Early November Update

From Columbus, we have moved on to getting a sense of how many other explorers from other countries "discovered" and "claimed" new lands. Students split up a chapter and taught their peers through a variety of means, including acting explorations and scenes out, writing songs, and teaching with the use of questions and answers. The motives of the explorers and those who funded them seemed like a broken record: profit and fame along with a great deal of neglect around the impact on Native Americans.

As a part of our lessons on reading nonfiction, students continued to practice pre-reading and were introduced to outlines. Together we filled in an outline about the beginning colonies stretching from the French in Canada down to the Spanish colonies in Mexico and Central America. This week students are independently completing a basic outline (fill in the blanks) while reading about the 13 Colonies.

Barely mentioned in the textbook are details about the Colonist-Native American interaction. We will be beginning three book groups, reading Sign of the Beaver, Indian Captive, and The Birchbark House. While gaining better understanding of the meeting of different cultures, we will read and answer questions with the aid of Bloom's Taxonomy, practice question generating and engage in discussions. Students will have the opportunity to read two of the above mentioned books.

We read Zinn's perspective on the birth of racism in America. He posed the question, "Is racism natural?" and proceeded to support his claim that it isn't a born instinct. Students reflected on this question and discussed Zinn's claim that racism in America was fueled by a "frenzy for limitless profit" and "racial hatred." Out of a discussion came the connection that this "frenzy for limitless profit" seems to be having a negative impact on things today, including the ecosystem.

Students took their Columbus Critiques entirely through the writing process, revising, editing, and then typing. They just scored their critiques using a rubric, focusing on Ideas, Organization, Sentence Fluency, Voice and Conventions. They will refer back to this piece as they continue to write and improve at the traits of writing. Our focus in writing will now shift to reading responses, reflections, prompts and some semblance of book reports.

As you saw in your child's goal setting conference, the three math groups have covered a lot of material so far. One group has just completed investigating integers and is moving on to linear equations and functions, while the others are in the midst of powers/exponents/order of operations and multiplication facts.

Spelling units, nature journal entries and an experiential lesson on the environmental impacts of industry/town zoning are among our many other endeavors. New pictures will be up soon on picasa, check them out!