Monday, January 30, 2012

Homework: January 30 - February 7th, 2012

1. Reading log

2. On Thursday the kids will bring home a draft of their stories. Please read through it with them and help them to make some editing and revision notes. They will have specific things they will want you to help them look for.

3. On Friday we will begin taking notes on our individual culture studies. If your child does not yet have a resource for this please help them get one from the library. I will see what I can do to help here from school as well. I will ask them to do a bit of this research over the weekend. It won't be a whole lot but will be enough to help keep us moving along.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Newsletter: Week Fifteen

Dear Families,

We spent this past week working to shore up some leaks in our understanding of place value. Mrs. Simpson introduced a fun dice game, we worked with base-10 blocks, we wrote numbers in both expanded (300+50+7) and word (three hundred fifty-seven) forms, and we stretched ourselves to read numbers all the way into the trillions. We'll continue to do a bit more of this work next week as we learn another game that not only addresses place value but focuses on use of the calculator and mental math as well.

We are reading Stone Fox in our reading workshop. It is a truly wonderful story about a boy who finds that his only hope of saving the family farm and restoring his grandfather's will to live is to win a dogsled race against the unbeatable Stone Fox. The prize money is just exactly what he needs to pay off the back taxes (convenient, I know). Stone Fox has a reason to win as well - he is trying to buy back land taken from his tribe so they can return to their homeland. Stone Fox has never lost and has five strong Samoyeds to pull his sled. Little Willy, the protagonist, has only his old dog, Searchlight. The ending is a terrific surprise no one ever sees coming. Be sure to ask your kids about it this weekend.

Connor shared a news article on Thursday about a family who tried to produce as little trash as they could for a full year. The photo shows them posing with a single mason jar "overflowing" with their year's worth of trash. It was pretty interesting. I half-jokingly said "Hey, maybe we should each carry around a bag for one day and see how much trash each of us produce and then analyze it to see where most of it comes from."

"We could graph it," Trent suggested.

Rachael raised her hand.

"Mr. Hass, could trash be our next study?"

I gotta tell you...it's awfully hard to say no to a request like that. I suggested they take a moment or two coming up with ideas of what we might do or what we might learn about. Their ideas included:

"We could take a field trip to the dump." - Micah
"We could bring someone in to talk to us." - Rachael
"We could collect our lunch trash and see how much each of us produces and then look at the whole class." - Maisy
"We could watch a video to see what happens to the trash at the dump. Do they leave it their or does it go somewhere else?" - Enock
"We could try to write or Skype with the family from Connor's article." - Mr. Hass

We also talked about the possibility of researching to see which products are most wasteful in their packaging and then coming up with alternatives that are less wasteful. I thought about ways we could work as readers, writers, and scientists, and social scientists to frame this topic and share it out with a larger audience. I never imagined as I drove into school today that we might be planning an inquiry into, of all things, trash. However, the more I think about it the more possibilities I see are there waiting to be found. The kids will keep thinking and sharing and we'll soon work out a plan. If you have any good questions, ideas, or information please feel free to pass it along.

Have a great weekend,
Chris

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Homework: January 24 - 31

1. Read at least twenty minutes each night.
2. There is a math packet coming home on Wednesday. It is due back next Tuesday.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Dear parents,

Hello! This is Ashley Simpson, MAT. I am sooo excited to be a part of your child's classroom this semester. I appreciate their ideas and questions they share and ask. The MAT program at USC is amazing and you are truly blessed to have Mr. Hass as your child's teacher...for two years!

I have been a stay-at-home for 12 years. Yikes! I have a 6th grader that attends the Two Academies at Dent Middle and a 3rd grader that attends Round Top. My husband is a comedian (or thinks he is) and I have two cuddly, goofy, fluffy GoldenDoodles.

I look forward to learning from your children,

Thanks,

Ashley

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Homework: January 17 - 24

There are just two homework assignments this week:

1. Read each night (no log)
2. Finish up the math packet I sent home (due next Tuesday)

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Newsletter: Week Nineteen

Dear Families,

We had a new addition to our classroom this week. Mrs. Ashley Simpson became our 24th class member and MAT. She spent the bulk of this week getting to know the kids, observing classroom practices and procedures, and asking lots of great questions. Next week she'll begin teaching a lesson or two. Her teaching responsibilities will slowly grow throughout the semester as she prepares herself for her full-time teaching experience the last two weeks before Spring Break. Be sure to be on the lookout for an introduction from her in next week's newsletter.

I hope you enjoyed the opportunity this week to talk with your child about the bullying that sometimes occurs when others feel a need to single out differences. As the kids shared your stories I couldn't help but think about the fact that so many of these stories are twenty or thirty years old yet such strong memories. After the kids shared we created a graph to help us see the distribution of attributes that were being used as the basis for teasing. We found that ten or your stories dealt with something about your bodies (weight, teeth, etc), three concerned a hair style, two stories (each) addressed differences in culture, clothes, or speech, and there was one story (apiece) dealing with hobbies, bravery, and health.


We talked about how hurtful it is to decide that because someone is different in some way it must automatically mean there is something wrong with them. Soon after our discussion I shared photographs from the book Children Like Me, a text sharing the lives of kids from around the world. As I came to the photograph of a group of young siblings from Brazil there were a few "Uuuuuughs" in response to the fact the kids were wearing only shorts.


The following day Mrs. Simpson, our new MAT, shared an Eve Bunting story about a young girl who moves to the US from the Middle East but has not learned English just yet. She showed the picture of the girl on the cover, nicely dressed with a scarf wrapped around her head, and asked what everyone thought the book was going to be about. Many agreed it was going to be a story about a poor girl.


The reason for making cultural studies a significant part of our yearlong inquiry into community is never lost on me. So much of what we discuss and learn about in terms of our relationships with one another in the classroom directly relates to multicultural studies, and vice-versa. Just as with our global community, we want to live and work within a classroom community that cares for and supports one another. Just as with our global community, it's crucial that our classroom be a place where we don't just tolerate the differences of others but understand and appreciate them.

We're preparing to launch into a class study of the Chinese culture. Afterward I will ask the kids to pair up and choose a culture they would like to know more about. They will work with their partners to identify the questions they want answered and then begin seeking these out. We'll conclude with a cultural study of our own families. These will include interviews, artifacts, family stories, and the such. It will be an opportunity to take pride in who we are and to learn more about one another.

In math workshop this week we've been counting coins and brushing up on our computation skills. As a part of our inquiry into money I asked the kids to generate a list of questions they would like to explore. These included:

Why is the nickel, quarter,and dime silver, but the penny is copper?
Where did all the coins gettheir names?
Which coin is oldest?
Why is the nickel smaller invalue but bigger than a dime in size?
Why do they put a city on theback?
Why do the coins have smallDs or Ps on them?
Why does the money say “InGod We Trust?”
Why did they put the presidents’faces on them?
Do other countries have morecoins/money than we do?
Why are there differentsizes?
Where are coins made?
Why do they have to put thedate they were made?
Why do they call the sides “heads”and “tails”?
Why can't we just print more money whenever we need it?

The South Carolina State Standards call for us to learn to count a collection of coins and to make change up to one dollar. While we'll definitely do this I appreciate the broader scope of possibilities the kids generated. We'll be searching for answers over the next week. You can help support our studies by counting money with your child at home or even bringing them along to the store and keep a mental tally of your purchases.

Thanks, too, for talking with the kids about the differences between a Republican and a Democrat. The themes that emerged from everyone's conversations were social programs and taxes. I'm sure it was hard to find the words to help them understand. Politics are very complex and to simplify them and select what to highlight is a tricky business. The fact I asked you to do this demonstrates my willingness to pass the buck!

I hope you all have a great long weekend.

Chris

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Newsletter: Week Eighteen




Dear Families,

I hope you all had a wonderful break. I don't know how you all felt but it seemed to me that it was longer this year. Our crew visited family in St. Louis and then spent our final week at home doing yard work, riding bikes, and playing hide-and-go-seek in the dark house at night. As much as we all enjoyed it I know everyone was ready to get back to school.

I owe you all a HUGE thank you for the generous gifts and beautiful holiday cards I received last month. They were amazing. As for the class gift, we’ll be using the recording equipment in the coming weeks so we can begin laying down a few tracks for our end-of-the-year class CD. This week we started thinking about which songs we should do first. Focusing on original songs, we're thinking "Reading is Thinking", "The Plant Song", and "Building Community." Look for these CDs to be completed in May.

I’d like to share one of my favorite moments from our week...On Thursday Connor shared a news article about a no-kill animal shelter. This led to a discussion of how there are far more stray animals than there are homes to place them - as well as the role of spaying and neutering. Ellis looked over at me and said “It’s kind of like a circle. The animals at some places are there too long, get killed and more come in and then they get killed and more come in – over and over.” I shared this thought with the class, explaining it was a cycle. Without missing a beat Chase said “That is NOT the circle of life!” I couldn’t help but laugh. He was certainly correct. Sharing news articles is often one of the highlights of the day. Please continue to be on the lookout for great articles to read with your children.

Speaking of the news, we have had a number of conversations over the past few weeks about the elections happening in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and beyond. We’ve noticed over the past few months there have been a number of different front runners. Now that the elections have come it will be fun for us to see how it all plays out. I often get the question “What’s the difference between a Democrat and a Republican?” Hmmm, what an important question! I've tried to answer this question a number of times but I might ultimately send them home to ask you and then have them report back to us what they learned. With twenty-two different families we would be sure to receive a nice variety of definitions and perspectives. Be on the lookout for that!

We spent time this week exploring the question, "What is normal?" Most responses, including not acting crazy, doing what you're supposed to, and not being wild, focused on behavior. I then asked the kids to work in groups to create a mural of what they thought a "normal" kid would look like. It was interesting to see how each group created a picture depicting themselves (their own gender, race, clothes, favorite movies, favorite foods, etc). I next asked them to show me what abnormal would look like. In their presentations of these illustrations we learned that many believe that normal/abnormal changes based on certain factors - such as gender (boys wearing pink shirts or liking Tinkerbell; girls wearing cowboy boots). This really made me think about how the concept of normal works to create stereotypes and to isolate certain individuals from their peers. I began considering whether there is a difference between using the word normal (which implies a judgment) and using words like typical or common (which do not). This may well serve as the basis for discussion next week.

While the kids were working on their murals I played a CD of African tribal music. One of the kids said, "This music is definitely abnormal!"

"Why?" I asked. "What makes it abnormal?"

"Because it's not American," said one of the others at the table.

I raised my eyebrows.

"But if you were from the country where this comes from you would be used to it," someone else offered. "It'd be normal to you. So there's really not any such thing as abnormal music."

Understanding our tendency to define normal by our own qualities and preferences will serve next week as a launching point into a study of other cultures. We'll consider the potential dangers of seeing the world in terms of normal and abnormal. I can't wait to hear what everyone has to say. As a part of this study, I'm going to ask the kids to come home and interview a family member about a time when they felt they were treated badly, or were made to feel uncomfortable, because of a difference that others may have perceived as abnormal or unpopular. This may have been due to their hair, clothes, speech, family structure, home, economic status, religion, political views, food preference, choice of friends, music tastes, etc.

If you would enjoy coming in to join any of these discussions we would love to have you. I can't remember whether or not I made this clear at the beginning of the year but we would ALWAYS love to have you in to visit the classroom. Whether it be to sit and observe, share a story, work alongside your child, or just hang out, there is never a bad time to drop in. Just let me know you're planning to visit so I can make sure we'll be in the classroom at that time.

I hope you are all enjoying this wonderfully warm weekend weather!

Chris