Did you see any good movies this summer? Two that our family watched were Mirror, Mirror and Brave. Our kids really enjoyed both fairy tale-based films. What stood out to me was that each of these stories flew in the face of what our class had noticed in so many fairy tales last spring - girls seen as weak or only concerned with their beauty. Both Mirror, Mirror and Brave had wonderfully strong female leads that sent all sorts of great messages. I was reminded of this when Micah brought in the letter she received from Scholastic over the summer. The letter was a response to the letter she had written them asking for more stories with strong female leads. Scholastic's response shared that there were, in fact, such stories being circulated and that many of the tales we hear that belittle women were written many, many years ago. That made me think it would have been interesting to sort out our fairy tales by their date of publication to look for such patterns. I'm sure they are, in large part, correct. However, my hope for the kids is that they develop a watchful eye for the messages being sent by ALL books, movies, video games, advertising, etc. Many of these messages they will agree with. Others they will not. The first step, and one we are trying to focus on in the classroom, is to just become aware of their presence.
Speaking of messages, on Tuesday we spent some time reading the Pledge of Allegiance. I had shared the concern that we were all facing the same corner of the room with our hands over our hearts while reciting a pledge that many of us did not understand. One of the kids shared that a pledge is really a promise. I wondered aloud if it might be important to understand a promise before placing our hands on our hearts and repeating it each and every day. When asked "What do you think the pledge means and why might we say it each day?" the kids responded...
It's a promise to God...We are worshiping the Army and wishing them luck...It's to help us have a good day...We're pledging to be good citizens...We're promising to respect the flag and live equally..We're promising to listen to God
After these initial responses we discussed the confusing words such as allegiance, united, republic, indivisible, liberty, and justice. We then tried to simplify this pledge a bit to see if we couldn't come to a clearer message we could all understand. In the end we decided it meant something along the lines of pledging our loyalty to America. We also thought it was saying that people should respect and follow our laws and expect to remain free as well as be treated equally. These seemed, to us, like pretty good ideas. As we study history and the present we will keep a watchful eye to see if these ideals are indeed being realized.
In math, we spent the week working on multiplication. We began with a fun game of creating equal groups and ended the week creating arrays for each of the numbers 1 - 24. For example, for the number 18 one group used blocks and graph paper to create the arrays 1x18, 18x1, 2x9, 9x2, 3x6, and 6x3. These arrays helped us launch our first discussions around topics such as "turn-around facts", multiples, factors, and prime numbers. These will be topics we'll continue to explore throughout the entire school year. Soon I will be asking the kids to work on memorizing their multiplication facts. If you have a set of multiplication flash cards at home you may want to break them out from time to time to support this work.
Did you notice an earlier post about our classes' upcoming CAMPING TRIP? If not, be sure to mark your calendar for Saturday, November 3rd. We'll be meeting at Sesqui in the afternoon for a day of eating, fishing, hiking, orienteering, etc. That evening we'll have a big campfire and then sleep under the stars (or at least the nylon roof of our tents). Much more information will be coming your way in October.
For Next Week:
Reading - Responding to texts in various ways (speech, writing, art, etc)
Math - Continue work around multiplication
Writing - Different types of writing that exist in the world (and here in our classroom)
Science - Developing our field guides for the flora of CFI
I hope you all have a great long weekend. Remember that all homework (reading log, two interviews, and math sheet) are due on Tuesday.
Chris
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