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.