behavior in the classroom. Some questions that were discussed: What should teachers be able to expect from students, and what can students expect from teachers? What do different forms of body language (like putting your head down on a desk, slouching and looking away) communicate to a speaker? It was a productive conversation, and I'm sure we'll be revisiting it as we continue through the year.

Discussion ideas for home: 

Ask your student about "props & recognitions" from the end of the day. 

Ask your student about Farm to Table ideas that interest them (even questions from other kids.) 

Ask your student to reflect on their own classroom behavior. How do they feel they're doing in classes, including specialty classes? 

 

Green Adventures Camp blog

Hello parents and families,

I mentioned this at Curriculum Night, so I thought I'd post a link to it for you to take a look at. Click here to view my class blog from my time with Green Adventures Camp. The format was obviously a bit different, but it might give you an idea of how I intend to use our class blog this year. (And you'll probably see some projects and activities that I'll be doing in the classroom this year as well.)

- Jason

Our Weekly Schedule

I thought you might like to have a copy of our weekly schedule for your perusal.

Monday:
8:45 - Homeroom (HR)
9:00 - Math
10:00 - Snack/Recess
10:35 - Art
11:30 - Lunch/Recess
12:30 - HR
2:45 - French/Mandarin
3:30 - Dismissal

Tuesday:
8:45 - Homeroom (HR)
9:00 - Math
10:00 - Snack/Recess
10:35 - Music
11:30 - Lunch/Recess
12:30 - PE
2:20 - HR
2:45 - French/Mandarin
3:30 - Dismissal

Wednesday:
8:45 - Homeroom (HR)
9:00 - Math
10:00 - Snack/Recess
10:35 - Art
11:30 - Lunch/Recess
12:30 - HR
3:30 - Dismissal

Thursday:
8:45 - Homeroom (HR)
9:00 - Math
10:00 - Snack/Recess
10:30 - HR
11:30 - Lunch/Recess
12:30 - Latin
1:25 - HR
2:20 - Science
3:15 - HR
3:30 - Dismissal

Friday:
8:45 - HR
9:05 - Music
10:00 - Snack/Recess
10:30 - HR
10:45 - French/Mandarin
11:30 - Lunch/Recess
12:30 - HR
3:30 - Dismissal

I hope to see you all Thursday evening!

Welcome!

Greetings!

Now that we've had a few days to settle into our new building and classroom, I'd like to begin the conversation with the families at home. Happily, I've already had the opportunity to meet most of the parents and guardians of my students, and I'm looking forward to corresponding with you further as the year progresses.

Welcome!

First of all, I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Jason DePasquale, and this is my first year at Summers-Knoll. My prior experiences include extensive work teaching and tutoring at 826michigan, and two years of working with students at the Ann Arbor Open School as both a student teacher and a substitute. My teaching style and philosophy have been largely informed by my time spent at those places, which I feel will blend quite nicely with the culture at Summers-Knoll.

As you can see, we have some shelve space to fill! If you have any books that might find a home in our class library, we would welcome them! All genres are welcome; fiction, reference, comics, mysteries, comics, etc!

I'm eager to hear from you all early and often! I'll be blogging about our class activities regularly at http://jason-sk.blogspot.com/, but I also hope to interact with you by phone, email, and in person with great frequency. Please don't hesitate to contact me at any point for any reason! Questions, comments, suggestions, book recommendations, idle thoughts... They're all welcome!

This is a group that loves reading time!

I hope to see you all at Curriculum Night this Thursday evening, where we'll have the opportunity to chat about the exciting year ahead. I look forward to it!