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

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!

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!