OLDER CLASS

Please try to come to my parent meeting next week. Here is a list of the topics I plan to talk about:  the history project and it’s effect, New York trips, comments from some former graduates, a questionnaire I gave the class “I would rather do this rather than that”, things we would like to tell or ask our parents submitted by students, the excitement of having nine graduates, how my class is maturing, and the outlook of the class for next year.

Moving-up week was a very good week. It was a whirlwind of activity and it flew by. We all enjoyed having the mover-uppers join us for the week.  We did miss the three students who will be graduating, but everybody seemed to get along well.

Now we are having another busy week. We have had fourteen history presentations:  the beginnings of Christianity, the European leaders during World War II, the Anasazi, European colonization of America, Roman gods, The Enlightenment, Phoenicians, Roman accomplishments, the mystery of the disappearance of Anastasia, Sparta, the Black  Plague, Egyptian daily life, the Aztecs, the statue of Zeus, and the battle at Lexington and Concorde.  We have 30 more history presentations to do before the end of year.  All the presentations that have been completed have been bound into a book.
This week we continue our work on Twelfth Night with Susan reading a children’s version and the class doing a 25 minute mini play.  We are all excited about seeing Twelfth Night today. I want to take the opportunity to give parents a little more insight into how much learning goes on in each of the classes. When it came to going over Twelfth Night last week, I asked one of our mover uppers if the story made sense to him. He told me that Kathey had given the class the assignment of reading three or four of the Shakespearean children’s books and he had read Twelfth Night. He then went downstairs and brought back the book so that he could show it to me. He was so happy to see that work he had done was already important and useful to him. I was thrilled because it was a surprise to me that he knew the story so well and that this was a good example of how children learn in the school by doing the work that is suggested by the teacher and by their own independent studies. It was a validation for him and for me, because it shows how much learning is taking place all day long and even if it isn’t uncovered as it was in this case, it is there. To date we have covered nine Shakespearean plays in depth with only one to go, A Winter’s Tale.

This week the schedule also included two pages of math work each day, music, phys ed, and a writing.  The writing assignment was to create the best Bob or Betty story ever!  Bob stories showed up last week when the assignment was to build a story around five new vocabulary words that we had covered in my handouts. Most of the students love Bob stories.  Bob is a character that has developed in the older class over the years, he is a daredevil and adventurer who loves explosives and particularly hand grenades. He is also partial to the country of France. The stories that the students read in bookcorner were varied but were all intriguing or fun. I don’t know when I have seen the class so happy and interested about hearing one story after another. The writing assignment for next week is for the student to choose their favorite Shakespearean character and tell why they chose that particular person. We only have about 20 days of school left but the ideas and enthusiasm in the class is continuing to grow.

MIDDLE CLASS

The class has started microsociety this week. Microsociety is a simulation game in which groups create a working “society” based on research and decisions made by the world council which is made up by the entire class. There will be three groups led by third year students and each group will research the mythologies chosen by the group leaders. They will be studying Roman, Egyptian and Amazon Rainforest myths. This project depends on all the members being present to make decisions. Please let me know as soon as possible if your child will be out in the next two weeks.

It is so hard to believe we only have 4 weeks of school left and they are busy ones. Please check your email and read the bulletin for information as middle classers are enthusiastic until the end and we are trying to squeeze in everything they have requested. In an effort to keep everyone informed, both email and bulletin will be used to communicate information.

If you haven’t done so already, please take the time to read the Older Class portion of the bulletin this week. Jay shared an experience he had with a middle classer during moving up week.

If you have specific things you would like to discuss about your child at conference, please email them to Jill ahead of your scheduled time.

YOUNGER CLASS

We had an amazing trip to Kateri on Tuesday. In the morning, we went frogging.  The children were paired up and given big nets to try to catch frogs around the pond.  They caught green frogs and bull frogs, and tadpoles and frogpoles (tadpoles with back legs).  We saw a giant snapping turtle come to the surface of the pond as well.  The children each had a chance to touch or hold the frogs.  Then we learned all about frogs. It was lots of fun!  In the afternoon we had a program on bugs.  The children paired up and were given sweep nets to catch bugs in a field.  Then we went in the woods and rolled over logs to look for more bugs.  We even found a salamander!  It was a wonderful day, filled with awesome experiences with nature.

Other things we have been working on this week have included math and reading, writing about our trip to Kateri for the trip addition of our newspaper (to be completed before the end of the year), portfolios (to be shared on our portfolio presentation day), and brushing up on the Little Class parts of the Boisterous Bard for the film version (to be filmed at school).
I enjoyed talking to parents about their children at conferences this week, and look forward to talking to parents next week as well.

OLDER CLASS

This week is moving up week, so I had all of the students give me feedback in the form of a journal or letter writing. I was pleased to see that the mover uppers were having a good time and enjoying being in the class and that the older classers were feeling good about this new mix for next year. I started the day off on Tuesday with 30 questions that were designed to get people talking and find out more about each other. Some sample questions were:  Have you ever ridden a snowmobile?  Are you afraid of spiders? Do you have blue eyes?  We then played a game with students getting credit for guessing the number of people who answered yes to these questions. You will be interested to know that only two people are thinking about tattoos at this point.

I’m afraid in my excitement of getting prepared for the week, I made the Tuesday schedule very full.  I rearranged that work and spread it out over the following two days.  The schedule included a new Scope Magazine in which we read the articles, mini play, and did five worksheets. The schedule also included math work, making another flower for our new display area in the stairwell, music, phys ed, and reading partners. We also had five more history presentations. These new presentations were on malaria, Industrial Revolution, Cleopatra – Egyptian inventions – and accomplishments, European colonization of America, and Anasazi. We have learned so much from the information that has been presented by taking notes and answering people’s questions about the material. At this point, I have so many people who want to present that we are working on creating time for that in our busy schedule. I couldn’t be more pleased with the effect this project is having and how it is giving us all information that we will use in the future.

This week we started our study of the play Twelfth Night. We are doing this to get ready for our sleepover next Thursday when we will view the video made by the Globe Theatre Company. This week I gave the class sheets I created with pictures of characters to help them with this rather complicated plot. Of course this play includes many of the things we have come to expect of Shakespeare and those things are marriages, people switching identities, people taking other names, love, entanglements, and misunderstandings.  This week in addition to using the sheets, we watched an animated video made by MTV. Next week we will have the opportunity to do a 20 minute mini play of Twelfth Night and read a children’s version of the play. We have had a “beautiful week” which is a quote from one of my student’s journal writings.

We will be having a sleepover at school.  This sleepover will be handled in the same manner as when we went to see Richard III with just a few changes. On that Thursday we will have a normal day with the only exception being watching the movie Star Wars so that we can then begin reading the Star Wars book in Shakespearean words. We tried reading this book before when I realized that many of my students had never seen the movie. During the day, Sara will take the various cooking groups to help prepare food for the evening. We will have an early dinner and then some free time before we sit together to watch Twelfth Night. The boys can put all of their stuff in the main classroom and the girls will again have the Quilt Room. In the morning they will all have breakfast together and then for lunch, since it is Friday, people should bring in money for pizza or subs as usual. I am really looking forward to this. If you have any questions please call me.

MIDDLE CLASS

Middle classers have been very helpful showing the moving uppers the “ropes” although they are all enthusiastic and capable.

We have been doing nature drawing and painting of the spring flowers in our yard. The mover uppers made drawing journals and participated in a water color activity. R did a great job of leading the mover uppers in a mini class on the symmetry work we have done and other middle classers have helped by reading, helping with research and demonstrating some online math sites we are using.

S very kindly included moving uppers in his independent project on coins and Helen loaned them recorders to practice during the week.

We have really enjoyed having them.

We have rescheduled the Kateri trip for next week.

 

YOUNGER CLASS

This week is Moving Up Week.  I have sent my 4 third year children to Kathey’s class for the week, and we have 2 visitors who will be joining our class in September. The third year students are having a wonderful time in Kathey’s class.  They have checked in with me numerous times to let me know that everything is going great!  The Little Class is much different without them, but we are having a great time.

Last Friday we had our reader’s theater performance of “Mr. Putter and Tabby Walk the Dog”.  It was lots of fun!!  The kids all worked really hard on costumes, props, and scenery then they acted out the story with me as narrator.   We have started a new readers theater production this week.  We’ve read the book “Salamander Ball” twice, decided what was going on in each scene, listed the characters, chose characters, and found or made props, costumes, and scenery.  Tomorrow we will finish getting everything together, and have our performance, with me as narrator once again.

On Tuesday, we went on a nature scavenger hunt.  The kids had a great time, and were really focused on looking for the different items on the list.  As soon as one child found something they made sure to show everyone else.  We found some very interesting items in addition to the ones on my list.  The most interesting was a bird’s wing.  We then had a discussion about what could have happened to the bird.  As a class we decided that most likely the bird was caught by a cooper’s hawk or maybe a red tailed hawk.  We also spent some time talking about poison ivy and how to identify it.

We played math games, read with partners, worked on math activities, had music with Helen and phys ed with Chris, and had older class reading partners.  It’s been a very full week!

Next week we start our final show and tell topic.  Please help your child find a joke or riddle to share with the class.  I sent an email home a few days ago with a list of which week each child is assigned.

We will be taking a trip to Kateri next week.

OLDER CLASS

My class has shown a real sense of responsibility and caring for the group and for each other as we went through the many experiences of the week. As I have said all year, I am very proud of this class and this week, they were particularly present in everything that we did together. I think we all have learned again that we should never take anything for granted.
Our fifth trip to New York was a joy for everyone. The students were complemented at every place that we visited including the museum and the restaurant. Before our visit we had looked at the many museum booklets that I had picked up at the museum on the weekend and everyone had a good idea of what they wanted to see. The armor section was a particular hit but we also visited many other areas including the Egyptian, Roman, Asian, African, musical instruments and various other art exhibit areas. I have never experienced a group so involved in reading and asking questions about the many things that they saw. One of my students asked me when I started doing New York trips so I went through our archives of bulletins and found that they started in 1996. Interestingly enough one of our first trips was to see the play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and in the bulletin piece it said that I had gotten a bargain – and that was $65 tickets for $17! I guess it’s not too bad then that 18 years later I was able to get tickets to Richard III for $25. I figured that with five trips a year, I would’ve taken 90 trips with the class up until to this point.
In searching the bulletins I also found out the answer to another question and that question was – “When did we start giving kimonos to graduates?” the answer to that question was 1982 – 33 years ago. Parent kimono kits are now ready for C, E, and S. Graduates will be doing some special activities with Susan and Chris during moving up week next week.
This week our history presentations reached a total of 50, 13 of them this week. They were on Zimbabwe, life expectancy, the Roman Republic, early Russia, middle history Russia, Russia becomes a world power, early European expansion, causes of World War I, timeline of World War I, the Mayans, Russian history, the great pyramids of Egypt, Confucius and his teaching, Julius Caesar, American, English and Japanese Leaders in WWII, Effects of WWII, and Early people crossing into America. As with everything we study, students are starting to see the things that they’ve heard about in these history presentation or learned coming up in other parts of their lives. Speaking of that, Richard III came into the news in two ways. Mark Rylance has been nominated in the category of best actor for Richard III, and Jill brought in an article in which Kevin Spacey, who has played Richard III throughout the world, has a new video coming out on Friday about that experience.
This week our schedule had math work, music from Nicky, art work and creating a new display area in the stairwell, reading our new book Uglies, looking at the booklets from the Metropolitan Museum, cooking, reading partners with the younger class, a writing of the fifth New York trip, and finally the practicing of an 11 page condensed version of the play, The Taming of the Shrew.
Sara had her second cooking session with the class making seasoned chips, sloppy Joe’s (beef and vegetarian), pasta salad and Blondies.
Congratulations to I for finishing all of the books in the Key Curriculum series.
I gave the class “would you rather questions” to answer which I will use for part of my parent meeting on Monday, May 19. At that meeting we will talk about my class for next year, how they are growing and how their interests are changing, and about their input into the class this year how that has helped to create a positive and full atmosphere. I will also ask parents who have gone on New York trips to share their observations with the other parents.
Don’t forget we have sleepover day with three main goals. The goals are watching Star Wars so that we can read the book that Rosalie gave us that presents the story of Star Wars in Shakespearean language, watching the video of 12th Night which was produced by the same company that we saw do Richard III, and having our third cooking session with Sara to make our dinner and our breakfast.

 

MIDDLE CLASS

This week we are taking advantage of breaks in the rain to garden. Although we were disappointed about having to reschedule the Kateri trip, we were lucky that it was possible to go on May 13.
Every day from now until the end of the year is chock full. Please let us know of any days you know your child will be out.
Next week we are looking forward to having R, Z, C and C join us for moving up week. We will be working on plant science which will include activities, projects and helping them become part of the ongoing middle class garden work. Middle classers work hard every year and will be happy to help moving uppers find a place in our garden crew.
The week after moving up week we will be starting micro society. We will be creating our own “worlds” based on Greek, Roman and Egyptian mythologies. S, S and A will be helping me run this as part of their work as 3rd year students.

 

YOUNGER CLASS

It has been a very busy week!
On Friday of last week, we had a wonderful readers’ theater workshop run by the Algonquin Arts Theater. Audra, from the theater, came with props, scenery, and costumes to use, scenes written out, and a list of characters. The book we used was “County Fair” from the Little House picture book series. The class was already familiar with the story as we had read it as a class a couple of times during the year. They knew the characters very well because they are in the book “Farmer Boy”, which we are currently reading, and on which the picture book is based. The children chose parts to play or jobs to have (props, costumes, scenery). The class had a discussion led by Audra about the characters and what they might be thinking, as well as what was happening in the story. The children then did an improvisation of the story with Audra leading them. It was lots of fun! We are working this week on our own version of readers’ theater using a book from the Mr. Putter series.
On Tuesday, we took our trip to Manasquan Reservoir. The wind prevented us from going out on our boat tour, but the class had a great day anyway. We had a naturalist guide us on a nature walk. Then we went inside the Environmental Center and learned about the animals that lived at the Reservoir. The naturalist brought out a tree frog and a fowler’s toad for the children to see. Then she brought out a box turtle and a painted turtle. After talking about the difference between the two turtles, we had a turtle race. She then brought out a corn snake which all of the children had a chance to pet. We played a habitat game where each child was given a stuffed animal and asked to place it in its correct habitat on a carpet decorated with a pond or on a tree. After lunch we toured the Environmental Center. We had the place just about to ourselves which was great. We saw the bald eagle chicks (eaglets) on a video camera that was pointed at the nest. We also looked at fossils found in Monmouth County, brook trout babies, water bugs, and more frogs, toads, turtles, and snakes. We then took the nature trail back to the parking lot and headed back to school. It was a very full day, and everyone had lots of fun! Thanks so much to Dina, Stan, Megan, and Letty for driving and chaperoning our trip!!
Yesterday and today we had a visitor to our class. The kids were so excited to show him all around. He was surrounded by half the class trying to show him everything in the school and tell him all of the rules. He will be visiting again tomorrow.
Our Shakespeare’s World project is up on the walls. Please come in before or after school and have your child show you the bodies, history drawings, and fact writing and drawings. All of the bodies are just wonderful. Each one completely different. Thanks so much to Kim for helping the children execute their ideas. Many hours and hot glue sticks later, the results are wonderful!
To all of my sewing volunteers. I have two more portfolios ready to go. Because Kim has been out, I have not had a chance to get any more ready, but they will be soon. Please check with me at the end of the day and I’ll give you what I have. Thanks to Melina for being the first.

By Susan M. Chilvers, Ed. D.

“Prevention is better than cure.” How many times have we heard that adage? We are urged to exercise to prevent heart disease, joint and muscle problems, and breathing difficulties. We are encouraged to eat right to avoid obesity, clogged arteries, heart strain, and a myriad of other afflictions. Millions of dollars are spent every year on gym memberships, supplements, and diets focusing on different elements of “healthy” eating, while at the same time we lament the costs of treating maladies that could have been avoided. We are an overweight, under-exercised nation, but we know a lot about being healthy and fit and many of us try to work toward those goals. We encourage children and young adults to be aware that their choices now will affect their future health. We know what we should do, but often we don’t do it. We may eat that piece of cheesecake but may feel guilty or believe that we should feel guilty.

Likewise with safety, which is mostly common sense. We tell children from an early age to keep their hand out of a flame, to stay out of the street, and to avoid strangers. We are constantly reminded to fasten our seatbelts and use car seats for young children. We focus on preventing something bad from happening rather than on repairing the problem after it happens.

SO, my question is – Why don’t we apply the same common sense and prevention knowledge to education?

Study the average mailings to schools with regard to workshop offerings and training courses for teachers. They emphasize dealing with difficult children, motivating non-learners, teaching this or that to create higher test scores, or dealing with bullying and social abuse—all cures (often expensive) for problems apparently created by the nature of individual children or their home environment. While I am not negating the effect of what goes on at home—who is monitoring what goes on at school or challenging the effect of schooling on the educational health of children?

Instead of using what we know about true education and learning, we continue with our bad habits and when things go wrong—sometimes horribly wrong—we try to fix them, blaming the students and not a deficient system of education. Here are a few examples.

We know that children learn to communicate by being surrounded by others who communicate, and they listen, observe, then imitate. What parent doesn’t talk to his or her child and totally encourage and support the beginning talker by showing delight at every word and new action demonstrated? We marvel as they explore their environment, discovering new things every day and give them as many varied experiences as possible.

We know from studies and sad examples of children abandoned in orphanages in their early years that lack of communication and interaction can cause severe damage. However, once children go to school we seem to ignore these good habits that nurture communication—confining them to desks, restricting talking and movement in the name of classroom management and discipline.

When problems occur, they usually are blamed on the individual student, who then may spend a lot of time in the principal’s office or be labeled with a learning deficiency and channeled into “remedial” programs. Sometimes these programs are individualized and creative, but they are usually only offered to students with a need for a “cure,” those who are too slow, too bright, too inattentive. They are seldom seen as a very healthy way to educate all children.

Another example is that of control. We know the effectiveness of empowering people in any situation to be in charge, make their own decisions, and work through consequences. But how many opportunities do we offer in schools for students to follow that particular path? Curriculum is created and imposed from “above” or outside with little to no input from students and few choices within the assigned projects, which may or may not interest the students.

Which brings me to another point—interest. Who does not know that having an interest in something makes it much easier to learn? Yet little effort is made in traditional education to harness interest, and boredom is often cited as one of the most frustrating things in students’ lives. In some children it results in “acting out,” in others, dropping out either mentally or actively. In some, the feeling of boredom causes them to describe their years of formal education as “putting in time” in an irrelevant system to gain access to profitable careers.

Is the goal of education to create interested, motivated, independent learners or to fill empty students’ heads with a prescribed quota of facts deemed necessary for an adequate “education”? If it is the former then I think we need to rethink our methods and put emphasis and money into prevention instead of “cure.”