Thank you!

Hello Families,


Thank you for such a lovely celebration today!  You haven't lived until you've seen this video.


LB

Survive: Women's Suffrage

We are framing our Social Action study around the societal cycle (survive, problems, organize, create norms, thrive) that we've been looking at since we started our Colonial America study in the spring of 4th grade.  Rather than looking at events chronologically, we're studying suffrage and Civil Rights through the lens of survival this week.  We started talking about Women's Suffrage yesterday.  First, we looked at several photographs from the 19th and 20th centuries and thought about the norms we saw.  We are looking at the norms that would eventually become problems, and the big question is, "Were women surviving?  Were they fully alive?"  Here are the norms we observed yesterday:

o   Women usually stayed at the house and did most of the cooking and cleaning.

o   Women were thought of as inferior to men.

o   Women were obsolete (not useful) outside of the home.

o   Women didn’t have power.

o   Women had limited freedom to affect their communities.

o   Women were supposed to be pretty.

o   Women didn’t have the right to vote.

o   Women always had to listen to the man in the house, whether it was their father, husband or son.

o   Women didn’t have as many rights as men.

o   Women were expected to get married.

o   Women were expected to have children.

o   Women were expected to agree with their husbands.

o   Women were expected to praise their husbands.

o   Women had to be feminine.

o   Women were talked about like they’re unimportant.

Today, we listened to two songs, Keep Woman in her Sphere and Oh, Dear, What Can the Matter Be?  You can listen to snippets of each song here (or buy them on iTunes if you're hardcore!).  We talked about the meaning and message of each song.  The conversation ended with a connection back to the idea of survival.  Here is a transcript of the conversation about the question, Were women surviving before they had suffrage?  Were they fully alive?

Rema: They were physically surviving, but their personality wasn't surviving.

Alexa: I thought that even though women were surviving physically, they weren't surviving mentally. We all have our own personalities and we can express it, but their personalities were suppressed.

Rose: They were surviving, but they weren’t surviving emotionally.  Women were cut off from society because they weren’t allowed to put their opinions to making a change to who could become president or who could become mayor.  They were being pampered without any real meaning.

Sasha A.: I disagree.  Even though they didn’t get to vote, women still played a big role because they had to make food for their family…  It wasn’t right that they didn’t get to vote, but they still played a big role.

Max: I kind of agree with Sasha, but I don’t think they were being cut off from society, they were being cut off from politics, and men were always more important

Sascha L.: I also want to disagree with Rose because even though they were sort of not allowed to be in politics, they still got to help in different ways.  They were allowed to tell their husbands what they thought, so the wife got to feel like they were helping at least a little bit.

Omri: I want to add on to Sascha L. because women weren’t allowed to do politics, but in the song that’s the only thing they were talking about, the vote.

Darien: I think they were surviving, because if they weren’t they wouldn’t be thinking about voting, they’d be thinking about something else.

Jessie: I agree with Darien.  If they were trying to survive, they wouldn’t even be able to stay at home.  They wouldn’t be worrying about cooking and cleaning.  Those are wants, not needs.  Voting is a want, not a need.

Braden: I agree with Darien that they were surviving, but they weren’t necessarily thriving because they didn’t get to vote and they didn’t get to have their say about things the way men did, and they were surviving, but they just weren’t as happy as they could be.

Thoughts on "Revolution" by The Beatles

To continue and broaden our thinking about revolution, we listened to "Revolution" by the Beatles on Thursday (listen here).


The lyrics:


Revolution
by The Beatles

(1) You say you want a revolution

(2) Well, you know

(3) We all want to change the world

(4) You tell me that it's evolution

(5) Well, you know

(6) We all want to change the world

(7) But when you talk about destruction

(8) Don't you know that you can count me out

(9) Don't you know it's gonna be all right

(10) All right, all right

(11) You say you got a real solution

(12) Well, you know

(13) We'd all love to see the plan

(14) You ask me for a contribution

(15) Well, you know

(16) We're doing what we can

(17) But when you want money

(18) For people with minds that hate

(19) All I can tell is brother you have to wait

(20) Don't you know it's gonna be all right

(21) All right, all right

(22) Ah

(23) Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah...

(24) You say you'll change the constitution

(25) Well, you know

(26) We all want to change your head

(27) You tell me it's the institution

(28) Well, you know

(29) You better free you mind instead

(30) But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao

(31) You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow

(32) Don't you know it's gonna be all right

(33) All right, all right

(34) All right, all right, all right

(35) All right, all right, all right

The numbers in parentheses refer to the corresponding lines that stood out to us.  Our thoughts after the jump:

Revolution!

Today marks the unofficial beginning of the second chunk (I can't say "half," that would be mathematically inaccurate) of fifth grade.  We started our second study: Social Action.  To kick off, we began to bridge the gap between The American Revolution and Social Action by talking about the word "revolution."  Here are the notes from our conversation as well as our working definitions of "revolution."  Talk with a young person about what they found interesting about our conversation today.

Choice Time with K-Buddies

Our k-buddies came to visit us in our classroom for the first time today!

text + reader = idea

At the end of last week, we looked at ideas we'd collected from Rules, our read aloud, and decided which ones we'd hold onto to discuss later.  The work was to evaluate which ideas were big enough to hold onto, or to identify which ideas would lead to rich conversations later.  Many of the ideas we decided to keep felt similar.  Yesterday, students grouped those similar-feeling ideas together.  Today's work was to make one strong statement that ties together each group of statements from yesterday.  Before students could do that on their own, we had a meeting about how to make a strong statement.  We looked at four ideas students had about The Circuit, a short story I read aloud a few weeks ago:

• The family was poor.
• The family was being used because they were working really hard, but they didn't get paid a lot of money.
• Every time Panchito gets used to where he is, he has to move.
• The family had to break the law because they needed more money.

Then, the students identified the second statement as the strongest.  We talked about what made it strong, and concluded that it's strong because it has the reader's opinion or judgement in it.  Our goal is to make statements that are text + reader = idea, not just text = idea.

Before students applied this thinking to their sorted ideas about Rules, we practiced as a whole class by revising our thoughts about The Circuit.  Here's what we came up with. Revisions are in purple:

• The family was poor.  It's not fair that their lives are being controlled by money.
• The family was being used because they were working really hard, but they didn't get paid a lot of money.  That's a bad thing.  They're not being paid fairly.
• Every time Panchito gets used to where he is, he has to move.  Panchito can't be like a real kid--that must be hard!  I would feel really frustrated.
• The family had to break the law because they needed more money.  They needed to break the law to survive, but it's still not okay (or is it?).

Students are still working on their strong statements about Rules.  Stand by for those!

Have a lovely Thanksgiving if you're celebrating!  Happy long weekend to all.

Reading Portraits

Happy Saturday!

We finished our reading self portraits last week!  They are glorious.  Over the last month, students have been collecting information about their reading lives, analyzing the information and synthesizing the information into a map of their reading brains that tells the story of who they are as readers.  They looked at favorite books, excerpts, characters, settings, authors, series, you name it--and then they thought about what all those favorites told them about themselves.  We read to affirm what we  believe.  We read because it changes our minds and moves us forward.  We read because it makes us want to change ourselves and the world.  That is the work of these portraits--to put students in touch with those ideas, and to give them a chance to see for themselves the connection between their identities and their reading lives.

Reading Portraits

Enjoy!