On Friday afternoons all the children had a chance to make a microscopic slide, put it on the stage, focus the microscope and change the magnification of the microscope. They were then asked to draw the images they saw. Older children used stains (iodine and onion cells) to make their slides more visible. Our goal Read More >>
Archives for March 2011
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
During Read Aloud, the 5th – 8th graders listened to “Where the Mountain Meets the Moon” by Grace Lin. In this story Min-Li, a young Chinese girl, becomes a hero as she travels to find her family’s fortune by talking to the Man in the Moon. Along the way she learns many good lessons about Read More >>
Integer Class
The oldest group of students as well as a few 5th graders, participated in a three week integer class. We started with the basics of the number line and what lies to the “left” of zero. We then moved on to adding and subtracting with positive and negative numbers. When we moved on to multiplying Read More >>
Sledding
Martin, a fifth grader, proposed a day of sledding at school. Teachers took his idea and made it a reality. During investigations the whole school took off to the golf course down the road for an afternoon of fun! When we returned, we had cookies (made at school by the children a few days earlier) Read More >>
The Fledgling Book Club
The older students were part of an eight week book club where they read The Fledgling by Jane Langton.At the start of the book club we set up expectations. All book marks needed to exhibit responses that were Detailed Articulate Thoughtful and Exemplary (DATE).Each week children were responsible for bringing to class two examples of author’s Read More >>
Writing Prompts
Working with Jeff Simmons, a parent of one of our students who teaches creative writing at Syracuse University, the older students were given two writing prompts which launched them into many weeks of writing fiction. “Not all stories have good characters, but most good stories have vivid characters that the reader feels they know almost Read More >>
Poetry
Inspired by Kenneth Koch’s Rose, where did you get that red? book the older students spent a month studying the poems of Wallace Stevens: Thirteen Ways to Look at a Blackbird, John Ashbery: Into the Dusk-Charged Air, and Arthur Rimbaud: Voyelles. Kenneth Koch’s prompts for children are both motivating and creative. Our final poem was Read More >>
Ancient China
Third grade students created a China poster describing four aspects of Chinese culture. They were able to select their own topics from a list that included the Silk Road, Chinese religions, Architecture/Homes, Clothing, Silk, Dynasties, Food/agriculture, Art/Music, and Inventions. For each topic they needed to include an illustration and a short typed paragraph.