End of December

Book groups met for the final time on Wednesday. Discussions became deeper as students consciously worked on their listening and sharing skills along with bringing high quality thoughts and questions to the meetings. Themes from the Wood Song discussion included the results of giving oneself over fully to something you love, the love and calmness we feel when we spend time with pets and an exploration of how we are like Gary at times when we want to continue an experience in order to learn more. Themes from The Phantom Tollbooth discussion included sharing an impossible task we will do in our lives, the pitfalls of ignorance (as represented by characters) and the tools of wisdom one can use to overcome ignorance, and finally the idea that boredom is something that one imposes on oneself. Both discussions were full of joy, creativity and life!

We are embarking on our investigation of Leonardo da Vinci's contributions to flight by first learning about Ancient Rome. Students have shown advanced knowledge of Roman Gods and Goddesses, and have begun learning about the rise of Rome, Rome's contributions to today (smooth roads, aqueduct, swimming pools etc.) and Julius Caesar. We will make our way toward the Renaissance in January and attempt to make our own ornithopters.

The Red Fox Clan spent time putting the final touches on the songs they learned for the amazing Solstice Celebration on Wednesday evening. Along with the other children, the Red Fox Clan displayed great levels of love, respect, compassion and leadership throughout the night. What an incredible group of children within an incredible community.

Have a joyful and restful holiday vacation!

Second post of December

The Red Fox Clan dove into the December busyness with a lot on their plate. They continued to practice preparing songs to be sung at next week's Solstice Celebration, as well as practice their technical writing skills in the form of writing directions for games to be played at Saturday's Holiday Fair.

We had most productive book group meetings where students shared their great enthusiasm for the books they are reading as well as their answers to higher level thinking questions. Students used both their answers and their own thoughts and questions as diving boards for discussion. The Wood Song group appreciated Paulsen's passion for learning from dogs and nature and made many connections to their own life experiences. The Phantom Tollbooth group was amused by Juster's writing and discussed how the book represents what lies just under the surface of the real world. The children are already displaying quite exceptional active listening skills, showing each other a great deal of respect and enjoying each other's ideas.

We continued to make our way closer to the last lessons of our first Singapore books in math. Students are enjoying topics ranging from constructing and filling in missing pieces of parallelograms to constructing and investigating the volume of cuboids. Tessellations and reviewing fractions are on deck.

The Beginning of December

The Red Fox Clan delved further into their Weather/Wildlife project, creating frequency tables, bar and line graphs to better represent data. Next week some students will complete pie charts before moving on to writing an analysis, discussion and conclusion.

We began book groups, with one group reading Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth and the other reading Gary Paulsen's Wood Song. Along with answering higher level thinking questions, students are continuing to maintain the practice of recording a thought or question for each section read. Now they are using this practice to start discussions with their peers. Students are practicing the skills of sharing, active listening and rhythm and other intricacies of holding a productive and enjoyable discussion.

To cap of our visit to Ancient Greece, we learned about the aeolipile. This hot water rocket engine, steam engine, and jet engine marked the start of engine invention. We will revisit engines in the world of flight in the spring.

We enjoyed our annual Hanukkah celebration on Friday morning. Latkes, dreidel and stories filled our tummies and hearts. This is a busy time of year! Students will continue with book groups, math, writing, science as well as preparing for the Holiday Fair.

11 and 12

Red Fox Clanners culminated their Athens/Sparta project with a performance at Big Circle. We finished filming our final scenes in the days before vacation and each travel show will be posted in short segments on the Red Fox Clan's facebook page soon.

Students continue to enthusiastically share their writing several times a week during Author's Share. Along with recording what they work on each day and sharing their drafting, students are adding weekly editing and collecting of misspelled words to their writing rhythm.

On Friday we were visited by Devin Franklin. Red Fox Clanners shared information from the large amount of Wildlife and Weather data recorded over the 6 weeks of Flying Deer. Devin offered students feedback on their presentations. To better represent their findings, students will formally document hypotheses, procedure, observations in the form of frequency tables, line graphs, bar graphs and pie graphs, and discuss their findings and new questions in a conclusion. We will aim to finish this project by mid December. Students have already voiced their plans to test their hypotheses about the relationship between weather and wildlife behavior next spring.

Empty Bowls was a great success, with students cutting vegetables and creating flags that made up the centerpieces. And that soup was delicious. Thank you all for contributing vegetables and your love to raise money to feed people. Enjoy the holiday!

Week 10

The main task of the week was the continuation of our Athens/Sparta Travel Show Project. Children split up the scenes they previously created and set to writing scripts. After writing in pairs, students collaborated with the other group members in the revision, editing and practicing of the scripts. Costume and props lists were made and students began memorizing their lines. Filming will start on Monday.

We spent two math sessions looking at the massive amount of data we collected over the 6 weeks of Flying Deer. Students created tables including the number of species seen each day, the number of animals seen each day, the number of animals before rainy days, the number of species seen on rainy days and many other variations. We will graph our data in an effort to learn more about how weather affects animals and specific species. On October 20th we saw 54 animals across 18 species!

The Red Fox Clan hopes to share several scenes from the Athens/Sparta Travel Show Project at next week's Big Circle. We hope you can come!

Eight and Nine

Many thanks go to Ellen Plageman for visiting us on the afternoon of Tuesday, the 26th. She brought many kites that she built over the years and told us of the inspirations that led her to start a kite making business. She sold many, many kites to the Smithsonian. We then walked down to Darrow School and flew several kites. Check out the pictures and Mountain Road's facebook page for video highlights.

The Red Foxes began their investigation of Greece by finding out our names without the many letters of the Alphabet that came from Ancient Greece. Students like JSS JCK RRSR and L FR SS loved their new names. We went on to read Homer's story of the Cyclops and Odysseus and dream up our own Olympic events. Students have now turned their attention to Athens and Sparta, comparing and contrasting the two city states with the aid of a Venn Diagram. Red Foxes have begun the process or writing the scripts of a travel show in which they will try to convince travelers to visit and live in their city. We will produce these shows and video tape them for your enjoyment.

Children have enjoyed moving their attention to free writing. They are practicing writing their own stories and have been doing short "author shares" to give the group a taste of their creation. We will begin weaving in peer revising and weekly editing of grammar and conventions. Real life DOL!

The Red Fox Clan has, over the past two weeks at Flying Deer, amazed me with their accomplishments. The children broke up into small groups on the 27th and put up tarps and created fires in the rain with no adult support. This is a challenge for naturalists of all ages. On the 3rd of November Red Fox Clanners built a 1 minute fire! They planned, organized, and then gathered and lit a match in under 60 seconds and then spent 10 minutes building it up into a roaring fire. Again, this accomplishment is most challenging. But they weren't finished. In the afternoon the other clans came to our site to find the hiding Red Foxes. The children hid, camouflaged with just a tiny bit of them showing, for 30 minutes without moving! Their concentration and passion is most commendable.

Magic Number 7`

We started the week focusing on peer revising for sentence fluency and writing introductions for our kite reports. All completed the finishing touches on their kites, wrote final drafts of their reports, and touched up a few bird study entries all in time for Big Circle on Friday. Red Fox Clanners helped arrange the exhibit hall and chose how to hang/display their kites. Each student did a phenomenal job taking turns reading their reports and nature journal entries. Congratulations to the Red Fox Clan! After a special guest's visit on Tuesday afternoon, we will turn our attention toward Ancient Greece and its contribution to flight.

Students began new topics in math and continue to learn and practice material with efficiency. We spent time as a whole group developing composition and decomposition strategies while completing mental math problems with large numbers.

In the classroom, in the woods, and on the playground I have felt thrilled to see how much compassion and appreciation flows between these children. Enjoy the pictures!

Week half a dozen

In Writing Red Fox Clanners finished up topic sentences and successfully gave each other thoughtful feedback during peer revision sessions. Students determined the order in which they will present ideas from their notes when constructing paragraphs. Drafting has begun. We are planning to present our kites and some semblance of our reports at Big Circle next Friday.

In class we began to look at data we have collected at the Flying Deer Weather Center. We have begun to notice a relationships in wildlife activity and weather by using graphic organizers. Students completed level one of Bird Chaser, a bird identification game being created by Devin Franklin. Each child has a life list on which they will record bird sightings or hearings.

Both groups of mathematicians are finishing up their first unit of study and assessing what they mastered. It has been most enjoyable to work in small groups with these eager learners. A great deal of collaboration, concentration and fun describes each math session.

The Red Fox Clan had their first handball match of the year. Within 30 seconds the first goal was scored. All immediately agreed to not keep score because they have observed that it creates unnecessary tension. These kids are on to something.

Week 5

Red Fox Clan gave a great deal of attention to birds this past week. Inside we practiced the core routine of Mind's Eye where we learned about key features to pay attention to when identifying birds. Students then used what they learned. After observing a robin for a minute, field guides were closed and the robin was colored from memory. Red Fox Clanners also completed listening to Jon Young's talk on Universal Language.

Within minutes of being outside on Wednesday we walked upon white throated sparrows (50 or more) and juncos. Before identifying the birds, students listened to calls, songs, and observed the key features of the birds. We sang and called to the white throated sparrows, and many of them flew closer and sang back to us. Each child received a bird nature name as well. The clan spent an hour building a roaring fire in the rain (a great accomplishment). Students learned knots and then put up a tarp near the fire, which captured the heat and we had a warm and comfortable afternoon.

Pairs continued to research the kites of a particular country. Using color, students categorized or chunked related information and began creating a short outline to see the big picture. Next week we will work on topic sentences and drafting. With the help of many grandparents and grand friends, students buzzed around Friday morning and made much progress on their kites.

Week 4

The Red Fox Clan had a short but exciting week of school, including our first session of Flying Deer with Devin Franklin!

Thank you all for being a part of the Goal Setting Conferences. As I have already expressed, I am delighted by the quality of self awareness these children have and the ease with which they reflect on and speak about their learning.

On Tuesday we began a "mini" kite project. Students were split up into pairs and given the task of exploring the history of kites within a particular country. They read provided resources, using highlighters and taking down information in their Flight Logs about how kites were used, developed and the country's stories and legends. Students will be asked to write a short report and build a kite from their designated country. The Red Fox Clan plans to share these reports and kites at the big circle we host later in October.

Red Fox Clanners started the day Wednesday recording information at a weather station before preceding to help built the tipi for the opening circle fire at Flying Deer. We began our investigation of bird language by first learning about chipmunks. After becoming chipmunks for a period of time (complete with "chipping" and treeing ourselves when a "fox" approached), students went on a wander to interact with chipmunks. Many returned with great stories and questions. Several students even managed to trap a chipmunk for all to catch a glimpse of when it escaped. We will continue to learn about the universal language of birds both inside the classroom and at Flying Deer next week.

Week 3

And we're off in using our Singapore Math textbooks and workbooks. Could it be that I heard a group of children express excitement about beginning math? And did I hear them express their enjoyment of the new format? Yes, indeed. Both groups began investigating decimals, practicing multiplication and division as well as learning about tenths.

Red Fox Clanners have devoted significant time to preparing for their Goal Setting Conferences coming up on Monday. Students continued to impress me with their ability to reflect and subsequently set goals for themselves in each discipline and the social learning/learning behaviors realms. They will continue to practice reflecting on and openly discussing their learning throughout the year.

In Language Arts land this week students wrote letters to our friend who moved to France, as well as looking at subjects and objects in sentences, to/too/two and your/you're. We continued to practice quotation marks and capitalizing proper nouns.

Just like last week, we ventured down to Darrow School and glazed the bowls we made last Wednesday. Pictures of the week will be up soon!

Week 2

Our kites took to the skies once again, this time with more attention on the tow point along the bridle. From their observations, students recorded what worked, what didn't work, and what needed to be changed in their Flight Logs. An additional cross spar was added to each kite, resulting in more air time. Also crafted this week were quick kite haikus.

Students began surveying the geography, climate and history of Ancient China and responded to questions while reading The Story of the World and Exploring our World. We recorded what we knew and what we want to learn about China, as well as listened to sections of the book If I were a Kid in Ancient China.

Red Fox Clanners finished up math assessments and are ready to review multiplication, division and fractions before delving into the Singapore Math curriculum.

Students completed a more difficult version of the Helium Stick challenge this week as well as beginning to learn the process of reaching consensus. Red Fox Clanners from last year recalled the various forms of decision-making and how certain situations call for the various methods. We went through the first 5 steps of the consensus process, which are as follows:

1. Presentation of proposal (Friday's proposal was to continue Work Block during the 30 minutes leading up to Big Circle).

2. The asking of clarifying questions

3. Discussion of proposal

4. Finger poll (to see how close consensus is and note those who have concerns so they may speak)

5. Further discussion, questioning and compromise

We ended at step 5 without consensus and will continue on to steps 6 through 9 next week on a different proposal. Students will begin to take on the roles of facilitator, list keeper and time keeper as their comfort level with the process grows.

First Week of School

Hello all returning and new Red Fox Clan parents!

I hope this update finds you all well and ready for more great learning this year. We have already touched upon many facets of air, our overall theme of the year, in many ways. Children have built and studied kites and today attempted our first flights. Some kites got into the air, and for all it's back to learning more about aerodynamics and adjusting their tow points.

We have taken on a number of challenges, including the Lava challenge (this is the first group I have witnessed succeeding in this challenge), the Blindfolded Caterpillar, and this morning the Helium Stick. We have toned with a drone, experiencing the effects of sound vibrations moving through air and into our ears. We have also begun paying attention to our breath, noticing how deep it is when we come to school and what it feels like after we sing. The more we breathe well, the more life and spirit we have found thus far!

Another practice we began this week was independent reading. For each independent reading session, students are expected to record the page numbers read, their thoughts on sticky notes, a question or 2, and then the answers to their questions in their reading log. The number of thoughts and questions assigned is dependent on the length of the reading session. We have also begun studying conventions through the means of Daily Oral Language. Students correctly write sentences full of errors into a notebook and then share their ideas.

As kites have their roots in Asia through various legends, we will soon begin an investigation of Ancient China. Our social studies curriculum can best be characterized as the history of flight. We will learn about many different regions of the world following the evolution of humankind's quest to fly.

Please check out this week's pictures by following the picasaweb link on the right side of this blog page.

Project Updates and More

So much blooming outside and inside the classroom... Second drafts of biographies have been handed in after students spent time on Thursday peer revising (focusing on sentence fluency) and editing. We will have an opportunity to share what we learned about these people who made change during the upcoming week.

Students have concluded interrupting their behavioral triggers and begun reflecting on the experience. The following are among the questions they are considering:

1. Explain what your trigger was, how you interrupted it and why you chose it. Was it hard/easy/ok to interrupt?

2. What feelings were present when you interrupted your trigger? What thoughts were present when you interrupted your trigger?

3. What did you learn about yourself? How are you going to use this information? What would you change about your project to make it better? What might be another behavior that you would benefit from interrupting?

The Geocity is finished and will soon be taped together and displayed in a place to be determined (it is very large and fabulous). We will continue having math lessons throughout the play intensive, exploring more geometry, decimals and statistics.

We will be able to get back to documenting rocks around the Abode on Wednesday. Until then be sure to check out the pictures from our walk last week!

Our investigation of United States history has brought us to the 1960's and early 70's. Skipping over the Vietnam War (except for various perspectives on why it was fought), we saw many groups of people uniting to bring about change and push for their "freedom". This is being highlighted by events in our current read aloud book, Esperanza Rising.

Rock Walk

Geologists call the area in which we live more exciting than the Grand Canyon (boring sandstone). We sit on mostly metamorphic rock that was pushed up and down by plate tectonics, constructed and deconstructed by glaciers, and whittled down by erosion (the Taconic Mountains were believed to be upwards of 15,000 - 20,000 feet tall at one time, towering above Lake Albany). Volcanoes, mastadons, bison... so much lived here before us. Ask your children for more interesting facts.

Here's the latest project we have underway:

Rock Walk

We’ll split up into small groups and then begin our search for the rocks of the Taconics before creating a big ole rock walk guide.

Procedure:

1. Find all the types of primary and secondary rock types in Columbia County using http://mrdata.usgs.gov/sgmc/ny.html, book resources and other internet resources. Create a list on a word document (copy and paste) all the rocks you find. You should find upwards of 15 or more rock types.

2. After you complete step 1, you will be assigned a few rocks on which to become experts. Using geology.com, book resources and other websites, find out as much information as you can about each of these rock types. Begin making powerpoint pages, including pictures of each rock (sometimes they can look a little different, so get more than 1 picture) and other juicy details.

3. There are more rock types here in our county than just those that make up the bedrock/top layer of lithosphere. Find 3 or more ways that rocks travel and gather as much information as you can about these processes.

4. With our rock identification powerpoint slides in hand, we will journey out in search of these rocks. Record the location, amount of rocks spotted and somehow we’ll get a picture.

5. Working together, we will make a guide to the rocks of the Abode. What will this look like? We will decide.

Geometric Math City

The group of students in the Red Fox Clan studying geometry have begun working on a city. Students planned, mapped, and worked out details on their own (with adults being flies on the wall). Each student, whether drawing an aquarium, train station, zoo or other part of the city, must include the following in their drawing:

- 1 set of similar figures

- 1 set of congruent figures

- a bisected angle

- labeled acute and obtuse angles

- at least 6 labeled 2-dimensional figures

- draw lines of symmetry for at least 3 figures

When put together, the city will measure about 32 square feet! Students have exhibited a great deal of creativity already.

Biography

Biography Project

Ha! It’s biography project season. I know you have all been waiting so long for this. You will have the opportunity to generate questions about someone who has made a splash in our country’s history. Who has unified people amidst great hardship? Who has taken on the dividing techniques of those in power? After you record some questions, we’ll work together to locate high quality resources about your person. You will be asked to record and organize information using a graphic organizer. From your detailed organizer, you will use your writing skills to craft a detailed biography and share it with the class.

The Procedure:

1. We will share our findings from our “People Who Made Change” lists. You will be asked to choose someone from these lists (or if another inspiring person is contacting you and asking you to write a biography on them, you just may be able to do so) and begin writing questions about this person. What interests you about this person? How did they inspire others?
2. Categories. Next is time to categorize your questions to see what kind of information you are looking for. Biographies usually have categories including childhood events, struggles, the person’s vision, and how they went about creating change in the world. You may choose to change or add new categories when you learn more about your person. Together we will look at a sample graphic organizer.
3. Time to find high quality resources. Try the American Library Association for Kids site, or bartleby.com, or biography.com. Adding “for kids” or “young readers” to your search will direct you to useful websites to begin learning about your person. More complicated websites are useful when you are searching for specific details.
4. Begin filling in/creating your graphic organizer as you learn about your inspiring person. You will conference with peers and teachers to get feedback about your findings. We’ll ask each other questions to help us direct our research.
5. Use your highly detailed graphic organizer to draft an essay with strong introductory, middle, and concluding paragraphs. You will have the opportunity to conference with peers/teachers prior to writing your final draft.

We may discover other things we want to add to/change to the project as we go along. Final drafts will be due during the last week of April.

Project!

Happiness, Joy, Love, Fulfillment and Energy Project

Purpose

The purpose of this project is to gain experience observing one’s thoughts and to learn about ourselves. We will do this by observing some aspect of ourselves that affects who we are as a student.

How we got here

According to the Red Fox Clan, we all thirst for joy, happiness, love, fulfillment and energy. We draw these experiences to ourselves in many ways- through having fun with friends, learning, cooperation, exploring, breathing, concentrating and many more. Sometimes, however, we use strategies that don’t actually lead us to joy or happiness. We have seen many patterns of this in history. People have tried to gain joy by exploiting others, lying, intimidating others, and so on. These misguided strategies often hurt others and ourselves (also seen in our country’s history). We can hurt ourselves by avoiding or taking shortcuts on assignments because we don’t learn important skills we need. Also according to the Red Fox Clan, joy arises when all work together for the benefit of all.

Mission

Our mission is to identify ways we mislead ourselves when trying to experience happiness, joy, love, fulfillment and lots of energy as students and members of a learning community. We will observe these ways/thoughts/beliefs in ourselves and interrupt them.

Procedure

First you must come up with an idea of what thought pattern/feeling/belief/behavior you want to interrupt. This is just like your trigger from the fall when you saw a leaf or heard your name. You stopped and noted what you were paying attention to. This time, the trigger is a thought or feeling inside of you, a thought or feeling that leads you away from happiness, joy, love, fulfillment and energy without you knowing it! When you notice your trigger, you will interrupt it. This can be doing jumping jacks, a few dance moves, going out on the fire escape for 30 seconds, asking someone a question… some action that doesn’t interrupt others but interrupts your trigger.

Choosing a thought pattern/belief/behavior to interrupt that is useful to you works best. Here are some suggestions to help you brainstorm your trigger:

- Consider yourself as a student in class. Do you offer ideas and contribute to discussions? Are you constantly involved or do you hold yourself back, unable to participate fully? What happens for you in at these moments when you could choose to participate or not? What feelings do you have? What is your internal dialogue?

- Do you find yourself experiencing emotional reactions to people in class or in our community? Or in group situations? What emotions arise? What happens for you? What is the situation in which your reactions arise? How can you learn more about them?

- Are you influenced more by a certain person or group of people? How are you influenced? What feelings arise? Is it beneficial for you and others? How do you interact with this person or these people? How does this group act towards others? Any intimidation or trying to gain energy from others?

- Is there a subject or activity in school you don’t like? What thoughts cross your head when you see it on the board or while preparing for it? What does it feel like in your body? Do you express what you are feeling out loud? How do you feel when you begin this activity?

Next is developing a contract and testing your trigger. In the contract you will share what your trigger is (what you will observe) and how you plan to interrupt it. You will have the opportunity to test your trigger over a few days to see if it happens enough, if it happens too often, or if you need to make other changes. We will follow the contract and interrupt triggers for a whole week. While you do this, you will be expected to take short notes about what happened and what arose for you.

As an ending project you will be asked to share with me (and others if you wish) what you did, what happened, what arose for you and any insights you gained about yourself.

All parents are invited to take part in the project along with their child(ren)!

How history has evolved

There are countless reasons as to why events unfolded as they did. We learned in the fall (and have continued to see) that history and events aren't always reported factually. Parts are omitted and the historian is often trying to get us to root for one side.

Motives of shapers of history

People acted to look good - People only want to see the good things - People didn't want the truth - Fame - Greed - Wealth - Land - Power - Profit - Natural Resources - Religious Freedom - Don't like to be controlled - Control - Cheap Labor - Working together - Share cultural ideas - Explore Land / Travel - Productivity - Make friends - Happiness

From all of these motives, we asked ourselves the following question:

What do people thirst for?

Happiness - Love - Joy - Fulfillment - Energy

In people's search to quench such a thirst, their actions can be misdirected. In order to gain what they thought was fulfillment, energy, and happiness, those with greater influence in the country used many tools to divide people so that they could grow their wealth and control. We then looked at our country's history through the 1870's and brainstormed patterns we saw that were used for dividing people.

Tools for Division

- Make people feel left out - "Because others did this too" - Racism - Fear - Lies - Intimidation - Untrue Stories - Hypocrisy - Buy a lot of something, sell for higher price - Don't address problems - Use laws to hold back others - Bribery - Give some people money - Jealousy - Treat people differently for no reason - Pick on an enemy, start a war - Put down, be man - Team up on a group - Revenge - Give some privileges/rights to fool and quiet people

How it could have been

While rewriting history, students noted that every event in history is linked to many other events. Changing one event would require changing many that came before it and occurred alongside it. With that understanding, students suggested the following:

Explorers could have been kind and asked set up trade agreements instead of acting for profit and out of greed.

Colonists could have cohabitated, cooperated and coexisted with Native peoples.

Instead of slavery, workers could have been paid and been given proper living quarters. If they were treated like people, all would be more happy and productivity would be up. Joy comes from when everyone benefits.

Diplomacy, compromise and agreements could have been made instead of the use of violence during the French and Indian War.

Revolutionary War- Was it necessary? Canada gained independence without such a devastating war. Diplomacy could have changed how this went down.

Native Americans could have been given the same rights. Land could have been shared or even gifted to them. Early Americans could have lived more like the natives, respecting traditions and living more closely to the land.

To avoid the Civil War, the North could have let the South be a different country instead of forcing them to be a part of the Union for economic reasons. There could have been better diplomacy and compromise, or they all could have elected a different president.

Spring Big Circle

On Friday the Red Fox Clan led the school in the welcoming of spring. The other clans were led through a sense meditation, looking for signs of spring/tracking and a game or two. Adults who participated shared so highly of the abilities of the children to facilitate activities for people of all ages. Check out the pictures for a visual report!

Patterns of Control and Division

This week among other things we are stepping back and taking a bird's eye view of our country's history from 1492 - 1870's. Students have read vasty different perspectives of the same stories, noticing omissions and varying motives of the story tellers. Students have expressed discontent of reading the same thing over and over again: one group gaining power and wealth at the expense of many. We all seem to be active creators in our society and individual lives. So we begin asking ourselves, "How should things have been over the first 400 years of our country?" And, "Why has history deviated from how it could have been?" Specifically we are looking for patterns of control and division in our country. We will search for these patterns not only as we progress chronologically in our country's history, but also within our selves. Driven by profits and power, millions (billions around the world) lead lives of great struggle and suffering. If we are driven by profits (money and getting our own way?) and power in our own internal worlds, what parts of ourselves are left struggling and suffering? What could things be like in our lives if we become skilled at observing how we create division in ourselves and subsequently acting to address such creations? We will work to segue this into individual projects in which students will observe their thinking and self talk and practice interrupting behaviors that are unbeneficial.

Spring!

As the earth continues to evolve under us, we came across an interesting article for you to check out: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/03/02/chile.quake/index.html?hpt=Mid

Another interesting and short article on the hypothesis of the expanding earth (thanks Eric) to check out: http://www.geologynet.com/tectonics1.htm

We have not spoken about the expanding earth hypthesis at school, so it might be interesting for you to introduce it to your child(ren) to fuel the investigation of geology happening everywhere.

We continue to be in full swing, from students taking part in revision/editing meetings with each other to running their own book group discussions. Investigations in math include geometry, percent/ratio/proportion and probability. Students continue to make headway on their earthquake reports, now working on illustrations. We hope to have these published around Open House/Author's Tea time in our effort to raise some funds for those struggling in Haiti and Chile.

Trial, Earthquakes, Essays and more

We had another successful trial chalk full with critical questions and answers. Three groups (the poor, wealthy elite and the British) were charged with the mistreatment, suffering and deaths of thousands of men, women and children. The British (Faolan, Will and Finn with lovely British accents) were accused with focusing purely on profit and being undiplomatic. The Poor (Milo, Peyton and Raven) were accused with allowing the minority wealthy elite to manipulate them into fighting a war and not uniting to change the terrible living conditions underwhich they lived. The Wealthy elite (Jesse, Isaac and Kiva) were charged with things such as fueling racism to divide people so that they could stay in control. Also, the elite were charged with writing the Constitution with the interests only of the wealthy in mind. Our prosecuter/judges (Iona, Ben and Rasulan), with the aid of Ariel and a visiting Elizabeth Downes, assigned responsibility to all the groups, finding the wealthy elite as having more responsibility than the other groups.

Students have been interacting with resources on earthquakes, taking notes on a wide variety of topics. They took detailed (and not so detailed) notes and are going through the process of writing topic sentences, determining how to organize their facts, and writing reports. While writing, students are seeing that the quality of notes they took are having a big impact on their ability to retell facts.

More writing... this morning Faolan and Ben led two peer editing groups. The kids have been working on 5 paragraph essays, responding to questions inspired by their bookgroup book (Three Cups of Tea and The Giver). The focus of the groups were revising their supporting details to be more clear and powerful. Every student listened and gave thoughtful feedback with no adult prompting. On the flip side, every student shared their writing and made changes in several places. Beyond revision, minilessons were taught on introductions, conclusions, and how to present one's ideas in the most persuasive ways. Students are having more conversations about writing and subsequently I am reading great progress.

Revolutionary War Trial Preparations begin

Prosecutors, British representatives, rich colonial elite representatives and the representatives of the poor majority of colonists began meeting today in preparation for a trial. Each group is being charged with the suffering and deaths of thousands of men, women and children before, during and after the Revolutionary War. Each group will defend themselves during prosecution. Stay tuned for frequent updates.

Solstice and More

Hello Blog, it's been too long.

Our big project with Flying Deer this fall culminated in making delicious acorn flour and selling it at the Holiday Fair. We spent a great deal of time documenting our work and calculated that it took 3 hours to make each cup of flour! Students worked together to make a brochure that described the process, classification, identification of oak trees, and how to use acorn flour.

We continued our study American history up to the Revolutionary War. To help us gain greater understanding of the time period, we utilized historical fiction. Students read My Brother Sam is Dead and Johnny Tremain as bookgroup books. While learning about what it could have been like for children and their families during the war, students focused on vocabulary and taking a greater lead in discussions. Two book groups began today, Three Cups of Tea and The Giver. Both have powerful messages for us.

We are beginning our exploration of plate tectonics and the physical structure of the earth. Beginning with the earth's layers, we'll move to convergent and divergent boundaries and all of the fascinating earth processes that arise (haha).