Our school’s kids doing good in the community. Help them make a difference.
A Call Out
From Sarah Airhart at The Community School of West Seattle:
SO my friends-as if 4 inches of snow is not bad enough on top of a tent-imagine what it has done underneath it….yes-it is WET. I am putting the call out good people of West Seattle PLEASE- BRING ME RAIN BOOTS-MOSTLY ADULT-PLEASE and I will take them to Nickelsville. Sizes 6 to 12 adult and I particularly need an adult size 9 1/2 for a super nice 12 year old boy. THANK YOU friends-a pair of rubber boots will not break the bank but not having them will ruin the only pair of dry socks a person has! I am at school right now with a couple families-you could swing them by if you like-I’m here until 6pm xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Stop Censorship
The Living Classroom was blacked out on January 18th to protest the pr0posed censorship of the internet:
We were a part of the largest online protest in history and it has fundamentally changed the game. We were heard.
We’ve won for now — SOPA and PIPA were dropped by Congress today — the votes we’ve been scrambling to mobilize against have been cancelled.
On January 18th, 13 million of us took the time to tell Congress to protect free speech rights on the internet. Hundreds of millions, maybe a billion, people all around the world saw what we did on Wednesday. See the amazing numbers here and tell everyone what you did.
This was unprecedented. Our collective activism may have changed the way people fight for the public interest and basic rights forever.
The MPAA (the lobby for big movie studios which created these terrible bills) was shocked and seemingly humbled. “‘This was a whole new different game all of a sudden,’ MPAA Chairman and former Senator Chris Dodd told the New York Times. ‘[PIPA and SOPA were] considered by many to be a slam dunk.’”
“’This is altogether a new effect,’ Mr. Dodd said, comparing the online movement to the Arab Spring. He could not remember seeing ‘an effort that was moving with this degree of support change this dramatically’ in the last four decades, he added.”
Shout on the internet with us, let’s celebrate: Round of applause to the 13 million people who stood up - #PIPA and #SOPA are tabled 4 now. #13millionapplause
#SOPA and #PIPA will likely return in some form. But when they do, we’ll be ready.
China’s internet censorship system reminds us why the fight for democratic principles is so important:
In the New Yorker: ”Fittingly, perhaps, the discussion has unfolded on Weibo, the Twitter-like micro-blogging site that has a team of censors on staff to trim posts with sensitive political content. That is the arrangement that opponents of the bill have suggested would be required of American sites if they are compelled to police their users’ content for copyright violations. On Weibo, joking about SOPA’s similarities to Chinese censorship was sensitive enough that some posts on the subject were almost certainly deleted (though it can be hard to know).
…
After Chinese Web users got over the strangeness of hearing Americans debate the merits of screening the Web for objectionable content, they marvelled at the American response. Commentator Liu Qingyan wrote:
‘We should learn something from the way these American Internet companies protested against SOPA and PIPA. A free and democratic society depends on every one of us caring about politics and fighting for our rights. We will not achieve it by avoiding talk about politics.’”
(press release is here: https://fightfortheftr.wordpress.com/press-releases/)
Thank you to everyone who signed the petition.
13 million strong,
Fight for the Future!
Snow Daze
I hope everyone had a fun, winter blast.
We sure did: Snow Play 2012
Share your links in comments if you like. We would all love to see the kids in the snow.
Miss you all. See you Monday.
All the places you can go on the back of a snail
As it goes, projects arise when the same things begin to appear over and over, in the classroom, and the kids (and the teachers) are on fire about it.
This time around, snails were coming in by the dozens by numerous kids. So we observed where they lived in our yard and then the kids set up a large aquarium habitat.
The terrariums that we were originally going to work on during our seed to tree project, became individual snail habitats for further observation.
We talked about what we know, about their habitats, where to find them. We observed them closely, drew them over and over and made them out of clay.
We learned an entire new vocabulary by studying the parts of a snail.
We drew, painted, labelled and wrote about what we know. We also wrote stories about snails going on adventures.
We talked about what the difference between a snail and a slug is: a shell.
Nora, of course, found eggs and we watched tiny snails come to life.
Of course Jen incorporated this into Handwriting Without Tears.
As well as in the Studio with Jaala too. Always. I think we may share parts of our brains.
As we were studying, we realized that we were looking at spirals over and over. Then we discovered that the Nautilus Shell has a mathematical spiral.
This spiral is found all around us in nature and is also called the Golden Ratio: In mathematics and the arts, two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio between the sum of those quantities and the larger one is the same as the ratio between the larger one and the smaller. Also known at phi. and infinity.
Atti’s mom got us this book, which was the most perfect book I have ever gotten, at exactly the right time I needed it.
“Growing Patters: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature”
This is how we found out that it is also in flowers, plants, leaves, the branching in trees, the arrangement of leaves on a stem, the fruitlets of a pineapple, the flowering of artichoke, an uncurling fern and the arrangement of a pine cone.
We found the sequence in flowers:
- 3 petals: lily, iris
- 5 petals: buttercup, wild rose, larkspur
- 8 petals: delphiniums
- 13 petals: ragwort, corn marigold
- 21 petals: aster, black-eyed susan
- 34 petals: plantain
- 55, 89 petals: michaelmas daisies
The same for pinecones, which we studied at length : they have either 8 spirals from one side and 13 from the other, or either 5 spirals from one side and 8 from the other.
Here is our mathematical breakdown. They loved seeing it translated into the numbers. And got it right away.
Don’t you usually learn about Fibonacci in kindergarten and first grade? Sarah keeps telling me, “you know Michelle, this isn’t college.” (while smiling of course). Because this is better than college!
How is it that everything we study anymore leads us directly back to evolution and the patterns in nature? Truly, truly amazing.
And questions and conversations like this:
And also the question of what other things might be infinite?
The list the kids made:
atoms, story, the life cycle, numbers, the universe, ideas, the ocean, snail shells, spirals, cells, energy, light, the sky, space…
“The Fibonacci numbers are Nature’s numbering system. They appear everywhere in Nature, from the leaf arrangement in plants, to the pattern of the florets of a flower, the bracts of a pinecone, or the scales of a pineapple. The Fibonacci numbers are therefore applicable to the growth of every living thing, including a single cell, a grain of wheat, a hive of bees, and even all of mankind.” -Stan Grist
Who knew we could tie weather, trees, snails and the universe all together like this.
Once again this class has led us down a path that is exhilarating for everyone. Because we like to tell the entire school about our discoveries. So watch out! We may just solve the mysteries to the Universe here in Mystery Bay.
Literature Circles
We all have the same book. We have pointers to follow along. Sometimes I read and they follow. Sometimes they take turns reading and we follow each other. Sometimes we all read out loud at once. We are readers. Making sounds. Blending sounds. Identifying site words. Taking cues from the pictures. Taking cues from each other. Making sense of punctuation. Following the story line. Talking about the story. Communing around literature. Being serious. Having fun. Being readers.
Thank you Terry for catching this with the camera.
Everyday I’m Grateful For…
- my amazing job that allows me to teach the way that I want, uninterrupted.
- my kids who make every single day worth it; excited by all that we bring to the table together. they are the reason I get out of bed in the morning.
- my parents who are supportive, kind, interested and excited by what we are doing in the classroom. just know that we love your kids more than you’ll ever know.
- my extended family that is coming to my house on Thursday. someone quick, send me a cleaner or we’re going to be in big trouble.
- my school family; their kind hearts, dedication, interest, love, concern, willingness to work a hard job, making just enough money to survive. and who are loving, supportive, amazing inspirations to the kids and their families on a daily basis. (sorry Terry, that I email you with thoughts at 2:00am.)
- and my own family for putting up with all the hours I spend at school, at the library, locked in my room while reading books, planning our days and working on the computer. and hoping they will forgive me for rarely doing the dishes or the laundry and to know how grateful I am that I can depend on them to pick up my slack. because they know how important this all is to me and how amazing it feels to be in all of these people’s lives; caring, loving, sharing and learning. so if you see them sitting in the parking lot waiting on me once again, blow them a kiss for me, and tell them I’ll be out in a bit.
From Seed to Tree. From Tree to Seed.
Our seed to tree project began with the start of the school year, jumping off of Nora’s independent seed project and play at the end of last year. We noticed that our garden was turning to seed and we wanted to save seeds to plant in the spring. This turned into a seed collection, investigation, detective work, identification, cutting, slicing, hammering, drawing, analyzing, categorizing, painting, naming and how exactly do seeds disperse and create more plants and TREES.
Trees became our next focus and in learning the different kinds and types of trees, we began to identify ourselves with the different trees. Some are disiduous, some conifereous, some tall, some strange and on. We will all forever remember who is which tree. Personalization is such an important part of learning and grasping concepts.
We traveled to parks and around the neighborhood and learned the tree and plant cycles. It was a beautiful, hands-on, exciting beginning to the year. As we began to become tree whisperers, we talked about creating fairy lands within our branches. We watched and noticed the way trees move, bend and invite animals and possibly fairies into their many nooks and crevices. Habitats became a topic and a great interest to the kids. What lives where and why. What kind of animals live in trees.
With our very large collection of limbs, branches, seeds, leaves, pods, moss, pine cones, and knowledge, we began to construct fairy houses while we were also building a replica of our personalized trees in the studio. It turned out to be an amazing fairyland with the addition of pumpkins as houses (awesomely donated by Tony’s).
As we were talking about fairies, and what fairies do and how they live, the kids thought they would have fireflies and snails as pets and while we don’t have fireflies, we sure have a ton of snails. Now we have more snails (and snail eggs) than people in our classroom, which led our terrariums to became snail habitats filled with our collections of moss, dirt and stems.
Now we are in full project snail mode. So, let’s go…
November 16, 2011
Michelle Taylor
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Categories: Project Approach, Seeds, Snails, Trees
