Please update your bookmarks: http://s-k-5-6.blogspot.com/

We're changing the address of our class blog! 

If you'd like to keep up with our ongoing adventures, please visit: 

http://s-k-5-6.blogspot.com/

(For those of you wondering why the address is changing: This blog was originally created using my personal google account. In the interest of bringing everything into the summers-knoll.org domain, I'm moving things to that account. This will also make it much easier for me to update the blog quickly on the fly, for reasons that are entirely too dull to explain here.) 

Thanks! 

An Introduction

Welcome to the 2013-2014 school year! 

We've really hit the ground running this year, which has been tremendously exciting and gratifying. Unfortunately, it also means that the blog has gotten off to a slow start, even as things in the classroom have taken off. 

Expect more regular updates as we get up to speed (and sign up to have new posts sent to you via email on the right side of this page!).  

For now, here are a few snapshots of what we've been up to over the last two weeks. 

Each week begins with an all-school assembly. Our community continues to grow, and these weekly gatherings keep us connected.  

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Our first theme of the year is Explorers of the World. In Science, we've gone back to some of the earliest recorded scientific thought. How can we learn about the nature of the world around us using only our senses and our intellect? 

We had some lovely, sunny days our first week back, and we took advantage of them to do a very old fashioned project. Sam Hirschman introduced us to one of the feats of the pre-Socratic philosopher Thales: While visiting the Great Pyramids in Egypt, Thales was able to accurately calculate their heights by measuring their shadows, then comparing them to the shadows of smaller objects whose heights were more easily measurable. 

We tasked the kids with determining the height of one of the light poles in the S-K parking lot by using the same trick. 

They set about their task by each selecting an object from school to measure, then measuring its height, and its shadow in the afternoon sun: 

We then created a class graph of all of our data, plotting both the height of the objects and the length of the shadow. 

We discovered that there is a linear relationship between our data points, which allows us to calculate the heights of large objects based on the measurements of their shadows. 

It's an activity that has spilled over from Science class into Math, and even a bit into Writing, as we stress the importance of keen observation of details and relationships. 

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Rachel discusses digital citizenship with our class

We also spent time last week discussing digital citizenship and responsibility. As you may know, Summers-Knoll has a 1-to-1 laptop program at the middle school level, meaning that each student is assigned their own computer for school use. However, before issuing them, we are working to establish institutional guidelines for their safe and appropriate use. Our students have an active role in the creation of these guidelines, and we've spent time working as a class and in small groups to create a code of conduct. When is Youtube okay to use? Is Minecraft an appropriate use of school time? How private is a school email account? Should other people be able to use your passwords? These are some of the many questions we're navigating as a community entering the online sphere. It's an interesting discussion, and a necessary one. 

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We even had our first field trip of the year last week, following the untimely malfunction of the middle school air conditioner on an abnormally hot day. Rather than swelter, we adjourned to the Kelsey Museum of Archeology and the University of Michigan Museum of Art. 

At the Kelsey, each student selected three artifacts that captured their interest, then wrote a little about each of them. They then placed each item on world history timeline, as well as on a map. 

At the UMMA, S-K Art instructor Monica took us to observe some of the pottery on display, tying in some of the work that has been done in class. 

The first of many class portraits!

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We are profoundly lucky to have County Farm Park right across the street from our school. It's a wonderful place to play, study, observe, and contemplate. 

We took an early morning walk last week to discuss a few of its key features: woods, prairie, ponds, and the community farm. Karl also had them playing soccer in the park for PE. It's a fabulous resource and I suspect that we will be regular and frequent visitors! 

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Finally, we've already had some class birthdays! It's a bit of a class birthday tradition that the birthday boy or girl gets to choose an activity for the class from a list made by me. It's usually a sizable list of options that includes things like, "Listen to Jason tell stories about the 80s," or "Handwriting Jamboree," but kids always seem to choose the "Recess" option. 

This week, however, we had two birthdays! One student chose recess, while the second chose "watch an episode of 'Star Trek: The Next Generation'." As it turns out, there was a specific episode that I had been planning on screening as a tie-in to our study of the Scientific Revolution. We've been discussing rational thought versus empirical data, so this episode was actually the perfect way to close out a busy Friday afternoon. 

Here's a scene in which an amnesiac Data is skeptical of some pre-industrial age science: 

As a teacher, I recognize, love, and dread that look on Data's face as he skeptically listens to that lecture. 

The kids loved it, and we paused frequently to discuss deduction, logical fallacies, and the fits and starts of developing scientific thought. It even allowed a little discussion about the power of using genre to convey ideas in interesting formats. 

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This has only been a taste of what we've been up to! As you can see, we've been busy! I look forward to chatting with you all about the work we've been doing on Curriculum Night! We're off to a great new year! 

Last Day! We're Almost There!

Of course, there's always time for one more game of Gaga Ball...

Jason and the Argonauts, 2012-2013

(Click here for a much larger version!) 

Laurea tells us about Pickling

Our second session of EBs recently wrapped up, and kids are still excited about them. Today, Laurea tells us about In a Pickle, the pickling EB. 

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Laurea, checking her wingspan.

We do EBs on Fridays. 

EBs are where we chose a topic from four or five choices. I am writing about the pickles EB. There were five EBs this season; Pickles, Flashmob, Comics, Guitar, and Horseback Riding. Mr. Chris Swinko taught this EB. We call him Chris. I hope you like my blog. :)

Session 1: 

We tried a lot of pickles. We learned about different types of pickles. There are salt pickles and vinegar pickles. With salt pickles, good bacteria thrives. It kills all of the other bacteria and the good bacteria pickles the cucumbers. With vinegar brine, it kills ALL of the bacteria. (Brine is what pickles the cucumbers.)  

Salt pickles

Vinegar pickles                         

Session 2: 

We made some vinegar pickles. Find a vinegar pickle recipe here. We also pickled some unusual things like carrots and cauliflower. The cauliflower was really good. We tried a little of the store-bought vinegar pickles. They were spicy, but good. You can buy the pickles we tried at Whole Foods. Their website is here.

Session 3:  

We started making salt pickles. We got our vinegar pickles from the last class. We started making salt pickles. Find how to make salt pickles here. We are going to interview people from various local pickle companies, one of them is The Brinery . We got to eat a lot of the ingredients, including fennel. We got to try our vinegar pickles from last class.

Session 4: 

We went to the Brinery and we got to see things. The Brinery’s website is here. We got to see how they do things and see how they make things. The surprising thing is they make everything by hand. They have a machine for shredding, but the majority of the process is without machines. We learned that pickle brine is being given as a drink to many major athletes. Pickle juice can replace many nutrients that gatorade cannot. We got to try some pickle brine and some pickles. They were good. Be sure to check out the link I gave you!

Lemon pickles

Spring Trip! DAY 2: Cave City and Mammoth Cave!

After a lovely visit at Serpent Mound, we began our long trip to Cave City, Kentucky. Google Maps says that it's a trip that should have taken us a little over four hours.

Google Maps is a liar.

We drove through torrential downpours, standstill traffic, more torrential downpours, and countless hills and valleys. There were points at which if felt as if we had driven all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. No matter how long we drove, the answer to "HOW MUCH LONGER," was always met with a tired, "about two more hours." This has since become an in-joke, a rallying cry, and an all purpose answer to all manner of questions.

The boys' cabin.

We eventually made it to Jellystone Park Camp, our home for the first two nights. Our amazing crew of parent chaperones called ahead and had a feast of pizza waiting for us, and we let the kids run around exploring together to burn off some of the energy built up by twelve hours spent on buses.

The lights-out portion of the evening went surprisingly well. It was late, and everyone knew we had a long day ahead.

The next morning, the kids rose with the sun, and they were treated to a feast prepared by our all-star parent crew. The parent cabins were equipped with kitchenettes, which were used to make toast, fry bacon, and scramble up several dozen eggs. There was also fresh fruit, yogurt, milk, and juice.

Then we loaded up the buses and headed to Mammoth Cave National Park. The drive from our campsite to the park is peppered with an assortment of local curiosities and attractions (a less charitable person might call them "tourist traps"). If you're planning on visiting Mammoth Cave National Park on a family trip (and I've already heard several rumors of people tentatively planning on returning), make sure to plan some time for bumper boats, the Mystery Spot, and the absolutely terrifying looking "Alpine Slide."

Our first cave tour was called the New Entrance Tour. The brochure sums it up:

New Entrance Tour

A wonderful complement to the Historic Tour, this trip includes a dramatic series of domes and pits, typical large trunk passageways, and a short journey through dripstone formations.

That description really undersells just how amazing it all was! First of all, the "new entrance" means exactly that. The entrance to this part of the cave is manmade, and looks nothing like what you would probably expect:

That utility door that that everyone is entering is the entrance to the cave. It looked much more like something out of the television show Lost than an ancient natural wonder.

DISCLAIMER: It is really, really difficult to get good photographs in caves. They are very dark, and frequently cramped. Rest assured that the views in person are amazing! The photographs that follow are... less so.

Just through the doorway is a damp, dank, manmade stairway. 

The manmade portion quickly gives way to the cave itself. Stainless steel staircases and walkways twist and turn through the passages. It's really, really cool. 

Aristea and Lev.

Here's a blurry shot of not-much, but if you look closely, you can get a sense of the scale of the interior. 

Again, this may give you a small sense of the scale of the passages. At the top of this photo, you can see a group gathered around a light. At the bottom, you can make out the ghostly silhouettes of people just in front of the camera who are about to climb the stairs.   

People were regularly exclaiming with wonder, pointing, posing, and generally having a wonderful time. Here are Aristea, Denali, and Margaret gathered around a light at a bend in a passageway. 

Each tour features a guide, who made frequent stops to tell us about the science and history of the cave.  We heard a lot about limestone, the sandstone cap (which is the waterproof barrier above the cave), and the colorful human history of the cave.

Following this two-hour excursion, we all enjoyed lunch together in a cafe in the park. Afterwards, Karl took a large group of kids kayaking above ground on the Green River, while I went with a smaller group on a second cave tour. I'll tell you a little about that tour in our next entry!

Spring Trip! Part 1: Serpent Mound

WE MADE IT.

By now, parents, siblings, and families have all probably heard many tales of epic adventure about our Spring trip. Between the parents, teachers, and photo-crazy students, I'm fairly certain that there are well over 11 million photos from this trip. Here are a few highlights from my camera. I'll start with Serpent Mound:

After a long, scenic drive through rural Ohio (and most of Ohio is rural), the kids were ready to run. Here we see them exploring the Serpent (and surrounding areas).

Of course, by "exploring," I mean "picking flowers" and "sinking into mud up to the knee..."

The mound sits on a ridge 100 feet above Ohio Brush Creek. 

A group shot on the observation tower. 

Serpent Mound was a really neat stopping point. It's out of the way (way out of the way), so we essentially had the place to ourselves for the duration of our visit. While there, I picked up a book called Indian Mounds of the Middle Ohio Valley. As it turns out, there are a lot of these mounds spread across Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, and Indiana. Serpent Mound is the largest, and generally the most well known. Others can be found on golf courses, in the parks of small towns, or tucked away in subdivisions. These mounds are often subtle, giving little clue that they represent the work of cultures that lived here one thousand years ago. (Artifacts found at Serpent Mound have been dated to 1030 AD.)

After lunch, a tour of the gift shop, and many, many photo ops, we loaded back onto our buses and resumed our long journey to Cave City, Kentucky.

The kids create their own serpent!

Seed Bombing

Hi, I’m Noah. I’m in Jason’s 5th grade class, and I have a blog post just for YOU! Yes, you. It’s just for you! On Wednesday, May 1, we went down to the Water Street Redevelopment Project, and we seed bombed it!

If you don’t know what seed bombing is, I’ll tell you. Seed bombing is when you make these little balls made of clay, compost, and whatever seeds you want, and throw them into a field. Mark Maynard, (Clementine's dad) wanted to seed bomb the field because he thought it would

show that the people of Ypsilanti care about their community. 

Making the seed bombs

At first, he decided to just do it with adults and their children, but after some thought, he thought that it would be a good educational experience, so he decided to include schools. His original idea was to seed bomb with sunflowers, but after talking to other people about it, he decided not to, mainly because if the sunflowers roots pick up pollutants, they would have to be treated like hazardous waste. Plus, it’s better to use native plants because they are stronger when in their own environment.

Noah with a slingshot

The tools we used to shoot the seed balls out were our hands, tiny trebuchets, a colossal trebuchet, slingshots, and a snowball thrower.

Some people were kind of violent, throwing them like there are aiming at birds, and others were more subtle. But all in all, everyone loved it! It turns out that your hands are the best for aiming, the snowball throwers sort of worked, the tiny trebuchets failed almost always, and when they did work, that launched it 3 feet away from the curb, and the most efficient was the slingshot, that shot it extremely far, and had amazing aim and precision! The seeds we used (for you horticulturalists out there) are in this link right HERE.The people who made the trebuchets were all in Science Club, and you can check out Dr. G.’s Blog for a little bit about the construction, which is right HERE. The main event took place at 5:00 PM, but I couldn’t show up, but I do have a few pictures from Mark Maynard’s Blog, which is HERE.

Anyway, that’s my blog post. Thank you all for reading! This has been Noah, a new reporter, signing off!

Lee on Computer Games

This is Lee.  I am posting on this blog for the first time, and I am super excited!  I am going to tell you about video games we have been using in our class.  One online game I would suggest is Gamestar Mechanic!  It is all about learning to build computer games, and you can play games that others have built. You can build educational games, skill games, or even games with riddles!  You can edit your avatar’s speed and health, and an enemy’s speed, damage, health, movements, and possibly rate of fire and jumping!  It has been useful in our class because we could make projects with it.  You can build games with text and a story, or just to be a challenge!  

Here are some of my sample games:

The first game is just for a short challenge:

Cavern of Stars

These two games show people the basics of gamestar mechanic controls:

Game for New Players 1

Game for New Players 2

This game is to show that backgrounds are important in games.  For example, if you play without a background, this game looks simple.  But with a background, there is an illusion.  (Press z or m to go into a portal (yellow side) and come out the other end (gray side).)

Light and Shadow

Here are some Farm to Table games from the start of the year: 

Laurea's Farm to Table game

Lee's Farm to Table game

Next is a game that I made in math class, about a game we were studying called Nim.  We were studying it because it shows how binary works, in a simple way.  Each player can take 1, 2, or 3 sticks at a time and whoever takes the last stick wins or loses. (Predetermined at the start)  

You play with 20 sticks and take turns.  If you go first and pick the right number of sticks sticks you always win.  
First turn: pick 3.  
All other turns: If your opponent chose 2, take 2, chose 1, take 3, chose 3, take 1.  

If you do this, you will always win, because when either player is at 5 sticks, the player who’s turn it is loses.  You can force your opponent down to five sticks if it is their turn with nine, down to nine if it is their turn with 13, and down to 13 if it is their turn with 17.

Here is a version of Nim that I made with Gamestar Mechanic. To make your selection, press Z.

Nim

I hope you like these games, and maybe even get an account!  

And speaking of games, I think that since Electrocity and Garbage Dreams are allowed in our class, I will tell you about them.  

Electrocity is all about running an energy- efficient and populous city and after 150 “turns”, you are graded on how well you ran your city.  You start with $400 and a population of 10,000.  You start with a small wind farm powering your electricity. If you go bankrupt or have a population of less than 1000 people, you lose.  I have a high score of  85%, or “A-”  if you just continually press “next turn”, (And always buy the power shortfall), you end up with 68 points, or a “B”  This was relevant to Global Citizenship because it is all about running a town.

Garbage dreams is all about recycling.  You get a pile of trash and recyclables and have to recycle and throw away the items that you find.  The recyclables need to be sorted into organics, paper, aluminum, tin, glass, and plastics.  You start with paper, organics, and $150.  You can expand your garbage empire, but you only have 8 “months” (turns).  The goal is to get as high of a percentage of recycling as possible. My high score is 13%.  You lose if you go bankrupt.  It is related to Global Citizenship because we were studying the great garbage patch, and pollution in general.

Place Out of Time banquet

For the last several weeks, the 5th-8th graders of Summers-Knoll have been participating in an online simulation called Place Out of Time. The project asks the question, what if we could bring the wisdom of history to address an issue of today? Participation has required the synthesis of numerous skills, including research, writing, improvisation, and acting, and has covered a variety of content areas; history, politics, society, and more. Eclipsing all of this has been how very fun and engaging it's been.

To begin with, each student selected a famous (or, in some cases, infamous) person that they wanted to research and portray. This yielded a motley assortment of luminaries, including a few fictional characters. We then portrayed these characters in the first person during in-school exercises. Gone were Margaret, Lee, and Alexandra, and in their places were Pocahontas, Socrates, and Nancy Drew.

After writing and posting an autobiography of their character, students began posting online on the Place Out of Time message board. There, they interacted with each other, students from around Michigan (and beyond!), and student facilitators from the University of Michigan, who made the whole thing possible. 

The issue that the students considered and debated was a complex one: The French law banning conspicuous religious symbols in schools. It's a controversial topic, and the simulation requires that students debate it in character, representing their character's views. For example, Matthew not only had to understand the issue at hand, but he had to make educated guesses about how Leonardo da Vinci might react to it. 

Of course, the complexities of this case are a lot for fifth-graders to wrap their minds around, so we've had numerous classroom and online discussions about much smaller, but related issues to ease into it. One line of conversation asked about the wisdom of school dress codes in general. Another found people arguing about whether children should have a voice in such matters at all. It has been fun and challenging for the students to portray the views of their characters, rather than their own. 

Watching them rise to the occasion has been a delight, and it all culminated with a field trip to the University of Michigan for the Place Out of Time banquet on Monday. 

For an hour-and-a-half, our students conversed, argued, and commiserated in character with other participants in the project. (One group of students drove all the way from Columbus, Ohio to participate!) 

The assembled group was an impressive sight to behold. 

Our own Victoria Woodhull, Angela Davis, Mr. Spock, Francis Scott Key, and Kim  Jong-il, bookended by Mohammed and "Pretty Boy" Floyd. 

Conversation and debate began in a large group, aided in part by some pre-planned drama played out by the University of Michigan student facilitators. 

Later, we broke into small groups for discussion and debate. You may not be surprised to hear that in many cases, Summers-Knoll kids were quick to jump into the debate. Here we see Jianmarco (in character as Mr. Spock) grilling a UM facilitator who was portraying former President of France Nicolas Sarkozy. 

Here we see a UM student facilitator leading a small group discussion while playing the role of former President of Turkey Kemal Ataturk. Our own Michael Jordan (Evan), Harry Potter (Henry), Nancy Drew (Alexandra), and Marcus Aurelius (Lev) look on.

Later, we dropped character and had pizza as we reflected on our experiences with the project. To wrap up, we were given a tour of the University of Michigan campus by one of the student facilitators. 

The entire project has been an enriching adventure, and I've hardly scratched the surface of the scope of it. Ask your student to tell you about it! They can even log into the website and give you a tour of some of the discussions they've been taking part in. We still have another week or so to go with the simulation, but I've already had a few students clamoring to get started with it for next year!

The Great Minds of History

A huge THANK YOU to the fine folks at the University of Michigan who invited us to participate, particularly Jeff Stanzler and his team of student facilitators!