This week's and last week's highlights Blue and Gray Day Field Trip Photos Independent Study Last week and this week we: -Finished reading Journey to Topaz and discussed using signposts to guide us -Took a photo walk through Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange photos from Japanese Internment -Dabbled in multiplying with decimals and with percentages -Worked on and started presenting independent study -Took a Spanish quiz on colors, pronouns, clothing, and seasonal activities -Took a vocabulary quiz on words from Journey to Topaz. Below are photos from Blue and Gray Day! GRAY was victorious, but we all had fun. Below are photos of students enjoying a beautiful, fun, and, muddy field trip. We were lucky enough to have some awesome 7th graders come share with us this week. They were using their Latin skills to teach us about Harry Potter spells and what they mean. We even got to go outside and find our own wands outside before the kids dueled each other. It was too fun! 5A's Independent Study project presentations are upon us!. Half the class shared today, and the other half will share on Monday, June 4. We are presenting in our homeroom and sharing in each other's research success! See below for the first round of presenter photos!
0 Comments
Spring Concert Photos Field Trip to Newport: Volvo Ocean Race Portfolio Showcase Social Studies: Japanese Internment Independent Study Due Date: June 1/June 4 We had the pleasure of visiting Newport this Thursday to see the Volvo Ocean Race Stopover Point at Fort Adams park. Though it was a drizzly day, the students were enthusiastic about everything we saw. Between cheering on Charlie Enright-the skipper to the US boat and South Coast local- to exploring ocean tides and how coral feed, the students had a blast. Here are photos from our Portfolio showcase on Wednesday. Students did an amazing job sharing about their learning through project-focused stations. I was so impressed with their ability to prepare for this event quickly and with such focus. They showed me through this event that they are really almost middle-schoolers! In language arts we continue to read Journey to Topaz, and are learning more about Japanese internment in social studies. We will read the picture book How Baseball Saved Us next week. This helps us have deep discussions about ways the American government made Japanese people feel during the inhuman internment process, and ways the Japanese people did their best to still remain hopeful.
As we wrap up the end of the year (?!?!?!) I want to let you know that students are going to share their independent study projects on the Volvo Ocean Race in our homeroom on either June 1 or June 4. I will split the group in two, and we will simply share with our class. I look forward to them spending time sharing their process, what they learned, and some sort of visual with their peers. This is something will be working on at home and at school a bit until the due dates. Students should not be stressed, but excited to share regardless of their final product. They are the experts on their subtopic, and it will be a great opportunity to speak publicly and to be a good audience member. See you around campus! Sarah Grandfriends Day! Journey to Topaz Math Update End of the Year Activities It was so wonderful to meet so many Grandfriends on Friday. We started off our time with them by having a morning meeting-albeit a rather cramped morning meeting. Students and grandfriends greeted each other with a "multilingual" greeting. Then to get to know each other a bit better, we shared a happy memory from 5th grade (or if we couldn't remember anything from 5th grade, another happy elementary school memory would suffice). We had such a blast hearing about Calvin's grandmother's secret language she and her classmates made up, and how joyful Mirna's grandfriend was to be back in the school where she taught 5th grade many years ago! When the grandfriends headed off to PE class, they first watched their little friends warm up, and then they all were invited to participate in some badminton. Afterwards, they returned to the classroom to participate in a Found Poetry activity. This is when pages from books are photocopied and students work to find a poem within an existing text. Students and grandfriends got their creative juices flowing, and they created some truly beautiful, and some silly, poems. We had just enough time at the end for students to share their work aloud with the group. Check out the photos below of our day with the wonderful visitors. In Language Arts we are reading our final classroom novel of the year. We started Journey to Topaz. In this book, readers follow Yuki and her family during the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor bombing. Yuki and her brother Ken are American citizens, so they are surprised and saddened when they hear they are going to be moved to an internment camp as many Americans begin to distrust Japanese Americans. Their father was imprisoned because he is a leader in the Japanese community. Their mother tries to stay positive, but this story and others just like it are heartbreaking and true. The class was quick to make connections to other times in American history when a group of people are feared or blamed when someone of the same nationality, ethnicity, or religion does something that causes harm to the United States. As they read the book, I expect them to become frustrated with this piece of history. One of the main reasons I appreciate studying history is to look for patterns, but I also believe that we can learn from and improve upon mistakes we have made. For example, we read an article about the Executive Order that President Trump passed in early 2017 banning immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries. The class started to see that sometimes we do not learn from our mistakes, but at least we can aim to be responsible citizens who promotes honesty, commitment, and respect for others, like in our school mission statement. On Thursday the class read an article about Fred Korematsu, a Japanese American man who went into hiding instead of being detained and sent to an internment camp. The article does a good job of connecting recent political events (Arab American immigration in 2017) to Japanese internment. Several students were surprised that history had repeated itself so closely. They were also surprised the government would treat its American citizens this way (about two-thirds of the Japanese people put into internment camps were born in the U.S.) In math we jumped ahead to unit 11, which focuses on graphs and probability. Students started this unit off by investigating some graphs related to gender inequality and careers, as well as educational background. Once we got the hang of basic graph and table characteristics, we were able to discuss more detailed and significant graphs like the ones below. Last but not least I have listed our upcoming events. May is a busy time!
-May 10: Spring Concert. Students should arrive 20 minutes or so before the concert begins. -May 11: 5th Grade Overnight. Packing list here. -May 12: 8 am pickup from the overnight. -May 16: Student Work Showcase after All School Meeting -May 18: Blue and Gray day Happy Sunday, and see you soon! Sarah |