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!

Thoughts about Rules by Cynthia Lord: Keep or Kill?

This week in school, we started a new read aloud: Rules, by Cynthia Lord. Over the course of the week, I collected students' thoughts about the book. Today, we looked at all the thoughts from this week and decided which ones we'd keep and which ones we'd "kill." The decision was based on whether or not the idea felt like something that would lead to a good discussion. If it was something that felt more like a fact from the book or a small idea that wouldn't lead to much conversation, we "killed" the idea. Check out our list of thoughts and see what we kept and what we killed. (If we were on the fence about keep it or kill it, we kept it just to be safe.)

Too Cute to Resist

Here we are, working on 10,000 Charts.
:)

10,000 Charts/Cuteness

Self Portraits

Hi Everybody,


As the class was lining up for science today, Sascha L. asked me, "Has our classroom ever been this messy, other than when we did clay sculptures or the mural?"  No, it has not.  Let me tell you, though, it's a beautiful mess!  Our room is positively covered with books, papers, markers, colored pencils, Post-It Notes, tape and more books.  It's glorious!


Last week, students brought in a pile of their favorite things to read.  They marked favorite excerpts, brainstormed their favorite characters, authors and settings, and thought about why they like the things they like.  Today, they began to synthesize all of that work into a reading reaction where they are the text.  Their work is to look across everything they collected and think about what it tells them about themselves as a reader, which will ultimately tell them about themselves in general.  They're analyzing data.


The reaction itself is a way for students to process, not present their thoughts.  As they begin to build their reading brains on paper, connections and new ideas appear, and they get recorded, too.  Halfway through their work today, I asked how many people felt like they'd discovered something new about themselves, and nearly every hand went up.  We're in the middle of a beautiful, messy process!  Check it out:

Self Portraits

Camping!

Drop Box

Why do People Write?

Here are some notes from one of our first conversations about writing.

Why do people write?

It’s fun!

To entertain

To express themselves

To remember/to remind

To share ideas, experiences, and memories

To share knowledge/info/thoughts/emotions/feelings

To let people know what’s going on

So others can experience what the writer did

To make $

To share life lessons

To warn someone

To create something new

To communicate

To inspire

To calm yourself

To process or figure something out, to think

To make people think

To learn

To convince

To help others

So as a writer, what do you want your reader to experience, regardless of your genre choice?  We want them...

To understand (understand=topic)

To get pulled in

To feel like they’re actually there

To feel what you hoped they would feel

To understand or feel your purpose (feel=purpose)

To think about the message

How the heck do we do that?!

Pick things that are personal to you.

Think about what’s happening now…write about what’s relevant to your readers.

Write from your heart.

What's in that heart?

You!

What you care about

Memories

Emotion

Too Pretty to do Homework?

Hi all,


I can't help myself from sharing this with you.  Forever 21 and JCPenny recently put shirts on their shelves that say "Allergic to Algebra" and "I'm too pretty to do homework, so my brother has to do it for me."  This is abhorrent!  They've since pulled the shirts, but I still think this petition is worth signing.  We will talk about this at school on Monday.


Take care,


Lauren

K-Buddies

Here are some photos from our first day with our kindergarten buddies!  The students' job was to show them the ropes in the cafeteria and yard.  It's unbelievably sweet to watch the very cool fifth graders warm up to the tiny kindergartners!

September 14, 2011

The First Days of School

We had a wonderful first two days back!  You'll find a few photos below.  You'll see us trying to determine the area of our newly painted cork board, playing Bowl-A-Fact, and building newspaper towers.  Building newspaper towers is a team building activity students do to help them think about what makes a group work well.  Each group of 3 was given some newspaper and a roll of masking tape, and the challenge is to build a tower at least as tall as the tallest member of the group using only those materials.  After the building was complete, we had a conversation about what makes a group work well.  In their words:

• Instead of one person doing the work, everybody pitches in and contributes ideas.
• Listen to other people.
• Everybody does some work.
• Combine everybody's ideas.
• Have fun with it--don't be mad if it's not going well.
• Know when it's time to take a step back.
• You don't have to agree, but you have to be agreeable (Don't act in a bad way.).
• Make formal or informal jobs for everyone--assign based on talents.
• You have to be positive, even if you don't like something.
• You have to communicate.  You have to listen and talk, and you have to use a nice tone.

At the end of the discussion, I asked them to distill the ideas about group work into keywords:

Conversations about September 11th

Dear Fifth Grade Families,

During these first couple days of school, each class had conversations about September 11th. We framed our conversations around the idea of community, and the students learned the story of what life was like at P.S. 234 and in our temporary homes after 9/11. We also talked about the outpouring of love and support we received from the world community. Our conversation also focused on the fact that the adults in our community made sure the children here were safe.

We watched an episode of “Reading Rainbow” that was filmed at P.S. 234. The episode was about how the TriBeCa community pulled together and began to heal, and also served as a way for the students at 234 to say thank you to all of the people who sent gifts, supplies and well wishes to the school during that difficult time.

There was much curiosity in our classrooms about September 11th. Students had questions about the event itself and expressed a lot of feelings about how important it is to come together as a community during a scary time to help each other feel better. As this topic is fresh in the minds of your children, we encourage you to continue this conversation at home. If you have any questions, please feel free to email us.

Thank you,

Arielle, Ed, Lauren & Sharon

School Supplies

Hi everybody!


I hope you're all enjoying a wonderful summer!  You'll be getting a letter from Lisa in the next week or two full of all kinds of back to school information, including where to find school supply lists.  Ours is in the links section of the blog.  Thanks for shopping, and I look forward to seeing you a month from today!


Love,


Lauren

The Last Day of 4th Grade

Dear Families,

Thank you for the amazing outpouring of love (and flora!) at the end of the day!  I was literally bowled over by all of the hugs, flowers, porcelain, blueberries and Lego Nils that came my way.  I adore all of you, and am looking forward to a very happy return in September!  Happy summers all around!

Love,

Lauren

The Invention of Hugo Cabret: Why Prometheus?

We're reading The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick for our final read aloud (http://www.theinventionofhugocabret.com/index.htm).  There are a few references to Prometheus in the book, and today we had a conversation about why, given all of the various mythological characters there are, Selznick might have invited Prometheus into his novel.  One of the Common Core Standards (which are, for the most part, exquisite) is that students will, "Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone."  In fourth grade, that means students will, "Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including those that allude to significant characters found in mythology (e.g. Herculean).  These are the notes I took during the conversation about Selznick's choice:

The California Frog Jumping Contest:Three Frogs

Check these problems out--this is what we're up to today.  Can you see the algebra connection?  And can you solve these problems without relying on it (Don't be a math robot!)?