Gift Wrapping Joy

Many thanks to all who helped make the holidays a little more joyful for families in need. We gathered at Extended Day last Friday to create beautiful wrapping paper and then wrap the many gifts that were donated. Gift wrapping is tricky!

Our friends at Youth Service Incorporated came later in the afternoon to thank everyone and to transport the gifts to their organization. It was a joyful, beautiful afternoon!

We have been supporting the gift giving program at YSI for almost ten years. To learn more about Youth Service Inc., visit their website, https://ysiphilly.org/!

Making Art for the Winter Program

The art room is bursting at the seams with all kinds of beautiful creations for the winter program next week. Creating costumes, sets and props is a collaborative and creative art process for the lower schoolers. The program is truly a reflection of our students' learning and experiences in the arts. Creating artwork with a real-life application lends a level of excitement and pride in what students make.

As the young artists are creating work, they are being challenged with how to use materials in a creative and meaningful manner, how to best execute their ideas and how to negotiate when working in groups; from papier-maching cardboard trees, to sharing space when painting an 18-foot sun, to negotiating who draws which picture for a projected background, the lower school students have been doing important work to bring their show to life as well as to learn life-long skills about how to work collaboratively. We can't wait to share all the beautiful pieces they have created in the show next week.

Multiplication Madness in Third (and a fun game to try at home!)

 In math, third graders have been building upon their understanding of multiplication and exploring multiplication through a variety of games and activities.  We started by reviewing what students already knew about multiplication, and it turns out that they know a lot!  Students recalled that multiplication is the same as repeated addition; that it totals the number of objects in a certain number of equal groups; that multiplication and division are opposite operations, and that the multiplication sign means “groups of.”

We have been exploring a number of ways to solve multiplication problems, including drawing equal groups, using skip-counting on a number line, skip-counting on a hundreds chart, as well as using arrays and the area model.

Third graders have been eager to practice and apply what they are learning.  They have been playing a variety of practice games, some of which focus on multiplying by a specific number and help them practice strategies like skip counting, and others that focus more on problem solving related to multiplication.  

If you’d like to try a fun multiplication game at home, get out a deck of cards, a die and something to use for game pieces.

Spiral Multiplication Directions (For two or more players)

1.     Use the deck of cards to make a spiral game board starting from the center (take out all of the face cards, but leave in the Aces, those will count for ones).

2.     Place your game pieces at the start (in the middle, ON the first card).

3.     Player 1 rolls the die.  Player 1 multiplies the number on the die by the number the game piece is on.  If they are correct, they move the number of spaces the die shows.  If they are incorrect, they do not move on that turn.

4.     Take turns and repeat until someone reaches the end of the spiral.

Poesía en el cuarto grado (Poetry in the fourth grade)

Writing poetry is a great exercise for all language learners, regardless of the target language. It gives the learner a chance to experiment with language and vocabulary, and to freely share their ideas without the confinement of grammar. To express their joyful encounter during their Shore Trip to Cape Henlopen in Delaware, the fourth graders gave this art form a try.

To embark into this learning practice we first gathered for a Meeting and reflected on the Shore Trip experience. To help awaken the students’ thoughts and memories, we viewed on the SMART Board the many photographs taken during this inolvidable (unforgettable) journey. 

Afterwards, we read Pam Muñoz Ryan’s book, Hello Ocean / Hola mar. In this tale, a young girl shares how she experiences the sea with all of her senses. Inspired by the story, we decided to create a poem on how our five senses were evoked by the shore experience, adding an emotional feeling as well. To commence the study, the vocabulary for the five senses and their roles was introduced followed by various activities to reinforce the learning.

A PowerPoint was prepared that included the Spanish vocabulary for los cinco sentidos (the five senses). In a large group, we discussed the many words that one might use in their poem and included them in this document. The fourth graders were encouraged to contribute their ideas for each part of speech; sustantivo (noun), adjetivo, (adjective), verbo (verb), and also for sentimiento (feeling). Then, a list was compiled that included all the vocabulary words suggested by all the students. Students went to work in crafting their written art. Using the list and Google Translate on their chromebooks, the fourth graders formed complete sentences.

Título (Title)

Yo veo … (I see...)

Yo oigo … (I hear...)

Yo huelo … (I smell...)

Yo saboreo … (I taste...)

Yo toco … (I touch...)

Me siento … (I feel...)

The students’ complete work is up on display in front of their fourth grade classrooms. Please make sure to stop by and read their craft. The poems are truly breathtaking!

Fourth Grade Film Makers

The fourth-grade class has been busy writing scripts for the films they are creating. They have recently discovered that the first European encounters with the Lenape did not go well. The volley between the Dutch and Swedes for control of land from the mouth of Delaware Bay to Philadelphia proved to be devastating to the Lenape and to the students learning about it as well.

The students are taking all that they have learned and are deciding how they want to tell the story. Our imaginative and creative students immediately started brainstorming and listing all they wanted to do. It was quite amazing listening to their ideas and interpretations. Some of the students' choices included documentaries, newscasts, puppet shows, animation, and plays. Students were given the choice to work independently or collaboratively in groups of two or three.

Those students working together assigned each other portions of the script to write. Once the scripts were all edited, the creative design and filming began. Over the next week or so, when they are done with their filming, the students will add backgrounds to their green screens, voice-overs, music, and sound effects. This is where they get to share their technological wizardry.

Then we will have a movie viewing class once all the films are completed. Popcorn most likely will be involved.

Kindergarten Writers: Responding to Books

 Kindergarten students write for a variety of reasons. They write lists, letters, stories and they write in response to books as well. One example of writing in response to a book was when students in Raji's kindergarten class listened to the book Pinkie Leaves Home by Peter O'Donnell. In this book Pinkie loses most of his feathers due to his swimming in an oil slick. He finds that he is always cold. He decides to leave his home for warmer weather. During the course of his adventures, he finds himself missing his friends. Students loved how the author solved Pinkie's problem and found a fun way for Pinkie to rejoin his friends and to no longer be cold. After reading the book, students engaged in a picture walk of the story and envisioned the part of the story they wanted to remember. They shared this part of the story with their classmates. The next step was to draw a detailed picture of the part of the story they wanted to remember and then to write about that part. Students are using various strategies to write. They use words from the title to help them, sight words from their word wall and kid writing. When they use kid writing, they are applying phonetic strategies to their writing.

Privilege, Want, Need and Grace

Fourth grade is talking about privilege, want and need. Students hearing Out of My Mind are thinking about all of the ways they can use their bodies without thinking about it, after hearing about how Melody needed help for everything, including dressing and eating. Since Melody can't talk, a chapter also shared how Melody could become frustrated with even relaying the simplest of messages, like "I would really like to go to McDonalds." After thinking around this for a few minutes as a class, students were invited to list in their journals at least ten things they could do without even thinking about it. Students were easily able to generate lists, cutting themselves off only because they wanted to check out books.

Students listening to Ghost are thinking about the difference between "wants" and "needs." We though about how it felt to want something so badly that we thought we needed it. Students are also discussing how some people have more than others in the world. During the read aloud, the main character, Ghost, steals a pair of running. Leading up to this part of the story, the author paints a scene of the constant heckling Ghost endures because of his poverty. His lack of clothing that fits him, (his mother buys clothes too big so he can wear them for longer times) his sneakers, even his lack of food. This all comes to a head when Ghost realizes that everyone on the track team not only have running sneakers but also running clothes. Ghost himself shows up everyday in jeans and a t-shirt, and his hightop sneakers. First Ghost tries to fix his shoes himself by cutting off the tops, but when he is laughed at in school for his sneakers he takes matters into his own hands and steals a pair. As a class we are unpacking the multiple layers around the choice Ghost made and the possible effects later in the story. Additionally, we are reading the picture book  The Lunch Thief, by Anne Bromley to further step back and think about why some people might steal.

This has given us the opportunity to have open and sometimes hard discussions on what it is like to be hungry and how some people have more than others.

Second Grade: Bill Peet Study

During Read aloud time, we have explored the work of author/illustrator Bill Peet. The students have enjoyed many of the picture books he wrote during the 1960s and 1970s.  His writing and drawing styles are quite distinctive, and the students have gotten good at noticing themes in his work. 

After reading each book, we discussed the setting, characters, story message and the language Bill Peet uses.  These conversations have given us the opportunity to introduce literary devices such as personification and alliteration, and to make connections to other books and to our own lives. This has been especially exciting as the students discover how his story messages relate to our leadership work!  

The students have also noticed that often Bill Peet makes up his own unusual words like “Pollutian.” (Ask your second grader what that is!). To keep track of these wonderful books and our conversations, and as a way to share what we are doing, we have created a chart in the hallway to record details of each book.  

Please feel free to stop by and check it out!

Math Takes Shape in First Grade

A most exciting and brain stretching exploration of shapes took place in first grade this week as the students explained and defined a variety of shapes.  The triangle was the easiest with its three sides and three points, tips, corners or angles (as we will call them).  As the shapes had similar attributes it became more difficult to explain explicitly what made each unique.  For example, an oval was described as this: a mix of a rectangle and a circle but it's not either, it has no points, it's a stretched out circle but only on the top and bottom, it has no sides, it has curved lines.  A circle was described thus: it's like an oval but the stretched out part is smaller, it's a squeezed oval to be round, it has curved lines, it is round, very round!, it's a little curve with no edges (as opposed to lines), it is almost an oval but smaller and rounder, it has one curved edge, it is a non-stopping curve.  It was tricky to describe one without comparing it to the other.

This only got more sticky when we came to our four sided shapes: square, rectangle, rhombus and trapezoid! We had many comparisons with one shape being another only squished or stretched out, or being two triangles without a line, or a triangle with the top cut off.  But with careful observations we came to these conclusions: a square has four equal sides, four equal angles and it is symmetrical.  A rectangle has two long sides and two short sides and four equal angles. A rhombus has four diagonal lines, two narrow angles and two wider angles. A trapezoid has two straight lines, a short top, and a long bottom, two diagonal lines and four angles, the top two are equal and the bottom two are equal but the top and bottom angles are different.  Wow!  Lots of explaining of ideas and changing minds was happening with each different description! It was wonderful to listen to and watch as the students challenged and compared their ideas. We never imagined we would have such a long and fascinating discussion!

A few other thoughts that came up (but were not agreed upon by all) after one student pointed out that an oval was still an oval even if you turned it on its side included these: a rhombus is a square turned on its side,  a trapezoid is only symmetrical when it's right side up and not if its standing on a point, a trapezoid is not a trapezoid when it is standing on a point and a triangle and an oval do not change no matter how you turn them.  What do you think???

As our discussion wrapped up, some students started making shapes with their bodies, another shared shape animals she was drawing and later in the day students were creating all the shapes on geo boards.  We loved seeing these extensions! And, we discovered that there are shapes with more sides than four.  We learned the names of those with as many as ten sides! What a fantastic way to begin a study!!

Third Grade Present Their Work at the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival!

Third graders worked hard to prepare for their Mid Autumn Moon Festival presentation, which took place on Thursday night.

As the leaves changed color outside our window, we learned about this important Chinese festival and the related cultural traditions through research, performances, interactive lessons and projects in class and in resource classes. 

In class, students worked hard to research the moon and write beautiful poems about the moon.

 In science, Rasheeda led us in many fun and interesting activities in science including creating models of the moon phases, playing Moon Phase Twister and even using Oreos to create the phases of the moon!

In Espanol, students wrote a diamanté poem as a class.  They learned a lot of new Spanish vocabulary while creating their poem as they thought about how the moon moves and what objects it reminds them of.

In art, Amanda taught the students many new things about Chinese art.  They also made beautiful lanterns and some intricate geometric designs.

As third graders read their poetry in both English and Spanish and shared their music, facts and movies they had created, their confidence in
themselves and their knowledge about this important Chinese holiday was clear.