Plymouth Perspective Project & Wampanoag Visitor Book Fair & Authorfest Banned Books Presentation Creativity Tube Activity with Mr. Murdock Constellations Lunch & Turkey Trot We've had another full and exciting week! My favorite parts of the week were the multiple visits from speakers. Between a visit from Mr. Kennedy to talk about the recent changes at All School Meeting, and the visitor author Marc Nobleman, to our special visit from a Plimoth Plantation Native American representative, we have been quite lucky to hear from many eloquent experts. Below is a photo of Tim, a Cherokee Native American who spends his days educating visitors to Plimoth Plantation about the Wampanoags. He spoke to us for over an hour, sharing information about artifacts and answering all of our questions. Students took notes to help improve their Plymouth perspective projects, and have been including new details into their writing thanks to his expertise. This class of readers thoroughly enjoyed our frequent visits to the book fair this week. I feel so lucky and thankful that so many of the kids (thanks to their lovely parents) shared their love of literature and new books by purchasing and gifting new books to me and our classroom. All the talk in our classroom has been centered around new books and titles that kids are lining up to read. Nothing makes me smile more than students suggesting and raving about books to each other. Marc Tyler Nobleman spoke to us about his approach to writing books, and his message was truly inspiring. He spoke to fifth through eighth grade together, and he wanted the kids to know that if he can be a story detective and solve literary mysteries, kids can do the same. Here is a Ted Talk with Marc Tyler Nobleman sharing the same information he shared with students this week. It is quite a neat story! On Wednesday at All School Meeting the 5th grade presented their thoughts and discoveries on Banned Books. They spoke eloquently and thoughtfully, sharing interesting observations with the rest of the student body. So many teachers approached us afterwards reporting that the presentation spurred deep discussions in their homerooms. On Friday we had a visit from a very special person, Mr. Murdock! He was in our homeroom for first period helping us clear our "Creativity Tubes". You may be wondering what this means. Mr. Murdock explained that each of us has innate creativity, and that this artistic sense can't really be taught. To best harness and feed our curiosity though, we all must get rid of the hindrances and road blocks to our success. So we talked about fear of judgement, of being wrong, or failure, and more. Students worked independently to write down anything that gets in their way of creativity. They then balled up the paper with their creativity obstructions on them, and stuffed them into empty paper towel roll tubes. After a group discussion, we cleared our tubes and disposed of the negative roadblocks, symbolically shoving the papers out of the tubes and saying goodbye to the fears that prevent us from expressing ourselves best. We will now display our cleared tubes in our classroom to remind us that we can be creative without fear. The last bit of new this week is that we met in our Constellations groups for lunch on Friday. We reintroduced ourselves and welcomed new members, and we chatted about the upcoming Turkey Trot. This year students and faculty will be running the "race" in our constellation groups. The goal is not to win the foot race, or to even speed through it, but to finish in one group, with big kids encouraging the smallest ones. We are looking forward to wearing all gray and blue on Tuesday. I am also looking forward to the Thanksgiving break. Until then, enjoy your weekend.
Best, Sarah
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Halloween and Day of the Dead Plymouth Plantation Field Trip Wonder Continued Other news From our blogger Michael: This Tuesday after the parade we had a Halloween party on the beach tree terrace. There was a lot of good food. It was very fun. Thank you to the room parents for organizing the party, and the parents who brought in the treats. I was Captain America. Some of my favorite costumes were Martim’s alien costume, Stella’s witch costume, Madi’s homemade pineapple costume, Jared’s pumpkin bobble head costume, Calvin’s costume, and JJ’s greaser costume. I also liked the teachers costumes. From our blogger JJ: On Tuesday we had a Halloween celebration at Friends Academy. For Halloween I dressed up as a greaser from The Outsiders book/movie. Some of my favorite costumes from our grade was Madi’s makeshift pineapple costume. Another one is Martim’s alien costume. My last favorite costume was Asher's mad scientist. These were some of my favorite costumes. Walking through the parade and high fiving everyone was really fun, especially once you got up on stage and you could dance to songs they were playing. It was also really fun to guess the song titles, which is what the teachers were all dressed up as. Michael: For Spanish we had a Day of the Dead presentation. We brought in an ancestor’s photo, a candle, and something they liked. Now there is a table with everyone's items in the main hallway. It is an altar, and we cut out and hung papel picado which is decorated colorful paper. We also made replicas of sugar skulls on a cup. It has been a very exciting and fun week. See photos above of the parade and our altar. JJ: Day of the Dead is a Mexican holiday during which people celebrate family members who have passed away. We celebrate this holiday at school. In Mexican countries families make an altar and put all their favorite foods and drinks and desserts on it. One of the desserts are sugar skulls that they decorate with different color frostings. Then at night they take flower petals and make a line from the grave to the families houses. The family keeps the house lights on all night which symbolizes that they will come back to life. Next Tuesday we are headed to Plimoth Plantation for our second field trip. We will break into small groups and explore the replica Wampanoag Village as well as the Puritan homestead. Students will be equipped with clipboards, prepared to take specific notes. We will be launching a new project called the Plymouth Perspective Project. It is one of my absolute favorites in 5th grade. On Monday, students will chose from the above baskets. Students will either be a boy or girl, age varying from child to aged adult, and either a Wampanoag Native or a Puritan English settler. We will have little Wampanoag girls, elderly Englishmen, and every combination in between. Taking on their new persona and perspective, students will research in picture books, online, and while at Plimoth Plantation to gather information and make journal entries from their new perspective. Final projects will also include an art element! On this field trip, students are not bringing technology. We will need non-heat-up lunches, and perhaps students will want extra snack as we are walking around quite a bit. Also, comfortable shoes and layers are strongly encouraged. We continue to read Wonder and discuss deeply the issues the characters are facing in 5th grade. This morning for morning work we illustrated a comic strip from a scene in Wonder. Students chose what they wanted to draw from one particular section of the story. Soon we will wrap up the end of the book and begin our special Wonder-related project. Students will write a "deleted scene" from the perspective of a character in the story. Below are some images of completed comic strips. I want to take this opportunity to remind you that Mr. Murdock has a blog and it is located here: Mr. Murdock's Music Blog. Check back for updates on what your child is working on in class and for photos. Lastly: This weekend as you're enjoying Open Trails at school you will notice a lot of new faces on campus because of Open House. Please feel free to introduce yourselves; we're sure our visitors will be wowed by the hospitality of our Friends Academy families! Happy Weekend, all! We are so looking forward to next week as we have a short week, a field trip, the Alice in Wonderland play performances, and exciting projects.
Thanks for reading, Sarah |