The four-day weekend was really enjoyable. I went into New York and celebrated Jay’s birthday with him and, as I think many of you know, we saw three Shakespeare’s in a row. We saw Twelfth Night and Richard the III performed by an all-male Shakespeare group who perform at the Globe Theater in London and are here for three months performing at the beautifully ornate Belasco Theatre. We also saw a performance of MacBeth at Lincoln Centre, another wonderful experience, incredibly visual, full of energy and with three tall male witches who were exceedingly scary! I also saw another theatrical performance on Sunday, something completely different, called Voices of Our Mothers, in which five women play Old Testament Biblical women telling their stories. Also over the weekend I had an hour of therapeutic restorative yoga with Adam (a teacher from the yoga studio where Jay takes classes) and an adjustment from Karen Erickson, a former New School student who is now a very successful New York chiropractor. Karen celebrated 25 years in her practice with a party a couple of weeks ago that Jay and I attended, and she is always willing to give me a gift of her services whenever I am able to go to her office. She is a dear friend and a New School graduate of whom I am very proud (also her mom was one of the founding parents of TNS.)
Of course once we’re back at school it seems like we’ve never been away. Jay’s class was absolutely thrilled that he had managed to go and get 30 tickets for Richard the III in January and I am sure they will love the performance. The group provides a large amount of educational material we printed out from the website and will use it as preparation for the theater visit.
The first New School Shakespearean performance will be the Little Class puppet play of Midsummer Night’s Dream which we will perform for the other classes hopefully before Thanksgiving and videotape to show the parents at a later date. I have been working with the little classers in small groups to write the narration for the play which older classers will read. With Jay’s class we finished watching a video of The Boisterous Bard and saw the second DVD of bloopers, outtakes and Susan sightings which everyone found hilarious. This video was made in 2004 by Nick C. a new school student who went on to study filmmaking at NYU. The video has given current students an idea of the play we put together the last time we studied Shakespeare in depth. Today and tomorrow we are reading an abridged version of Romeo and Juliet. The class had expressed an interest in reading the original Shakespeare play and not a paraphrased version.
As I said last week, it’s great having Meeta back, and she has certainly jumped back into work with great enthusiasm. I have been trying to catch the odd moment here and there to talk to her about her family and her trip home for her father’s birthday. She said he was very touched by the celebration and all the family members that had come to enjoy it with him.
In the middle class I continued my Shakespeare work with a new book on Shakespeare’s life and also finishing my reading of Hamlet from the Shakespeare Can Be Fun series. We are going to do some acting out of scenes from Midsummer Night’s Dream and Hamlet in small groups next week. This class has also started watching the Boisterous Bard video and I have shown one or two excerpts concerned with Midsummer Night’s Dream to the younger class too.
We have another maintenance workshop this weekend which hopefully will be well attended since there is a lot to be done. Now that our backyard is beginning to look so good with the new blacktop, Timmy’s pavers and Kathey’s plantings, we want to work on the other areas needing repair to bring everything to par. There are many jobs inside and out and the weather is supposed to be a little warmer so come and have fun doing stuff for the school. The kids love it when they can see what their parents did at a workshop.

OLDER CLASS

As I said last week Susan gave my class a 10 minute version of the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream that she wanted them to present to the younger class. All she thought they would do would be read the script but what happened Thursday afternoon was magical. The entire class got so excited about this project that they started looking for costumes in the closet and talking about their roles. We moved the couches and created a circular stage area, Younger classers came up to join us, and the show began. Everyone in my class had a wonderful time being the characters, and the end product was exhilarating. Shakespeare is turning out to be quite an adventure for them and a lot of fun. Kathey and middle-class heard about our production and asked us to perform it for them the next day which we did. Kathey took pictures during the performance and the looks on the older and younger class students faces were full of wonder and avid concentration. On Monday we had another great session covering the play with the 40 quotes that I looked up over the weekend. E had also on her own made a sheet with 12 quotes. The class took turns reading the quotes from the papers and even fought over who could say some of them – students wanting to say quotes that were said by their character in the mini play.

If that wasn’t enough excitement and believe me it was excitement, we also started talking about the creation of the haunted house. Because of Sandy it turns out that only two of my students have ever worked on a haunted house before, so everybody was a bit nervous but so excited. We talked about the many things they could do and set-aside most of Tuesday to work on it. Sara was such a great help and the class worked tirelessly until the things they imagined became a reality. E and C stepped up on their own to check to see what everyone was doing and to put a plan in play for how all of the pieces would fit together in the haunted house tour. The room was transformed, and ready for us to start giving tours today, Thursday. Creating the haunted house is an amazing process from beginning to end.

Our third group reading book, Hoot is also turning out to be success. We are now a little over a third of the way through the book and reading sessions are going well. The schedule included math workbooks, phys ed, creating paper bag donkey heads (from A.M.S.N.D.), and communications work. H completed decimal book number three. V & I completed geometry one, and A completed the entire algebra series this week. On Friday we will be having a timed times table test and asking for mentors to help people who still need to learn these tables – knowing the times tables will makes their lives so much easier when it comes to math work. Also by Friday morning everyone should have completed their letter report which involved writing a report on a topic of their choice from an assigned letter of the encyclopedia. This report was supposed to be one typed or written page long. Talking about writing, if you still have writing that were given out at parent conferences, please send them back to be put into the writing drawers.

In November, we will be going to New York by taking train from Middletown Station. We arrive in New York and will take the subway down to lower Manhattan. Our first stop is to see the new Canstruction exhibit in the Wintergarden. We will pass the new World Trade Center on our short walk from Chambers St. Station. We will have lunch in the Wintergarden and then take the subway back up to 23rd St. We have another short walk from 23rd to 26th street to the National Mathematics Museum. Dinner is four blocks away at a Thai restaurant and after dinner we have our longest walk, which really is not that long, up to Penn Station on 34th St. We will have Krispy Kreme donuts while waiting for the train home. Parents will pick up at Middletown Station.

MIDDLE CLASS

The excitement surrounding Halloween and the anticipation of the Older Class haunted house has been the focus of the week. Discussions about costume details, trying to guess the theme for the haunted house, and social events like parties have put everyone in a festive mood. Several of the Middle Classers volunteered to sing with the Young Classers at the nursing home on Tuesday and enjoyed the opportunity to sing old favorites and help Susan and Robin.

Our other excitement of the week was returning on Monday to find our beautiful new walkway and flower beds. My class especially is looking forward to planting in the spring. Thanks you so much to T and his crew for a job well done.

Our Prism City is taking shape and can be seen on the loft in the library. The children have begun doing their own extensions by combining other shapes to build a variety of commercial buildings for city. The theme of geometric shapes was carried over into art pieces following a lesson by Mo on color theory and made by Middle Classers on Friday. The children worked in pairs to create a collage of opposite colors using squares, circles, and triangles which are hanging in the classroom.

Thank you to I for reading his essay to my class. They were very impressed with his writing and commented that they thought the contest judges must have also been impressed with his vocabulary. We plan to have other students read their essays including N who also wrote an excellent one. We followed his reading with a discussion on essays. My class has decided that they would like to find out about essay contests that might be coming up.

Thank you to all the Older Classers and Jay for putting on a performance of A Mid Summer’s Night Dream for us on Friday. My class was completely enthralled by the performance and the characters created by each individual actor. Great Job!

Shakespeare continues with Susan reading the children’s version of Hamlet and the books being made available to Middle Classers to read on their own.

Please check to make sure your child has a cold weather change of clothes in their locker and check lost and found and the yard for clothes that are shed in this changeable weather. We have several sweatshirts and jackets left outside every day.

YOUNGER CLASS

Thank you all for your caring thoughts. It was a difficult week last week. I am so thankful to Kim for taking my class while I was with my family. Thank you to Susan for helping Kim as well. I wouldn’t have been able to be there to help my Mom without all of the help in the classroom. Thank you to all the Little Classers who made me such wonderful cards and pictures. The kids are so amazingly caring. I came in at the end of the day on Tuesday to meet with parents for conferences. I was greeted with lots of hugs as the kids all came running to meet me. My Mom came in for part of the day on Friday so that she didn’t have to be alone all day. She loved seeing all of the kids, and got huge hugs when she left after lunch. It really made her feel so good.

Last Friday we went on our pumpkin picking trip. The kids had great fun with a hay ride, corn maze, huge stack of hay bales to climb, and a crawl through hay tunnel. We then walked through the pumpkin patch and the kids each picked their pumpkin (it had to be no bigger than their head!).

Frank (Rebekah’s husband) brought our class a huge pumpkin last week. Thanks so much Frank!! Susan and Kim had the children measure and weigh that pumpkin, and guess if it would sink or float. This week Susan found a big bin and we tested to see if this huge pumpkin would float or sink. To the amazement of most of the kids, the pumpkin did in fact float! (And in the process of doing this experiment, Kim got sprayed with water… sorry Kim!) We then talked a bit about why a pumpkin would float when it was so heavy.

This week we focused our writing and math on the little pumpkins that the kids selected last Friday on our trip. Each child measured height and circumference of their pumpkin, weighed their pumpkin, and tested to see if would float or sink. They also wrote describing words about their pumpkin and drew a picture of it. We then decoupaged jack-o-lantern faces onto the pumpkins. They came out really cute.

On Tuesday, my class did an amazing job of singing their holiday songs at the nursing home (or singing for the “old people” as some of my class told me). All of their costumes were wonderful, and the residents at the nursing home were so happy to see them all and listen to the songs. After singing numerous songs, including three rounds, the children went around and said happy Halloween to all. The smiles from both the residents and the kids were just priceless. I was so proud of them, and I really think they understood that they did this to make other people happy. Thanks to Kathey for allowing me to borrow some Middle Classers to fill out our sound. They did a great job of helping on Tuesday.

Today is Halloween. As is the TNS tradition, the Older Class created a haunted house for the rest of the school. The kids had a choice of different levels of scariness, from not scary at all with the lights on to lights off and the works. The children went up in groups of 3 along with a grown up. You’ll have to ask your child what level they chose and what they thought of the work the Older Classers did.

Hope everyone has a happy Halloween, with lots of treats and not too many tricks!

What a wonderful surprise all the parents and students had this past Monday morning as they came into school and saw the gorgeous new walkway and flower beds. Everyone is thrilled with this amazing gift and excited about the plans to continue around the back of the school and to replace the deck outside Kathey’s room. A big thank you for your generosity!
It has been really great having Jill and Robin back this week and they have both been working really hard. I know from experience that getting back into the swing of things after an absence from TNS is like jumping into a fast moving river. It will also be really good to see Meeta back next week. The three weeks have gone by very fast and yet it seems ages since we saw her. As I said before it’s been really great having Mo in Kathey’s class on Thursdays and Fridays and the art work she has done with the middle class is really quite spectacular. Kathryn’s Prism City, a unique, creative city evolved from her math work with them on circles, cones, etc. is also taking on quite a life of its own and I can’t wait to see the finished product.
Last week on Thursday and Friday the older class did a wonderful impromptu play reading of a 10 minute version of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream for the younger and middle classes. I had asked them to just do a straightforward play reading for the younger class as a prelude to the younger classers writing a narration for their puppet play. They only had the scripts Thursday morning but by the end of the day they had improvised costumes and actions and put on quite an extraordinary show, which we then asked them to encore for the middle class on Friday morning. Happily Since Robin was back Friday she was able to see the play as was her mom who was visiting for the morning. At the Thursday performance a few of the older class had taken two parts and I was really pleased to see that they happily shared them giving parts to L and J who had been away. This week they have all been busy doing the haunted house for the Younger and middle classes as their Halloween day treat. They showed it to groups this morning and it was a terrific hit. They had 4 levels of scariness, 2 with the lights on and 2 with the lights off—each getting more intense than the one before. E was the guide and visitors were treated to a tour of an insane asylum that was supposedly closed years ago but still held many long forgotten and very weird inmates. Screams and cries of delight were the “music” of the morning and Jay and his class deserve a lot of credit for their hard work and another successful Halloween adventure.
On Tuesday the younger class, dressed in their Halloween costumes, went to the nursing home to sing, Helen, Robin and I accompanied them and it was really one of the best performances that we have done there. The children all looked wonderful in their costumes and were a big hit with the residents and I was very proud of the way they behaved and how each one went round and shook hands with our audience afterwards and wished them Happy Halloween. We were also very grateful to add seven students from Kathey’s class at the last minute to help us with the singing. We encouraged the residents to participate with us in singing the songs and they did so very enthusiastically and said afterwards how much they enjoyed it. We told them that we will go back at the holidays and perform for them again.
Despite the Halloween goings-on I have still managed to do some of my Shakespeare work. The younger class has started work on the narration for their puppet play; with the middle class I have started a simplified version of Hamlet (their choice) We have also talked more about the characters in the Midsummer Night’s Dream play and watched part of the video we made the last time I did Shakespeare called The Boisterous Bard.
We are all looking forward to a long weekend next week and I know that several families will be going away. With the holidays coming up soon we would appreciate people telling us well in advance if they are taking time out of school for trips. Much of our work is done in groups and this is affected if one or more of a group is missing. Knowing in advance helps us with our planning and avoids the frustration of groups having to work with someone missing or wait for them to come back.
Happy Halloween!

OLDER CLASS:

This week our main focus was on the mural, independent projects, our culinary trip, our Earth Matters Review (T.V. style) on Friday, and the special edition of the newspaper. All of these projects are in full swing, and I am encouraging everyone to work on them. This week we had presentations by K, L, J, and K. These presentations have added so much to the class – I really appreciate them and have learned much from them.

We worked on continuing projects of phys. ed., music, helping the younger class and people in the class, reading partners, and humans. This week in the human project we covered factors that hold different societies together, languages of the world (everyone in the class should know the top 12 languages), and finally we had a great discussion on the microbes that live on and in our bodies. These 100 trillion microbes make up 1-2 pounds of our body weight and fall into 3 categories. Those that are freeloaders, those that are beneficial (which luckily makes up the majority), and those that are disease causing. This information lead to one of the most in-depth discussions we have had in the class this year.

Two new assignments were doing surveys and “’List 25”. Students chose things they were curious about and surveyed different groups in the school. The survey I shared with them was about ecology predictions in 50 years and was from The Smithsonian Magazine. My class agreed (to a greater extent than those people surveyed in the magazine) that most of the energy will come from sources other than coal, oil, and gas; there will be computers that can carry on conversations; there will be a cure for cancer, there will be artificial arms and legs that perform better than natural ones; scientists will bring back an extinct animal by cloning; and we will find evidence of life elsewhere in the universe. They agreed to an even greater percent that the world was going to get warmer. Areas where they had the biggest disagreement with the sample were in their belief that the world would not face a major energy crisis, the quality of the earth’s environment would not improve, and that the oceans would not be healthier. “ List 25” is a website that Kathryn Moore shared with me that listed the “top” 25 items in many different categories as the 25 important numbers, 25 scary insects, and the 25 usually crowded places with pictures of them without people.

Update on E and C’s book reading chart – we are now up to 160 books read by members of the class in the last two months. Another interesting project has been to take the life-sized charcoal cow made by A, K and E and transform it into a painted plywood cow. This was done by our soon to be graduates with Susan and Christopher’s help. As with many pieces of work in the class one can never tell where it will lead. This should be a reminder for all students to finish their independent projects and share them before we run out of time!

I will be spending 15 minutes each morning until the end of school talking to students about 6 important rules that I want them to continue to work on improving. These rules are no shoes, no Internet without permission, listening in bookcorner, no use of bad language, no gum chewing, and the no cellphone rule, which was broken by 3 students on Tuesday and started me down this road again. I have faith that when people believe in the importance of the process of living and growing together miracles are possible. I am actually very pleased with my class and what we have accomplished, learned, and experienced together this year.

Every week I have started my bulletin on Monday and have then added to it during the week. By doing this I have shared over 35 typed pages of information about my class with you. In addition to face to face communication, I feel the bulletin is a very important tool that I use to communicate with you about the many things we are doing and thinking about.

Instead of a sleepover, I have arranged for the older class to have an extended day and the class will be treated to breakfast at school the next day when they arrive. I will provide more details on the extended day in next week’s bulletin. This year’s trip fund has covered all of our trips except the waterpark which will be an additional $10 per student.

MIDDLE CLASS:

This week has been busy but productive despite changes in schedule. Unfortunately we had to cancel our trip to Poricy Park with the threat of pop-up thunderstorms. We are in the process of rescheduling. Thanks to all the parents who volunteered to go with us and for their understanding about the last minute change. Thanks to S and his mother for preparing a great introduction to geo-caching that S presented to the class on Wed. morning.

Despite the change, the time today was well spent on rehearsing and finishing costumes. Thank you to Helen’s friend, John who is a voice and acting teacher, for coming in and giving the children some pointers regarding their performance. Helen and the class have done such a great job in putting this play together. Thanks to Jay and his class for moving furniture for rehearsal and Salvadora for helping Meeta with last minute costume repair.

Micro society is moving along. The children have made model magic figures to represent their characters and have begun the process of making plants and animals for their bio region. Yesterday I heard a discussion of the merits of using camel skin to make tents if you live in the Sahara. According to one “expert” it can go moldy if you don’t tan it properly.

YOUNGER CLASS:

Despite the heat we had a great trip to Holmdel Park and Longstreet Farm. On the farm we had a complete tour and then played some old fashioned games. We then had a picnic lunch and hiked to the top of the park to play. Thanks so much to Kim, Lori, and Susan for chaperoning this trip. We have spent a lot of time this week getting ready for tonight’s Portfolio Open House for the parents in my class. I am always so impressed by how much work my class completes throughout the year. I am really looking forward to seeing everyone tonight. We have also been working hard on our musical numbers we learned with Helen, Kim, and Susan and as of this bulletin writing I am very hopeful that they will be videoed and ready for showing tonight. Tomorrow we will be planning Fun Week and I will put details in next week’s bulletin. Next week we will be going to Veteran’s park, which is just down the street, for a morning trip to see the animals and explore the park. Since we will be back at school for lunch students can bring cooked lunches.

MUSIC WITH HELEN:

I can’t believe we’re so close to the end of the school year and I look forward to our presentation next week. I have attached a notice for those who will be part of the evening’s performance.

Unfortunately, due to scheduling conflicts, the younger class will NOT be singing that evening but we hope to have their part of the performance recorded for viewing at the portfolio open house tonight.

The middle class is ready to go with Bebop with Aesop, and the older class’ musical exploration on rhythm, xylophone, recorder and cups is not to be missed!

OLDER CLASS:

Congratulations to E and C for helping to organize such a successful “Great Walk.” I hope everyone enjoyed it – I certainly did! Even with the walk on Friday, S managed to start working on the wall mural and Sara even worked in her last cooking session.

Moving up week is always a good week for us. The energy in the class has a completely different feel, and my older class students are always trying their best to help during this week. This week I gave daily schedules each day so my new students had that extra support. One project we worked on together was penciling in the wave painting which is starting to look quite impressive. We actually will be able to complete all of the preliminary drawing, so next week we will start painting when S returns from her trip. We started our day on Tuesday with everyone writing ten things about themselves and then passing them out for others to read. We then guessed as the clues became more revealing who the person was – this was an exercise for us to get to know each other better, and it was a lot of fun as well. We had a group reading session each day as we passed around the book The Day No Pigs Would Die. The first chapter impressed everyone as the main character helped a cow birth her calf. The schedule included a new extension for J’s fish project of making 3-dimensional fish from our heavy paper stock. These sea creatures ranged from A’s tiny crab to E’s 17 foot sawfish. Each student was given a line from the C D B (see the bee) book to illustrate. I made a new POD which was to be researched by using our encyclopedias and many students ended up getting the correct mathematical answer – several students asked for several more versions later in the week so I added another one to the schedule for Thursday. J talked to us about the coming invasion of the cicadas and showed us a breadboard thermometer he made to measure the temperature of the earth. When the temperature reaches 64 degrees they are set to emerge from their 17 year absence. The temperature of the earth at school was only 55 but we heard reports that cicadas have shown up at LaGuardia Airport, Staten Island, and the Parkway! We had phys. ed. and music this week. There were nine math workbook pages assigned and I gave the class two magic squares to figure out. The class did journal writing twice and it was good to see how much they had to say about the week. It was a very good moving-up week.

MIDDLE CLASS:

We are having a great moving up week. The group has worked cooperatively on illustrating animal poems, scratch games, math sheets, and designing Rescue Ridge posters to illustrate how much it would cost to foster a dog or cat for a week. It has been wonderful to have the 5 mover uppers from the younger class for the week.

Next week we begin micro-society based on biomes of the world. Each group will have to make decisions that will impact the animals, plants and people who live in their particular ecosystems. This project will run for approximately 3 weeks.

YOUNGER CLASS:

We have had a fun moving up week, although it is always an interesting process since those remaining in my class often don’t know quite how to handle the changing social dynamic. We have continued working on our environmental project and have enjoyed a lot of help from the three graduates. Tomorrow my mover-uppers will be back with me in the afternoon and we will be celebrating S’s Birthday. Next week is our trip to the Staten Island Zoo. I think I have enough parents to chaperone and drive Everyone needs to have a packed lunch that is completely nut free and doesn’t need cooking. They also need good walking shoes.

The week of June 3rd is known as “Fun Week” in my class. This has become a tradition over the past 8 years and is our time as a class to do all the things we haven’t had a chance to do during the year.