Matthew summarizes the week

Matthew armed with a new pencil

Hi, this is Matthew, a student of Jason's class, A.K.A The Argonauts. Since October, we have been doing a research papers on ancient civilizations. We are now trying to finish them. Some people had to start over. For example, I am doing the Ancient Greek military. I think that many people are doing very well.

We have also been working on our Place Out of Time stuff. This week on P.O.O.T., we worked on something called a Bio-Cube:
http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/cube_creator/.

Everybody is still trying to keep their own person a secret, and people aren’t succeeding much. So I won’t post my, or anybody else's, person.

In Music, we have been studying The Sphinx Organization, which is an organization for teaching kids without access to music to learn strings. Every year, Sphinx has a competition in musical skills, involving the people that Sphinx taught. We went on a field trip to watch three finalists compete for 1st. The three contestants were Lev Mamuya, Annelle Gregory, and Sterling Elliott. Lev Mamuya got 1st, Sterling Elliot got second, and Annelle Gregory got 3rd. They each got a prize of money; 1st: $5000, 2nd: $3500, and 3rd: $2000.

In Latin, we have been doing what we always have, and for people who don’t know what that is, I’ll fill in the blanks. We translate Latin sentences into English, and take single Latin words and find their English derivatives.

In Science, we are doing things on Digication. Digication is a online portfolio. We are using it to record our calorimetry projects. Here’s the link: http://www.digication.com. We are making a record of what we are doing and a “how to” on the experiment.  

Science Class.

Signing off, 
Matthew  

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Thank you, Matthew! 

As Matthew mentioned, we were able to take a school trip (including everyone in grades 3 through 8!) to the beautiful Max M. Fisher Music Center in Detroit on Friday to attend one of the competitions. It was a marvelous opportunity, and we're grateful to Mr. Riccinto for arranging the trip. (Speaking of Mr. Riccinto, have you subscribed to his new music blog yet? If not, check it out!) 

Inside the Max M. Fisher Music Center

While waiting to hear who won, we were treated to a question and answer session. Students were invited to walk up to the stage and ask the conductor questions about Sphinx, the symphony, or anything else that was on their minds. Our own Noah was the first person to rush down to the mic to ask a question, which opened the floodgates of students. I was particularly impressed to see how many Summers-Knoll kids went up to the microphone to take advantage of this unique opportunity. It was a genuine pleasure to be in the company of so many bright, polite, and questioning kids! I was very proud of them on Friday! (Of course, I'm usually pretty proud of them.) 

I hope everyone has a wonderful break!

Melissa introduces Place Out of Time

Hi there, This is Melissa L., Rookie reporter. This week the 5th grade teacher, Charles Jason Depasquale (Jason), has made changes to the classroom blogging system. Instead of him doing everything, he thought up the brilliant idea of the students writing the blog, seeing the lessons through our eyes. When the sign-up sheet went up, I immediately put my name in big letters. But thats enough about me. Lets get learning!

Place out of time

(POOT)

This week, Karl Sikkenga’s class and Jason’s class started to do a U of M program called “Place Out Of Time”, Or POOT, for short. The main outline for this program is as follows:

The students pick out a historical figure of some importance and write a short summary of their lives. The students explain what they did, why they did it, their pet peeves, Their views, and all that jazz. When they have done that, They go deeper into their characters lives and really think about why you picked this person and make it a lot more emotional and real for you. Then you have a chat with, well, whoever. It could be a UM professor or your best friend or a UM student or the person your locker is next to. (In our case, hooks, not lockers.)

I think that this program is very interesting and that we, as students, will have a lot of fun With it.

Well, that’s pretty much it!

Ta-ta for now!

Melissa L., SK student.

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Thank you, Melissa!


For more information on the Place Out of Time simulation, visit their website! There, you'll find some helpful introductory videos there explaining the project. Just like this one:








As Melissa mentioned, we'll all be contributing to the blog from now on. Our current schedule calls for two student entries a week (in addition to my own regular entries), so expect to hear a lot more about POOT and more in the weeks ahead!

Time for School

Time for School

Ken in 2003.

As part of our Global Citizenship theme, we've been watching the documentary Time for School. It's a fascinating PBS project that chronicles seven children from around the world as they begin their first year of school. The kids come from radically different cultures and backgrounds, and we've been talking about how different factors can help or hinder an education. For example, Ken from Japan lives in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. We watch as he begins school at six years old, and he has already learned to read by his first day of class. He has tremendous cultural and family support, as well as a backpack stuffed full of new supplies. 

Neeraj in 2003.

Compare Ken's experience to those of Neeraj. She is about 9 or 10 years old (she's not sure), and living in India. Her mother takes an extremely dim view of education, arguing that she doesn't have an education, so why would her daughter need one? She also complains that the educated males in their village are unable to find work, and asks why should she bother educating her daughter as well? Neeraj is allowed to attend school only after a full day of labor. She attends a night school huddled around a small lantern with other girls. She walks home by herself each night, and arrives in her home after the rest of the household has gone to sleep.

We also meet children from Kenya, Romania, Brazil, and Benin. The first installment aired in 2003, and the filmmakers followed up with each student three years later. The intention is to check in with each student over the course a twelve year period.

You can view the original installment here: Time for School (2003)

The first installment yielded such productive conversations that we decided to watch the 2006 follow-up. You can watch it online here: Back to School (2006)

There is also a third installment, but we've held off on it for now. We've been using what we've seen so far to think about what we've learned about each culture and society featured in the program, and it's caused us to examine our own as well.

The documentary has inspired strong interest in trying to connect to some international pen pals, which is something that I'm looking into. (I have a few leads, but I'd welcome suggestions!)

Read Aloud

Our current read aloud selection is called How Susie Bayer's T-Shirt Ended Up on Yusuf Mama's Back, an article by George Packer that originally appeared in The New York Times in 2002. In it, Mr. Packer follows a t-shirt donated to a thrift shop in Manhattan on a long journey across hemispheres, exploring the many hands it passes through along the way to its final destination in Africa. Like our studies of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the Materials Recovery Facility, it encourages us to think about the things that we own and use, and the effect they have on others when we discard them.