Science: Volcano and Earthquake demonstrations

Grade Level: Elementary

Objective: To further analyze fault movement and the geology of our region.

Earthquake:

To simulate the fault activity that causes earthquakes and mountains, K and I took a two piece yogurt box and filled it with dirt.  We demonstrated to the second graders how when the "fault" is pushed together earth gets pushed up, creating mountains but when the "fault" is pulled apart a gap, gorge, or valley is formed.

 We also did a classic class volcano demonstration using baking soda, vinegar, dish soap, water, and food coloring.  Although this activity does not show how volcanoes work, it entertained and engaged the students, opening up the class for more conversation about volcanoes.

The Giver: Career Cruising

Grade Level: 6

Objective: To reflect upon the career assignment process in The Giver in order to further understand and analyze the world Jonas and "the Giver" inhabit.

Today K and I finished reading The Giver.  We both felt a combination of excitement and disappointment finishing the book.  Reading The Giver aloud has been a highlight of most days for both of us.  We loved how complicated the ending was, but we wanted to know more.

As an imaginative exercise and a reward for all the hard work K has put in, we did an activity called Career Cruising to accompany the reading of our last chapter.  Career Cruising software is used by our school district's high school counseling department to give older students vocational direction.  K and I used it today because he's 12 and 12 year-old students in The Giver are deemed adults and assigned a career based on their interests.  K got his results back (among them: stuntman, dancer, gardener, zookeeper, and musician) and imagined what it would be like to be assigned such a career in a reflective writing exercise.

Happy Halloween

My costume:

Social Studies: Day of the Dead, Halloween, All Saints/All Souls

Grade Level: 6

Objective: Student will learn about the cultural context of three holidays that happen this week

Today we:

-Read a series of articles from National Geographic 

-Watched a Travel Channel special about the Day of the Dead

-Watched a clip from the History channel about Halloween's Celtic roots

-Looked at pictures and video footage from an All Saints Day celebration in Krakow

-Created a poster comparing and contrasting the three holidays, looking for cross cultural similarities and patterns

Becoming a Redwood

Grade Level: High School

Objective: Students will begin thinking about contemporary explorers and how their ideas and beliefs relate the writers we've been reading so far this semester

Today we:
-Reviewed writers we've read so far this semester, searching for connections between texts
-Analyzed Dana Gioia's poem "Becoming a Redwood," searching for both evocative lines and
philosophical connections to other environmental writers and texts
-Watched Richard Preston's Ted Talk: The mysterious lives of giant trees
-Looked at photographs from the National Geographic article the students are reading for homework: Daring. Defiant. Free. A new generation of superclimbers is pushing the limits in Yosemite.

Kitchen Geology

Grade: Elementary

Objective: Students will learn more about the composition of the Earth through a series of hands-on sensory activities.

Materials: Twix bar, hard-boiled egg, apple, crackers, bread, world maps, BBC Plate Tectonic Activity

Today we:
-Talked about the definition of "geology" breaking the world down to "geo" earth, "ology" study
-Looked at a world map for evidence of continental drift
-Completed BBC's Plate Tectonic Activity
-Cut into an apple, discussing it as a model for the crust, mantle, and core of the earth
-Used a hard-boiled egg as a model for the crust, mantle, and core of the earth, cracking the egg-shell to help us imagine Earth's plates
-Completed a variation of the "Discovery Center" Layers of the Earth Activity  using a Twix bar
-Discussed the locations of plate boundaries and the geologic activity that often accompanies plate boundaries
-Examined the "convergent" boundary west of us in Washington, demonstrating the subduction caused by the meeting of the dense thin oceanic plate (modeled through a cracker) and the thicker airier continental plate (modeled through a slice of bread.)  In our model we slipped a cracker underneath a piece of bread to show how the oceanic plate pushes the continental plate up, causing mountain ranges like the North Cascades

Autumn Happiness

Lately my days have been filled with pleasant things too small to blog about but worth remembering.  For example..

-Raking leaf piles on the playground during recess 

-Reading picture books aloud to two younger-than-school-age kids while their mother tutors math at school

-Reading The Giver aloud with K., drinking caramel apple cider and talking about Distopian/Utopian literature

-Going running with K in the afternoon, getting exercise and sunshine while we talk about language arts, social studies, and science

photo taken at the Barter Faire in Tonasket, WA

Decomposition experiment

Grade Level: Elementary

Objective: Students will learn about sustainability and practice the scientific method.

Question: Do plastic, paper, and fruit decompose at different rates?

Hypothesis: The paper and pear core will decompose by spring but the plastic bag will still be there.

Procedure:

1-Dig a hole, six inches deep

2-Bury a plastic bag, a pear, and a wadded up paper towel

3-Wait until spring, dig up the garbage to see what has decomposed.

Rock poem art

Poems for kids: Carl Sandburg and Beverly McLoughland

Theme in Yellow 

               by Carl Sandburg

I SPOT the hills

With yellow balls in autumn.

I light the prairie cornfields

Orange and tawny gold clusters

And I am called pumpkins.

On the last of October

When dusk is fallen

Children join hands

And circle round me

Singing ghost songs

And love to the harvest moon;

I am a jack-o'-lantern

With terrible teeth

And the children know

I am fooling.

I Talk With the Moon 

by Beverly McLoughland

I talk with the moon, said the owl
While she lingers over my tree
I talk with the moon, said the owl
And the night belongs to me.
I talk with the sun, said the wren
As soon as he starts to shine
I talk with the sun, said the wren
And the day is mine.

Library gardens and poetry rocks

Grade Level: Elementary

 Today we:
-Created rock poems
-Made a list of words we wanted to use create more poetry rocks
-Transplanted our seedlings into flower pots and window boxes
-Made our own poetry rocks using the typed words we brainstormed, homemade Modge-Podge, and rocks we collected
-Read "Theme in Yellow" by Carl Sandburg and "I talk to the moon" by Beverly McLoughland
-Watched Bill Nye's video on Earth's Crust to prepare for our upcoming week of science

Night Hike

Grade Level: Any

Objective: Students will learn about their senses and the way their bodies adapt to the dark.

(Photo by my father, Richard Button)

Materials: Flashlight, first-Aid Kit, radio (or phone), Wint-O-Green lifesavers, Skittles, plastic containers with strong scented object (I used cinnamon and hot chocolate mix), photoreceptor model drawn on an opaque ball, candle, lighter

Poetry Rocks

I created "poetry rocks" using printed words and Modge-Podge.  My hope is to have one student per day use the rocks to create a poem on the library table.

“Do You Have Any Advice For Those of Us Just Starting Out?"

by Ron Koertge

Give up sitting dutifully at your desk. Leave
your house or apartment. Go out into the world.

It's all right to carry a notebook but a cheap
one is best, with pages the color of weak tea
and on the front a kitten or a space ship.

Avoid any enclosed space where more than
three people are wearing turtlenecks. Beware
any snow-covered chalet with deer tracks
across the muffled tennis courts.

Not surprisingly, libraries are a good place to write.
And the perfect place in a library is near an aisle
where a child a year or two old is playing as his
mother browses the ranks of the dead.

Often he will pull books from the bottom shelf.
The title, the author's name, the brooding photo
on the flap mean nothing. Red book on black, gray
book on brown, he builds a tower. And the higher
it gets, the wider he grins.

You who asked for advice, listen: When the tower
falls, be like that child. Laugh so loud everybody
in the world frowns and says, "Shhhh."

Then start again.

Autumn Leafs: crafts, games, science

"Love is where attentiveness to nature starts, and responsibility toward one’s home landscape is where it leads."-John Elder, from Stories of the Land: A Place-Based Environmental Education Anthology

Grade Level: Elementary

Objective: Students will walk through the autumn landscape paying attention to the details of their environment.  Collecting leafs, playing autumn hike bingo and other forest games, and conducting a series of observations of the changing ecosystem will scaffold the way for a short lesson on the science of leaf color.

 Today we:
-Played "Fall Walk bingo"
-Collected autumn leafs
-Sat on yard blankets under the cottonwood trees watching leafs fall
-Observed the differences in falling leafs and acted out the ways in which we noticed leafs falling
-Played "Snag Tag"--a tree identification game where the leader/tagger (me) calls out a species which is "base" (examples: Cottonwood, Douglas Fir, Western Red Cedar) that all the players have to tag in order to be "safe"
-Played "Lynx" a game in which the leader (me) plays the lynx and the players pretend to be snowshoe hares.  In order to be "safe" the players have to freeze every time the leader shouts "lynx."  If a player moves or laughs during the designated time he/she is eaten.

-Pressed and preserved leafs using wax paper and a warm iron
-Discussed the science of changing leaf color and watched a short video explaining the concept

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Grade Level: High School

Objective: Students will analyze Wendell Berry's poem "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" paying close attention to language, metaphor, and the poet's use of paradox.

Guiding Questions:

-What lines stand out?
-What does the narrator say about politics?  
-How would you describe the narrator's attitude toward work?
-What kind of life does the poet advocate leading?
-How does the poet use paradox?
-What is meant by...
Expect the end of the world. Laugh. 
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts...?  (Look at the rest of the poem for clues about the poet's intent.)
-How does one "practice resurrection"?  What feeling does the poet leave us with?

Place-Based Education

"Love is the deepest science, but it is not quantifiable.  Loving attentiveness to one’s bioregional community is a discipline, in the sense of being a life’s study. It does not, however, depend upon the sort of specialized vocabulary that those academic categories we call “disciplines” use to define and defend themselves. There is already a temptation, given the rapid growth of interest in environmental issues, to segregate environmental studies or environmental education into new departments or programs of their own. But we should resist this impulse. The essence of environmental education is a certain energetic waywardness with regard to compartmentalization and boundaries of all kinds."-John Elder, from Stories of the Land: A Place-Based Environmental Education Anthology

Eggshell planters, bird feeders

"Environmental education seems less a new discipline than a recovery of the connections from which disciplines originally emerged."-John Elder

Objective: To continue working as a class to create a learning space that fosters exploration and observation.

Today we:
-Constructed apple bird feeders using cored apples, twine, and sunflower seeds
-Constructed pine cone bird feeders using pine cones, peanut butter, quinoa, and hot cereal
-Planted seeds in plastic bags with damp paper towel to tape to the window and observe
-Planted seeds (crest, cilantro, and peas) in planters constructed from egg shells to put near the window and observe

Adding to our Nature Discovery Center

I gave both Ms a place to display the treasures they find outside during our hikes in the woods.

Bark, needles, lichen, moss, mushroom roots, and rocks--M and M show off their finds

Games, Poetry, Poster Making, Observing, and Collecting

Grade Level: Elementary

"Memory" game--using local species laminated onto cards

Objective: Students will continue their exploration of the ecosystems and ecotones through games, poetry, and poster making.

Subject areas covered: Science, Art, English/Language Arts

Opening Game: "Memory", using laminated cards made from plant clippings we collected yesterday.  (Object-to increase familiarity with local species)

Today we...
-Read Carl Sandburg's poem "Fog"--twice.  On the first read, students closed their eyes and imagined Sandburg's imagery, on the second read they followed along on the board and selected words and images from the writing that stood out to them.

Fog by Carl Sandburg

The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

then moves on.

Elementary Student Poems

Inspired by Carl Sandburg and our "Ecotone Photography Adventure":

Untitled by K

A young female dear chews the long grass intently--her eyes alert for any predators on the prowl. Her children play off in the woods galloping freely. Her breath is calm like a warm summer breeze. The crunch of her hooves on the fallen leaves. She is quiet and peaceful.  

SNAG by M.S

Birds peep.  Animals squeak and it is paradise.  My dead branches may hold nests with peeping chicks waiting for their mother to bring bugs.  I’m part of nature.

The Waves Rock by M.D

A fallen log sits in the river

with waves rushing

against

            and back

against

            and back.

Long branches of cedar

            hang down from the branch above.

The rocks beneath are like filters of the earth.

They filter the water, no matter how dirty it gets,

and the waves go again:

            against

                        and back

            against

                        and back.

This Land is YOUR Land

"Hey hey Woody Guthrie I wrote you a song."-Bob Dylan

Grade Level: High School

Objective: Students will analyze two examples of iconic American environmental poetry, examining both their context and their portrayal of the American landscape and its people.

Today we:
-Read aloud Walt Whitman's poem "This Compost"
-Discussed Walt Whitman's relationship with Emerson and other transcendentalists, comparing and contrasting the depiction of landscape in Whitman's poetry with the descriptions of environment in Thoreau, Whitman, and Muir
-Watched a short PBS clip which showed Leaves of Grass in a more modern context
-Listened to Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen's cover of "This Land is Your Land" (as performed at Obama's presidential inauguration)
-Discussed the text of "This Land is Your Land" looking at it in the context of American literature, American history, and Guthrie's life
-Listened to an excerpt of Studio 360 about "The Land is Your Land" as an American icon

Ecotone Photography Adventure

Objective: Students will review what they know about ecosystems, habitats, and limiting factors of a habitat.  Students will learn about ecotones and go on a photography scavenger hunt to gather photos of our local stream and forest environment and the ecotone between them.

The Giver by Lois Lowry

“The man that I named the Giver passed along to the boy knowledge, history, memories, color, pain, laughter, love, and truth. Every time you place a book in the hands of a child, you do the same thing. It is very risky. But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere. It gives him choices. It gives him freedom. Those are magnificent, wonderfully unsafe things. [from her Newberry Award acceptance speech]” ― Lois Lowry

Grade Level: 6

Objective:  Student will begin reading The Giver, reflecting on character development, setting, symbolism, and writer intent.

So far we've:
-Read Chapters 1-4 of The Giver out loud, pausing to reflect on setting, foreshadowing, and charecter development
-Compiled a list of memories, the sensory details associated with those memorys, and the emotions they evoke
-Defined "utopia" and "dystopia" and reflected on those definitions
-Wrote a piece of creative nonfiction in the style of Lois Lowry
-Discussed symbolism and the role of symbols in The Giver

K's reflection on his idea of utopia:
"My vision of utopia would be a place where the government is not all greedy and listens to the needs of the people and does something about what is wrong--a place where everyone is treated equally and everyone is giving to those in need."

Life and Death in the Forest

Grade Level:  All

Objective:  Students will learn about the role of omnivores, herbivores, and carnivores in an ecosystem.

Getting ready to play

Me--enjoying myself facilitating 

A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf

Grade Level: High School

Text:  Excerpt from "A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf" by John Muir

Objective:  Students will look at John Muir's writing in the context of his life, comparing and contrasting his work with the writing of other transcendentalists.

Today we: 
-Learned about John Muir's life, analyzing several primary texts from around the time period he wrote "One Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf"
-Watched a collection of video clips from the PBS America's Best Idea series
-Discussed today's text outside (as Muir would have wanted) paying particular attention to the stylistic differences between Muir and other transdentalists

Water Cycle in action: visiting the drainfield

Grade Level:  Elementary

Objective:  Students will tour the drain field where their community's waste-water goes, applying their knowledge of the water cycle to their own life and water use.

Number the Stars: Final Chapters and Project

Grade Level: 6

Objective: Student will finish Number the Stars and reflect on his reading.

In the past two days we:

-Read Chapters 10-17 aloud, focusing on foreshadowing, prediction-making, and the author's use of symbol and setting
-Wrote a short summary of the novel
-Reflected on the books title, opening chapter, and cover illustration
-Created an alternative cover to Number the Stars

K's alternative cover and book summary, crafted into a poster to display in the school hallway

Oh Deer! Predators!

Grade Level: Elementary

Objective:  Students will learn about habitats, predators, prey, and their adaptations kinesthetically through a series of games.

Materials:  Hula hoops, extra players.

Game 1:  Oh Deer!

Objective-Students will learn the limiting factors of a habitat and see how resource amounts effect population.

Number the Stars: Day 3

Grade Level: 6

Objective: Student will continue reading Lois Lowry's Number the Stars, using the text to ponder story structure, history, and the concept of courage.

Today we:

-Read chapters 5-10 aloud in Number the Stars
-Learned more about WWII and the Danish Resistance to Nazi occupation
-Wrote a short reflection about "courage" around a specific memory of an instance of personal bravery

Did you know?
-Danish disdain of antisemitism dates back to at least 1690, when a Danish police officer was fired for suggesting the Danes create ghettos for Jewish citizens like other European countries
-In 1814 the Danish government passed a bill that made an discrimination based on race or religion a crime
-Worried about the country's small standing military and the possible loss of Danish lives, Danish King Christian X surrendered to Germany.  The country destroyed their naval fleet so it could not be used by Nazis during the occupation.
-When Germany first occupied Denmark in 1840 the former German ambassador to Denmark warned Nazi leaders that it would be a dangerous to the German occupation to limit the rights of Danish Jews in any way
-Members of the Danish Resistance helped nearly 7,000 people—almost the entire population of Danish Jews—cross the sea to freedom in Sweden during the Nazi occupation.

Self Reliance

Grade Level:  High School

Objective: Students will gain a greater understanding of the transcendental roots of American environmental literature through delving into Emerson's "Self Reliance"

Today we:

-Compared and contrasted Emerson's "Self Reliance" with the excerpts of Walden we read last week
-Looked for the tenants of Transcendentalism (as seen from "The Transcendentalist Fact-sheet") in Emerson's work
-Defined "Emersonian" and debated whether our mountain community would be considered "Emersonian"
-Watched Apple's 1997 "Think Different" commercial and identified Transcendentalist and Emersonian tendencies in the company's nonconformist ad campaign
-Listened to an excerpt of Charles Ives's "Emerson" and analyzed the music for echoes of the tone and values we'd noticed in "Self Reliance"
-Read McSweeney's satirical piece: "Ralph Waldo Emerson Pitches the Snuggie to the Home Shopping Network" by Mira Hayward, and laughed at the tonal similarities to what we'd read

The Carbon Cycle Game

Grade Level:  Elementary

Objective:  Students will learn about the carbon cycle through an engaging hands-on board game.

Washington State Standards-6th grade writing, simplified

simplified from: http://www.k12.wa.us/CurriculumInstruct/learningstandards.aspx

Grade 6:

In sixth grade, students approach writing with purpose and maintain their focus. They use form, content, technique, and conventions flexibly to meet their own purposes or assignment requirements. Competence is evident in skills of paragraphing, summarizing, and synthesizing in exposition, persuasion, and content-area writing, whereas fiction writing reflects an awareness of its role to entertain, explore human relationships, and persuade. Students work toward precision in spelling in all writing and evaluate honestly both their own work and the work of others, making a concerted effort to improve weak traits. Students consider writing to be an important and effective tool for furthering their own learning.

Number the Stars: Day 2

Grade Level: 6

Objective: Student will continue reading Number the Stars, focusing on fluently reading aloud, understanding vocabulary, and analyzing point of view and author foreshadowing.

Today we...
-Looked up vocabulary words (contempt, exasperated, imperious, intricate, sabotage) from Number the Stars in Webster's High School Dictionary and discussed and recorded the definitions
-Read chapters 4 and 5 aloud in Number the Stars, discussing plot points and pausing to reflect on chapter headings, foreshadowing, and setting
-Watched a short video about Tivoli gardens in Copenhagen and visited the Tivoli gardens website
-Learned about first person, second person, and third person limited, omniscient and objective, analyzing how the use of first person limited point of view in Number the Stars creates suspence
-Looked through the library for books with first, second, and third person limited, omniscient, and objective narrators

"Look condensation!"

When we went out to recess today, M and M and K found their playground to be a site of water-cycling: water condensing on playground equipment and dew evaporating from the fence.

Number the Stars: Day 1

Grade Level: 6

Objective:  Student will use Lois Lowry's novel Number the Stars as a vehicle for working on reading comprehension and analysis, creative writing, and social studies.

Today we...

-Briefly discussed background information on WWII
-Read through chapters 1-3 (aloud) of Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
-Discussed charecters and setting, charted charecter and their traits on the white board
-Looked at maps of Europe to see which countries were occupied, located Denmark and Copenhagen on the map
-Watched a PBS video clip about tourism in Copenhagen
-Practiced creative writing skills by writing an imaginative opening scene of a fiction story featuring a character who's running

Washington State Standards-Reading 6th Grade, simplified

simplified from: http://www.k12.wa.us/CurriculumInstruct/learningstandards.aspx

Grade 6

In sixth grade, students are aware of the author's craft.  They are able to adjust their purpose, pace and strategies according to difficulty and/or type of text. Students continue to reflect on their skills and adjust their comprehension and vocabulary strategies to become better readers.  Students discuss, reflect, and respond, using evidence from text, to a wide variety of literary genres and informational text. Students read for pleasure and choose books based on personal preference, topic, genre, theme, or author.

Abiotic and Biotic Scavenger Hunt with Anna

“There is a deep interconnectedness of all life on earth, from the tiniest organisms, to the largest ecosystems, and absolutely between each person.” ― Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason

Grade Level:  Elementary

Objective:  Students will learn what makes an organism biotic and be able to identify biotic and abiotic elements in the ecosystem

 Today we...
-got to work with Anna K., an environmental educator from New Mexico
-learned characteristics that make an animal "living" or "biotic"
(cells, using energy, responding to an environment, growing, reproducing)
-went on an abiotic and biotic scavenger hunt
-discussed our findings

Huckleberries and Henry David Thoreau

Grade Level: High School

Objective: Students will continue their discussion of Walden, enriching the conversation through their reading of Rebecca Solnit's essay The Thoreau Problem.  Students will contemplate Thoreau as an American character and ruminate on what his writing means to us today.

We eat bread made from mountain blueberries while we discuss Walden

"Th[e] compartmentalizing of Thoreau is a microcosm of a larger partition in American thought, a fence built in the belief that places in the imagination can be contained. Those who deny that nature and culture, landscape and politics, the city and the country are inextricably interfused have undermined the connections for all of us (so few have been able to find Thoreau’s short, direct route between them since). This makes politics dreary and landscape trivial, a vacation site. It banishes certain thoughts, including the thought that much of what the environmental movement dubbed wilderness was or is indigenous homeland—a very social and political space indeed, then and now—and especially the thought that Thoreau in jail must have contemplated the following day’s huckleberry party, and Thoreau among the huckleberries must have ruminated on his stay in jail."-Rebecca Solnit, The Thoreau Problem

Water water everywhere

“Water is the driving force in nature.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

Students use sponges, filters, and spoons to "clean and treat" water

Grade Level: Elementary

Objective:  Students will built upon their knowledge of water and the water cycle, examining how we use, clean, and impact water.

Materials:  cups (6), food coloring, sponges, filters, spoons, rocks, dirt, oatmeal, soap, Bill Nye Water Cycle DVD, Magic School Bus at the Waterworks, microwave, plastic bag, towel, water glass

Today we....
-read Magic School Bus at the Waterworks
-conducted a water cycle demonstration using a plastic bag, water, and the microwave
-calculated our water use over the course of three school days
-brainstormed ways to reduce use and save water
-discussed the amount of fresh water on earth
-practiced cleaning and treating water
-tested ourselves using a Bill Nye Water Cycle DVD video quiz