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.

Alexandra Explains Student Exhibitions

Alexandra

Hi, I am Alexandra - I am 10 years old and love to write.  For this week, I am going to tell you all about the exhibitions that Jason’s 5th grade class has been working on.

An exhibition is a chance for us students to teach what we have learned.  One of the ways we could do an exhibition is to describe our topic by doing a hands-on experiment and explaining what we are doing as we go along.  For this first set of exhibitions, we have been asked to pick a topic that we have already learned a little about in class. I am studying The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  So one of the activities I am doing is to take a large tub of water, put small pieces of garbage around the edges, and swirl it around to see if the trash gathers together.

I will now tell you how we do exhibitions:  We first decide what we want to do for the exhibition, and then get the topic approved by Jason. As you saw above, my topic is The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  I decided to pick this topic because when we started this topic as a class, I became very interested. After we finished this topic, exhibitions came along, and I thought it would be cool to do that as my exhibition.  Second, we will take our time to get the entire lesson planned step by step. Third, we make sure all the materials are assembled in advance. Even if we could do something during the exhibitions, it is best to do as much as we can before it starts. Fourth, we do a few rehearsals so that we get all our mistakes out before the real thing.  Fifth, we do the exhibition hoping we do well!

A planning sheet to help us track our progress.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
The exhibitions I have seen have both been Evan's, and each had two lessons. The first one was about P.E., and also about the soil Evan collected from ScatterGood, a small boarding school in Iowa that Karl's 6, 7, 8 class went to during the theme of Farm-to-Table.  The second included a gnome math problem that Michael taught his group, and also an activity about the play Julius Ceasar.  I enjoyed Evan’s exhibitions and am excited to present my own!

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. 

Quality Global Citizenship online games

While varied, entertaining, and delightful, we have a general policy that excludes computer games from our classroom. With rare exception, the educational value of most games is overshadowed by other opportunities offered by the classroom. Most online games (especially those with educational value) tend to be fairly solitary, so the feeling is that they're best left for home. 

However, occasionally we come across some gems that line up nicely with what we're studying. Here are two games that I've introduced to the class that not only reinforce a lot of what we've been studying this month, but are also challenging and a lot of fun. (They're also free!)  

Garbage Dreams

Garbage Dreams is a game developed as a tie-in to a documentary of the same name. The film chronicles the lives of three teenagers in Cairo who make their living recycling the trash of others. The game tasks the player with matching their impressive recycling rate: They are able to recycle 80% of the trash that they collect. The player has to use limited resources to turn a profit, then use that money wisely to invest in better technology. In the process of playing, you learn quite a bit about what can and cannot be recycled and why. Investing resources in different technologies allows you to recycle more items, which (ideally) justifies the expense. It effectively illustrates that recycling is not makes ecological sense, but economic sense as well. 

Also, you get to feed old sandwiches and banana peels to a cartoon goat. 

It's fun and informative! 

Play Garbage Dreams

Some more background on Garbage Dreams can be found here. 

ElectroCity

ElectroCity challenges the player to take a small sleepy town on a resource-rich patch of land and develop it sustainably and responsibly. You are given numerous opportunities to balance short term gains with longterm growth. For example, clear cutting a forest may yield some much needed cash, but turning it into a national forest may be a better course for longterm success. It's an extremely open-ended game that allows the player to experience the pros and cons of a number of real world conundrums. 

Play ElectroCity 

Where does the recycling go?

The conversations that grew from our biodegradation and Great Pacific Garbage Patch activities were excellent background for our first field trip of the year: The Ann Arbor Materials Recycling Facility (MRF, often referred to as "the Murph").

We joined with Karl's class and visited on Wednesday, January 16th for a guided tour of the facility, accompanied by an informative talk and Q & A session with our guide. We learned exactly what can and cannot be put into curbside recycling bins in Ann Arbor (check out a handy list here), and we also learned where the materials go once they've been sorted. For example, newspaper and magazines end up in a paper mill in Kalamazoo, while boxboard is sent to a company in Rittman, Ohio. #1 plastic bottles get shipped to a company in Georgia (where they'll find new life as fabric, carpet, and fleece), while scrap steel gets sent to Pittsburgh, where it's used in the production of car parts. Check out this link for a comprehensive list of what gets sent where.

Of course, the highlight of the visit was the actual tour of the facility. The kids donned hardhats, safety vests, and goggles, then headed out to the floor to walk amongst the whirring conveyor belts and rumbling machinery.

Everyone marveled at each identifiable piece of recycling. "There goes a box of Cheerios!" "Those are the fruit snacks my brother eats!" "Somebody threw away the box to Hungry, Hungry Hippos!"

It's difficult to get a good sense of scale here, but the mound of recyclables in the background of this photo was probably taller than the Summers-Knoll building.

To the right of this stairwell was a massive pile of more crushed plastic cartons than you would have imagined could exist in the entire world. 

Watching the glass tumble and rattle...

Aristea spotted an environmentally-conscious fairy door at the MRF, complete with tiny recycling bins.

Karl's class, modeling both safety and style. 

Henry's go-to joke of the day was to point at random items spotted on the conveyor belts and exclaim, "Jason! I think that's the Dr. Pepper I was drinking last Thursday!" 

As Karl's class took their tour of the facility, we got to do some on-the-spot recycling at a paper-making station. 

If anyone happens to have a functional, but unwanted blender, we might be interested in taking it off of your hands. There was considerable interest in trying to make some paper of our own back at S-K.

It was another fun, educational field trip! The facility has monthly open houses. It's well worth a visit!

Extra special thanks to Superstar Parent Volunteer Jenny Hannibal, who saved the day we unexpectedly found ourselves with only one bus to transport two class loads of kids. THANK YOU, JENNY!

Jam-Packed January

We've fallen behind a bit with the blog, and it's in part because we've had an extremely busy January! I'll be writing a few catch-up posts over the next few days, and then we'll return to our usual schedule of posting at least once a week. We're also going to be turning some of the posting duties over to the class in the weeks ahead, with each student taking turns to recap our activities for each week.  

Global Citizenship

Our first weeks of 2013 have been packed with activity, much of which has been related to our Global Citizenship theme. This month, we've talked a lot about the unintended consequences that human activity have had on the natural world. We kicked off this conversation early in the month with an activity. 

Students were presented with the following objects: 

- tin can 
- aluminum can
- cotton rag
- wool sock
- styrofoam block
- plastic bottle
- glass bottle
- apple core
- leather boot
- paper bag

They were then asked what they had in common. As you might imagine, there were many clever and ridiculous answers, but the one we finally hit on was that these are all things that are likely to be thrown into the garbage at some point. 

We then split into small groups. Different materials decompose at different rates, and each group was asked to list the items in order from the quickest to decompose to the longest. We then compared our lists on the board: 

After each group gave their rationale for their list, I gave everyone the correct order and asked them to come up with their best guesses for how long it would take for each item to decompose. The answers were eye-opening: 

1. apple: 3-4 weeks
2. paper bag: 1 month
3. cotton rag: 5 months
4. wool sock: 1 year
5. leather boot: 40-50 years for the leather, 50-80 for the rubber sole
6. tin can: 80 years
7. aluminum can: 200 years
8. plastic bottle: 1 million years (?)
9. Styrofoam block: unknown
10. glass bottle: unknown

Some of this was surprising. For example, Styrofoam seems so fragile and brittle that one might think that it would "break down" quickly. This lead to a discussion on the difference between "biodegradation" and simply breaking something into smaller and smaller pieces. A hunk of Styrofoam may get broken down into smaller and smaller bits, but they are still tiny pieces of Styrofoam. The same is true of plastic.

Another observation that was made was that items that were the least processed by humans were the things that broke down the fastest. Apples, paper, cotton, wool, and leather will break down much more quickly than processed tin and aluminum.

This activity primed them for a conversation about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which we talked about a few days later. If you're unfamiliar with the Garbage Patch, take a look at this short video. It's only two minutes long, but it's pretty powerful. It will stick with you.

We also watched a slightly longer video (it's about seven minutes long) of a talk given by Capt. Charles Moore, who first visited the garbage patch and who has worked to publicize its existence.

These videos, along with some readings, have generated many subsequent conversations on a variety of topics. For example, learning about the nature of the garbage patch has introduced the concept of global ocean and atmospheric currents. Understanding how the patch came into existence means learning about these currents, and specifically gyres, which is a term they had previously been unfamiliar with. (There are actually five large garbage patches across the globe, created by five large gyres. The Pacific Garbage Patch is simply the one that has recieved the most media attention.) Each of these concepts introduces potential lines of inquiry for individual research and project work, which we will be developing over the course the school year.

Literature Circles

We've also introduced Literature Circles this month. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we join with Karl's class to work in small groups. Each group is reading a different novel. Karl has introduced the topic on his class blog here: http://sikkenga.blogspot.com/2013/01/literature-circles.html

Danny, Jonathan, Jianmarco, and Alexandra reading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Saul, Lily, Kaeli, and Noah reading Red Scarf Girl by Ji-li Jiang

Melissa, Matthew, Cory, and Taylor reading Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Denali, Isobel Aristea, and Margaret reading Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell 

Evan, Henry, and Trent reading My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

Karl has also posted some of the questions that the groups have come up with regarding their books. Read his post here. 

The Week in Photos

It's been a momentous week, and it's only Thursday night. Let's catch up:

A full dress rehearsal for Gilgamesh meant we had to dine when we could.

The kids are settling in with our new music teacher Mr. Riccinto. (I'm pretty sure that I heard a little bit of heavy metal playing as I listened from the hallway the other day...) 

There was a tremendous amount of anticipation on Wednesday, as it was 12/12/12. It's the last time we'll see this sort of month/day/year configuration until January 1, 2101. Here are Lee, Laurea, and Matthew counting down the seconds until 12:12 (and twelve seconds) PM...

High fives all around at the historic moment!

Posing with the clock.  

In Math, pyramid construction has begun in earnest. There have, however, been a few setbacks. Here you see the exact moment that Henry, Alexandra, and Christopher have realized that their pyramid is too wide to fit through the classroom door, and too heavy to tilt on its side. As a result, this fine ziggurat pyramid will be entombed in Karl's room forever, or until someone brings in a sledgehammer.

We spent some time talking about our Global Citizenship theme. Here we see Bob. He lives on an island by himself in a state of pure nature. He can do exactly what he wants, when he wants. All of the resources on the island are his to do with as he pleases...

... until, of course, Gary arrives. Now Bob's actions have an effect on Gary, and vice versa. Bob can no longer yodel at three AM without repercussions, and Gary can't eat all of the coconuts on the island. A community is formed, and each person has to surrender certain rights for the sake of their fledgling civilization.This scenario was an introduction to the concept of natural law, which is one the philosophies that influenced the founding fathers of the United States.

We also finished our read aloud novel, Esperanza Rising. We were able to use it to springboard into a conversation about globalization, immigration, shared resources, discrimination, and more. I originally chose this book because it fit well with our Farm to Table theme, but it has also provided some excellent conversation fodder for Global Citizenship.

---

Of course, above all, Gilgamesh has dominated our week. At long last, we premiered the show on Thursday.

Backstage at the premiere of Gilgamesh, everyone gets a hand in... 

...then lets out a cheer for a great show!

Gilgamesh and Enkido contemplating a battle with Huwawa. 

As you can see, it's been a fairly epic week, and I've only covered the elements of it that I was able to snap photos of. We also found time to work on our research papers, summarize an international news story, and write a poem about snow (ask your student about the trick I used to get them to think creatively about writing their poems! They HATED it... at first...). 

On a gratuitously personal note, I also celebrated a milestone in my home life: Our daughter Violet turned one on Wednesday! As much as I love working with your kids, it sure is a delight to get to go home to this one! 

Only one more week until Winter Break! 

Student Exhibitions and Gilgamesh

We're a mere three days away from the premiere of our production of Gilgamesh (and a week and a half from winter break), and the energy around the school is palpable. Props and costumes are spread throughout the middle school commons, the hallways echo with the grunts and shouts of Jianmarco and Taylor practicing their fight choreography, and nearly everyone has the bulk of the script memorized, as evidenced by the frequency that I overhear people quoting lines to one another.

Our director giving notes during a full dress rehearsal.

Props

In addition to the spectacle of Gilgamesh, we'll have a range of student work from this year on display during the performances. Each student in our class spent a part of the afternoon selecting at least one thing item that they're particularly proud of for display. Some chose their Farm-to-Table reports, others are sharing stories that they've been writing, and others are writing up brief descriptions of math and science projects they've enjoyed. It's been exciting to watch them revisit their work and reflect on it. In many cases, students were eager to revise and improve upon their past work before display.

Gilgamesh has grown beyond the play: Lee has been adapting the plot of our play to create a computer game.   

We also spent some time today moving our research papers along. By now, each student should have a thesis statement written and the major points of their outline completed. We worked today to start plugging research notes into our outlines, with the goal of writing a draft of the paper by the end of the week.

Discussion starters: 

- Ask your student what piece of work they chose to display at Gilgamesh! Why did they chose that particular item?

- Ask your student about their research paper. What is their thesis? Ask them to take a look at the outline they've written. 

- Ask your student about what world news story they read about during our warm-up this morning.