OLDER CLASS:

On Tuesday my class had their weekly reading session with younger class partners. I walked around the room observing the wonderful connection that these students have with each other. This is such a beneficial activity for both classes.

This week we will be only four pages away from finishing our ecosystem project. I have offered our review of all of this work as an idea for a group of students to do as additional independent project work. This review could take the form of a game or a television quiz show. If no one takes this offer, I will work on this myself. All students are continuing to work on their independent projects with J and K starting daily presentations of technology and the most evil people. K is continuing his presentation of ducks and J has completed his daily fish presentation. J illustrated and researched more than 50 fish! Please help me by encouraging and checking in with your student on their progress.

This week we read a Scope mini play together and each person read several articles.
Our writing this week was about how we spent our break, and our schedule also included personal quiet reading times and math work book pages,

Two animals keep showing up in our lives this year – the chihuahua and the manatee. I found two articles on the manatee which I shared with the class. One was from the New York Times and one was from National Geographic. Both articles connected with our ecological studies of how humans and animals constantly have a direct effect upon each other. I also found a wild statistic in New York Magazine that said that the Empire State Building now that it’s outside lighting has gone LED computerized has gone from 10 color changes to 16 million. We quickly figured that was a1.6 million percent increase!

We saw a video on the Brooklyn Bridge and did two Brooklyn fact sheets in preparation for our next class trip.

Sara starts her second round of food preparation with this week’s group making pasta sauce/baked ziti on Friday.

Following is the itinerary for our upcoming trip. We will take the train from Middletown Station and arrive at Penn Station where we will take the subway to the Brooklyn Museum. We will have lunch in the museum courtyard and then go in the museum where we will see the permanent collection as well as special shows like El Anatsui Gravity and Grace. This monumental work of metallic wall hangings made out of stitched together bottle caps found at a Nigerian distillery and various other art pieces is truly amazing. We will be in the museum for two hours and then walk 20 blocks to the restaurant. Our restaurant is an Irish Pub/Restaurant called Mullanes. We are having an early dinner to allow for our long walk to and over the Brooklyn Bridge (45 blocks). Once we arrive in Manhattan we will take the subway back to Penn Station. There we will have Krispy Kremes and board the train for home. Our 5th New York Trip will be in June.

MIDDLE CLASS:
It is so nice to be back from the break. Everyone was excited to share accounts of their experiences while they were away. We jumped right back into gardening-raking, watering our wintersowing seeds, cleaning up the front of the building and “roping” off garden beds to protect the bulbs that we planted in the fall which are valiantly trying to come up despite being trampled and eaten by the rabbits. Please keep in mind that we will be outdoors in the sun most days and getting dirty so old clothes and sunscreen applied in the morning are best.

We have been reading and writing poetry about animals, working in small groups to create estimation activities, and getting ready to make large cut-outs of the animals we have researched and finishing our Fibonacci books. Apps we have been using this week include Amazing Earth and Merriam Webster Dictionary.

There has been lots of discussion about how little time we have left until the end of the year. We will begin planning which will include a day trip to Kateri for frogging, egg babies, microsociety which will be about the earth’s biomes and native peoples and possibly doing an extended day or one night sleepover at school.

YOUNGER CLASS:
We have had a good week back. Everyone was very excited to see each other on Monday, they couldn’t wait to share their stories from vacation. We also began a new project this week on the water cycle and how this affects the food chains of larger predators. We will be looking at how rain waters plants, then evaporates and goes back into the clouds and turns into rain again. As a part of this project they have begun designing their own imaginative flowers that we will turn into sewing projects. We will also do environmental poetry, art work, and plant seeds to watch the germination and growing process. They all seem excited about this project so far.

We have also started training for the Great Mile Walk by increasing our post lunch walk at the park from 4 laps (1 mile) to 6-8 laps. My class is taking this seriously and is hoping to set the record for the most laps walked by a class!

We welcomed Z into our class as an official New Schooler this week. As part of his initiation, we went over indoor and outdoor rules. One rule that initiated a lot of discussion was about cleaning up snack, especially when it falls on the floor. We were talking about food attracting pests, and I was informed much to my surprise that bears are a real possibility if we leave food out in the class. I learn something new every day!

We’ve enjoyed having three visitors in the class this week and hope to make them permanent additions in the fall.

MUSIC WITH HELEN:
Younger class – this week we are learning a new song in Spanish and English.

Middle Class – work continues on Bebop with Aesop but we really need parent’s help to get the costumes done.
Older Class – we worked on a music/rhythm piece this week which will be part of the end of the year project and next week we will finish that up, and start our variations on a theme.

by Susan M. Chilvers, Ed. D.

We want children to be good, isn’t that right? Good students, good friends, good citizens, good losers, good siblings and we often talk about good choices. My grandson, who is two, tells me very seriously that I made “a good choice” whenever I agree to doing what he wants. It’s sweet and funny in a two year old but it made me think about what we demonstrate to our children as opposed to what we tell them. We live with dichotomy.

There are so many adages about behavior such as “forgive and forget” and “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and all the major religions exhort us to love our enemies and forgive those who wrong us. However children are also living with the daily news of wars in various parts of the world most of which originated with religious differences. Other sayings such as “don’t get mad, get even” or “revenge is sweet” are also part of everyday living and the media daily glories in the ‘transgressions’ of the famous and alternates between ‘forgiving’ huge digressions and delighting in the revenge taken by relatives or colleagues with words such as consequences, justice and karma bandied around as just that – words.

So on a basic daily level with our children at home or at school what do we tell them – or more importantly show them? Do we ‘forgive’ those who don’t agree with us, who in our opinion did not make a ‘good choice’ or do we get back at them? Do we compromise, practicing give and take or do we feel that compromise weakens our position?

We hear it is human nature to protect our territory, our family or the group with whom we identify and the term ‘power struggle’ is another of those well worn adages. Can we demonstrate that forgiveness is power? That differences can actually make us strong as a community if they are embraced instead of feared.

One way we can work on this is to create situations where children learn cooperatively not competitively. Cooperative learning opens the door to learning from others, sharing ideas and going forward as a team instead of striving alone and often only experiencing success at the expense of others. When the goal of the experience is to work with everyone’s ideas and agree on an outcome that benefits everyone it presents a different focus and challenge from trying to decide who has the best idea and giving all the planning and decision making powers to that person. Cooperative working takes time but in the long run produces children with confidence, who are not afraid to share leadership and learn through experience that with power comes responsibility. Team work also helps the individuals to be able to make mistakes and learn from them, ‘forgiving’ themselves and others and being forgiven in the process.

Experiencing this in many small ways can build an ethic for larger more important scenarios. As adults we can create such an environment and model for children our way of working as a team with each other and with them, whether as parents, teachers, youth leaders or any other community role. When we make mistakes or hurt someone albeit inadvertently saying sorry is a powerful message that we admit a wrong doing and are asking for forgiveness.

There is a lot of discussion going on right now about upgrading education and speculation about what kind of curriculum would improve our system. Fairness, forgiveness, celebrating differences, admitting mistakes, cooperation and collaboration are impossible to package into a class to be taught alongside Algebra or Spanish but if we create a way to infuse these tenets into all we do, I think, to quote my grandson, we are making a “a good choice.”

OLDER CLASS:
Last week on Friday we ended the day with me reading a book from the younger class on Shrek II. It was one of those books I love that have the pictures that are connected to the sound buttons so that the reading is punctuated by these funny sound bites. I had a great time reading the book and the class really enjoyed it.

We started off this week with a talk by J’s parents on Passover and Easter. They then invited the class to help them prepare items to help us all celebrate together. The class helped to make charoset and strawberries and clementines hand-dipped in chocolate. We also had matzoh and grape juice. Thank you to Rosalie and Gary for starting off our week in such a thoughtful and connected way.

This week we also had our usual presentations by J and K, math work book pages, Earth Matters’ reading on forests, and reading partners.

Last week the class voted to read individual books in daily quiet sessions instead of reading another book together aloud. We had two very positive reviews from C and E on books they had read as part of their independent project. The books they really enjoyed were Star Girl and The Giver. I made a book reading chart over the weekend and ask each student to set a goal of the number of books they would read by the end of the year. They could choose from one to twenty-two. Seven people in the class choose twenty-two which I thought was amazing. Even though C and E told the class that this chart was not their idea they have had such a positive impact already with their work. The chart shows that as a class different students have read a total of 33 books since Monday of last week!!!!!! This extending of student project work is what I plan to do as each person starts to share the work they have decided to do in their independent project. This is a very exciting beginning!!!

This week we also listened to some of the first musical recordings Edison made. Most of the numbers were military marches and the quality of the recordings was remarkable. I also shared parts of two different articles that I had taken from the New York Times on Sunday. One was about countries that are using renewable energy like hydroelectric, solar, and geothermal sources to make electricity for their countries. Iceland came in first creating 100% of their electricity from renewable sources, second was Norway at 97%, third was Canada at 63%, and forth Sweden at 55%. The U.S. Was at 13%. The second article was random N.Y.C. Facts – Jayden was the most popular boys name in 2009, there are 1,985 water fountains in city parks, there are 2,540 laundromats, and each week the city issues 100,156 parking tickets. I figured out that this would give the city an income of over 360 million dollars a year if we estimated each fine to be $70.

We have been reading the essays called What Animal Would I Be and Why and they are insightful, humorous, and nicely written. Here is a list of the students and the animals they would like to be: C – parrot and a Bald Eagle, A – bird, A – Golden Eagle, I – wolf, J, K, and T – cheetahs, K – baryonyn, H – cow, E – pegacorn, E – sloth, N– half-human half-dragon, L – owl, S – deinynochus, and J – gar. I am thinking of putting all of these writing into a book so that I can share them with everyone.

MIDDLE CLASS:
We have been taking advantage of the nicer weather and doing a lot of gardening this week. We were able to complete our winter sowing project that had been postponed. We will continue our gardening projects after the break.

Please see your child’s costume design drawing attached to this bulletin and also the “Music with Helen” section of the bulletin for costume needs for the music program in May.

YOUNGER CLASS:
We have just finished one of the most exciting egg hunts I have ever seen, I think a lot of the fun was a result of the beautiful spring baskets my class made this week, they are some of the best I have ever seen. We will finish our spring celebration with a group craft.

This week we also had an amazing time sharing our habitat projects. Each group got to share their projects with the rest of the class, teaching everyone else what they had learned about their habitat over the past few weeks. The projects were great and we were all really impressed by how well they shared information and asked questions. The projects are now on display around the room. This week we also enjoyed having a visiting student on Monday and Tuesday. Reading partners went really well, my class is enjoying reading with a variety of older classers. We also journaled, did math, and enjoyed a great phys. ed. session with Chris.

I hope everyone has a wonderful spring break. Please take note of your conference time (they are posted outside the office) as well as our up-coming trip schedule. If any parent would like to chaperone please let Jill know, thanks Rebekah

MUSIC WITH HELEN:
This week we talked a bit about the end of the year project for all three classes. Since we are winding down and getting a little excited about the upcoming break, we focused largely on discussion this week and when we get back from Spring Break I expect everybody to be ready for some fun.

MIDDLE CLASSERS – will be working on costuming the week we return. Part of their costume will be a toga and head piece. If you can donate a white sheet for the toga portion of the costume we’d appreciate that. Also, look at the drawing your child made of their animal costume and if
there are any parts that you can send in with them next week it would be helpful. Finally, if you have sweatshirts, sweatpants, felt, anything with an animal print, etc., that any child might be able to use, would you please send that in.

If you have any questions just email me. Thanks!

By Susan M. Chilvers, Ed.D

Someone once said bullies are often hard to identify.  We tend to think of bullying as an act of aggression usually done in a sneaky way and seldom observed or seldom reported.  I read an article in Teaching Tolerance magazine that suggests the participants in bullying can be identified by the three B’s – the bully, the bullied and the bystander.  The bystander was as the name suggests just an observer, not involved as an aggressor, a defender or a reporter but is as crucial as the bully and bullied and needs to see how important it is to be involved.  With this in mind, I think the current focus on bullying following such tragic outcomes as suicide is important and anti-bullying steps need to be taken in all schools.  I feel strongly that caring, compassion and accountability are essential in any environment, particularly schools, but I also feel strongly that this cannot be mandated.  Creating endless rules to follow, incident reports to be filed by teachers, may reduce some bullying but it will not deal with the underlying problem of why people bully which is usually because they are unhappy people with low self-esteem but more importantly because the environment allows this behavior.  Reporting incidents and “cracking down” on the perpetrators may reduce some of the problem but ultimately if the environment is structured to support it, bullying will continue.  This is a systemic problem, power is often used not as a force for good but as a weapon by individuals, adults and children, who have poor communication skills, fear of losing control or are just plain unhappy.  I am not suggesting that everyone can live in a rosy, Pollyanna world but real personal interaction skills and conflict resolution can only be taught and experienced in small caring groups, not huge institutions.  Some children bully each other, some teachers bully children for example telling a bullied child he needs to stand up for him or herself and fight back.  If our definition of bullying is a misuse of power, we need to look at that from top to bottom of any institution working with our children.  The anti-bullying mandates for N.J. are good in intention but I think represents piles of paper work and reports building a wall between teachers and students when they should be given more time and staff to look at the underlying causes of bullying with students they know well.

In a small school such as ours, it’s much easier to know the children individually and have their input on every level—academic, social and emotional and they are a wealth of information on what they consider to be bullying and how it can be handled.

In schools with huge populations, it’s much harder to individualize but unless students can feel on an everyday level that they count and are being taken care of they will not be able to trust enough to weigh in on bullying situations as a victim or a bystander.