Holden High School David Shringley Imitation

Grade Level: High School
Objective: To practice imitation in preparation for our upcoming paper

by David Shringley

Tools:
Hands
Screwdriver
Cleverness


Playthings:
Skis
Forklift
Welder

Jewelry:
Pianos
Pocket Protectors
Head-gear

Themes:
Zombies
Apocalypse
Algebra 2

Currency:
Paintings
Canadians
Elephants

Ailments:
Writing
Boredom
Scarlet Fever

Frivolities:
Computers
Video Games
Methane

Essentials:
Oxygen
Twinkies
Hip-Hop 

Last week I learned...

-Lava is too dense to sink into--it's 3 times denser than the human body and between 100,000 to 1,100,000 times more viscous than water.

-The kangaroo rat is so well adapted to living in the desert it can go its whole life without drinking water.

-During the outbreak of World War II, London Zoo killed all their venomous animals in case the zoo was bombed and the animals escaped

-The word "nerd" was first used by Dr. Seuss

Rhetorical Strategies/Devices

Grade Level: High School

(Elements creators of text use to put forth their arguments)

Diction/Word Choice/ Repetition of certain words: Why, with all the words at his or her disposal, does a writer choose to use or repeat particular words? (Questions to consider: What could they mean or symbolize? What effect do they have on the tone of the piece? On the sound of the piece?)

Imagery: Language that evokes one or all of the five senses: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching. (Questions to consider: Where is the language the most vivid? Why? The author will usually slow down to describe things he/she considers important for a reason? What do the images contribute to his or her argument?)

Assignment 1: Environmental Literature: Rhetorical Analysis

Grade Level: High School

Assignment 1: Rhetorical Analysis

Rough Draft Due-Imitation: Monday November 25th
Rough Draft Due-Analysis: Wednesday November 27th

While the term "rhetorical analysis" is, at first, rather intimidating for many people, it is easily understood (at least at its most basic) when broken down and defined.

Rhetoric: The art of persuasion
Analysis: The breaking down of something into its parts and interpreting how those parts fit together.

A rhetorical analysis examines how a text works—how its words, its structure, its ideas connect—or don't connect—with a given audience. For this assignment I want you to choose one of the readings you’ve encountered this semester and to break it down to its structural components. Rather than merely summarizing what the author is saying a rhetorical analysis analyzes how the author conveys his or her thesis through specific structural decisions.

Instead of a traditional rhetorical analysis you will be writing an imitation of a piece we’ve read in this class then writing a two page analysis of your imitation. You will need to include both your thesis and the thesis of the original work. You will need to write about which of the author’s strategies you employed to imitate their writing style and you will need to exhibit an understanding of how those strategies furthered both your thesis and the thesis of the original text.

Ice: Exploring a frozen waterfall

Grade Level: High School

Objective: To explore the way water crystallizes into ice through watching a series of BBC videos on the "Secret Life of Ice" and hiking to a frozen waterfall.

Looking at Ice Crystals:

Facts for Pie

Geography Week Facts 

(given to us by members of our community in exchange for apple pie):

-Washington State has more glaciers than the other 47 contiguous states combined. (Linda)

-Equatorial Guinea is the only country in Africa to have Spanish as its official language (Hunter)

-The Mariana Trench is the deepest spot in the ocean, 35,760 feet below sea level (Nate)

-“Home on Range” is the official state song of Kansas (Eva)

- Azkaban (the prison in Harry Potter) is named for a small lake in Russia (Abbey)

-Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United State.  At one point it was a 14,000+ foot mountain, which imploded into itself (Lisa)

-The reason they know that the earth’s magnetic poles flip is that they’re able to look at minerals within an ocean trench to see evidence of the change (Andrew L)

-In the 1800s the New Madrid fault line caused an earthquake in the Midwest that was felt in New York (Andrew L)

-The Red River in Minnesota flows North.  You can travel from Minnesota to Hudson Bay on it. (Andrew K)

-Northeast Iowa is called the “driftless” region because the glaciers scraped the rest of Iowa flat but missed the driftless region leaving it forested and rolling (Peter)

-Harney Peak in South Dakota is 7,244 feet—it is the highest peak in the U.S east of the Rockies (Dale)

-There’s a town in Quebec, Canada called La Tuque named after a hill that looks like a Tuque (James)

-The first place you can see the sunrise in the United States is on the top of Cadillac Mountain on Mount Desert Island in Arcadia National Park (Andy)

-In Northern Minnesota there’s a lake called Cass Lake—it has an island called Star island—it’s the only freshwater lake with an island with a freshwater lake inside of it (Claire)

-Vatican City is the smallest country (Sharon)

-48 of Montana’s 52 counties are considered frontier counties, which means that there are less than 6 people per square mile (Tressa)

-In 1888 Helena, Montana had more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the U.S. (Tressa)

-The lowest point on land you can stand on is the beach of the Dead Sea—it’s about 1,500 feet below sea level (David)

-A device for remembering coastal countries in Africa from Egypt, around the west coast of the country, ending with Equatorial Guinea: Every Lotto Ticket a moron wins my sister guzzles great glasses of slurpy leaving ice globs tightly bonded near the crystal’s edge. (Rosa)

-If you drained Lake Chelan it would cover Washington at a depth of 4 inches (Chris)

-In North Central Mauritania, there’s something called a Richat structure that’s 31 miles in diameter—it’s a symmetrical uplift made by erosion that you can see from space (Lisa)

-In Papua New Guinea there are over 800 languages and dialects (Janine)

-The Northernmost point of the continental United States is in Minnesota.  However you can’t get there by car—you either have to boat or by way of Canada (Ellen)

-The two cities I lived in before coming here were on the Mississippi River (Ellen)

-The hottest temp ever to be recorded in the world is believed to be 134 degrees F in Furnace Creek Ranch, CA recorded on 10/7/1913 (Bonnie)

-The shortest river in North America is the Chelan River (Rosa)

-It’s 550 miles to hike from Oregon to Canada on the PCT (Natalie)

-If you drilled a hole through the middle of the world straight through (from where we are now) you would end up in the Indian Ocean, right off the coast of Madagascar (Cindy)

The average American's food travels 1,500-2,500 miles before reaching his/her table

Learning where our food comes from:

Places we import (some of) our food from:
Chelan, WA-0 miles (apples, lettuce)

Stehekin, WA-0 miles (by car) (kale)

Tonasket, WA-80 miles (beef)

Eugene, OR-174 miles (coffee)

Roy, WA-213 miles (eggs)

Palouse, WA-213 miles (flour, lentils, garbanzo beans)

Euphrata, WA-61.2 miles (cod, salmon)

Brewster, WA-27.2 miles (potatoes)

Seattle, WA-180 miles (cream, milk, cheese)

Twisp, WA-52.3 miles (whole wheat flour)

Pendleton, OR-238 miles (pork)

California (Sysco Central)-aprox. 872 miles (lettuce, oranges, cream of wheat, kale)

Guatemala-aprox. 3,551 miles (coffee)

Alaska-aprox. 2,281 miles (cod, salmon)

What ratio of the food we researched comes from Washington?

9:14 or 9 of 14 or 9/14 

What percentage is that?

64%

What ratio of the food we researched comes from California?

4:14 or 4 of 14 or 4/14

What percentage is that?

28%

What is the mean (average) distance our food travels?

547.48 miles

Eating Geography

Trading pie for geography facts in the dining hall---

Mapping Apple Pie

Objective: To connect to geography, ecology, and economics using food.
Check out our: Apple Pie Map

Making pie from Washington ingredients

Ingredients:

(For the ingredients we where we didn’t know the exact location they were grown/produced, we searched online to find out where they usually come from)

 Apple Crumble:

-Flour (Palouse, WA) 120 grams

-Oats (123 grams

-Sugar (Brazil) 63 grams

-Cinnamon (Sri Lanka) 2 grams

-Butter (Seattle, WA) 113 grams

-Apples (Wenatchee, WA/Tonasket,WA) 547 grams

Grams grown/produced in Washington=780 grams

Percent of total crumble grown/produced in Washington=81%

Pie:

-Flour (Palouse, WA) 302 grams

-Salt (California) 7 grams

-Butter (Seattle, WA) 215 grams

-Water (Holden Village, WA) 111 grams

-Apples (Wenatchee, WA/Tonasket,WA) 968 grams

-Sugar (Brazil) 32 grams

-Cinnamon (Sri Lanka) 2 grams

Grams grown/produced in Washington= 1,596 grams

Percent of total pie grown/produced in Washington= 91%

National Geography Week preparations

Grade Level: 6

Objective: To celebrate geography through creating a community event and to learn about ecology and economics through engaging with the question of where our food comes from.

GeoWeek is November 17-23rd.  K and I have decided to highlight GeoWeek in our community through an event we're organizing tomorrow at lunch.

Our celebration has three components:
1-Make and share a map of food sources for our community
2-Make an apple pie, calculating what percentage of that pie is made from ingredients produced or grown in the state of Washington
3-Trade pieces of pie for geography facts during a community-wide geography celebration tomorrow at lunch

Mapping where our foods are grown and manufactured: regionally, nationally, and internationally 

Places we import (some of) our food from:
Chelan, WA-0 miles (apples, lettuce)

Stehekin, WA-0 miles (by car) (kale)

Tonasket, WA-80 miles (beef)

Eugene, OR-174 miles (coffee)

Roy, WA-213 miles (eggs)

Palouse, WA-213 miles (flour, lentils, garbanzo beans)

Euphrata, WA-61.2 miles (cod, salmon)

Brewster, WA-27.2 miles (potatoes)

Seattle, WA-180 miles (cream, milk, cheese)

Twisp, WA-52.3 miles (whole wheat flour)

Pendleton, OR-238 miles (pork)

California (Sysco Central)-aprox. 872 miles (lettuce, oranges, cream of wheat)

Guatemala-aprox. 3,551 miles (coffee)

Alaska-aprox. 2,281 miles (cod, salmon)

Andy Goldsworthy for kids: making environmental art about the changing seasons

Grade Level: Elementary

Objective: To engage with science and nature through art-making in an exercise inspired by environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy.

Three Fossil Activities

Grade Level: Elementary

Step C, Cast and Mold

1. Fossilized Sugar Cubes:
Objective: To show how way different materials decay at different rates
A: Hot glue four sugar cubes together
B: Let dry over night
C: Place sugar cube structure in a strainer, run warm water over it
D: What happens to the sugar?  What happens to the glue?  What can we learn about the way bodies of living things decay from this experiment?

2. Cast and Mold:

Objective: To learn the difference between the cast and the mold of a fossil

A: Coat the ridges of a rock, stick, or shell with Vaseline

 B: Press the rock, stick, or shell into a clump of clay.

C: Remove carefully.

D: Drizzle white glue in the imprint.

 E: Let glue harden--then remove.

F: Which part is the cast?  The mold?

3. Imprints:                                

Objective: To explore other ways fossils are formed 

A: Dip a rock, stick, leaf, or branch in paint

 B: Press the object on a sheet of paper

C: Remove carefully.  

D: Look at the resulting shape?  What can you observe from the imprint left by the shape of the object you pressed.

Today I Learned (11/12-11/15)

In order to continue my own learning and encourage life-long learning habits among Holden students, I started posting daily facts on a "Today I Learned" board I posted on the library door.  I'm only a couple days in, but I enjoy the ritual and have gotten positive feedback from the students I teach.

Here's the first few facts I found:
(thanks to Reddit's fun "today I learned" forum and some web-based research)

10/12-The world's smallest guitar is 10 micrometers long, about the size of a single cell

10/13-The world's longest living vertebrate is the Greenland Shark, which is thought to live over two hundred years

10/14-"Dore" is Old English word for male bee.  "Dumbledore" is Old English for bumblebee.

10/15-The word "echo" comes from Greek mythology.  Hera, in an act of anger at Echo, took away her voice, allowing her only to repeat the shouted phrases of others.

Library Learning Center

On memorizing poetry

Grade Level: Elementary

We don't have homework at Holden School but today students copied poems using calligraphy pens to take home and memorize for fun over the weekend.  

Later when I researched the pedagogical rationale for poetry memorization, I found some interesting and compelling support for such practices.  None of the articles I found had any strong brain-based evidence that memorization of poetry makes you more analytical or intelligent.  Instead the memorization of poetry seems to cultivate a love of language and rhythm, an internalization of words and stanzas that shapes our cognitive and sensory experiences of writing we encounter later in life.

-From The Cat in the Hat on up, verse teaches children something about the patterns and relationships that bind together the words of which it is composed. Poetry sets up an abstract system of order and harmony; the rhythm and the rhyme scheme are logical structures that a child can comprehend even before he understands the words themselves, just as he can grasp the rhythmic and harmonic relations of a piece of music...What the child discovers, in other words, is not only aesthetically pleasing, but important to cognitive development. Classic verse teaches children an enormous amount about order, measure, proportion, correspondence, balance, symmetry, agreement, temporal relation (tense), and contingent possibility (mood). Mastering these concepts involves the most fundamental kind of learning, for these are the basic categories of thought and the framework in which we organize sensory experience.-"In Defense of Memorization" by Michael Knox Beren

-The best argument for verse memorization may be that it provides us with knowledge of a qualitatively and physiologically different variety: you take the poem inside you, into your brain chemistry if not your blood, and you know it at a deeper, bodily level than if you simply read it off a screen. Robson puts the point succinctly: “If we do not learn by heart, the heart does not feel the rhythms of poetry as echoes or variations of its own insistent beat.”-"Why We Should Memorize" by Brad Leithauser

Also worth reading:
-Why I Force my Students to Memorize Poetry (Despite the fact it won't be on standardized tests) by Andy Waddell (The New Yorker)
-'Poems to Learn by Heart: The Merit of Memorizing Verse (NPR)

6th grade Student Writing Samples

I've been working daily with our school's only 6th grader, K, on Language Arts.  We read out loud.  We write both critical essays and creative writing pieces.  We've read Number the Stars and The Giver by Lois Lowry and are currently reading Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbit.  We also try to read and write poetry at least once a week.  I'm very proud of K's progress.  He impresses me with his insights, his intellect, and his sensitivity on a regular basis and those qualities shine in his writing.  He gave me permission to share some samples of his work online:

From an in class creative writing exercise in which I asked K to let weather set the mood for the piece:

The snow falls, softly, not even making a sound when it reaches the ground. The wind howls like a wolf at the dead of night. An old man, walking, in the shadows of the dark trees. No one knows where he’s going just that he’s on a journey. The darkness is his friend. Hunters with long teeth and nimble feet watch him from the trees but, they do not pounce, they have seen him before walking in the Dark woods of night. He has a secret, something only he knows, an unusual awareness. An old man walking in the woods, the trees lean over him like they might fall but, they do not. There goes the moon moving over him like a giant ball about to hit a bat.  The old man keeps walking.    

From a longer critical essay, which analyzed the Utopian and Distopian factors in Jonas's community in The Giver:

In this book The Giver Jonas, the main character, changes when he finds out that he was living in a false community. It made him realize that he was no longer living in the utopia.  His community had changed, it was now a dystopia. The elders assigned him the job of Giver (a great honor among his people)--an assignment in which he will receive memories from the past.  He receives feelings, the seeing of color, the truth.  One day when the Giver was training him, Jonas asks to see the release of a new born child, for the new child had an identical twin and he weighed the lesser of the two. In the past Jonas thought of a release as the person going somewhere outside of the community but he did not truly know what happened at a release.  He only knew that no one ever saw them again. On a screen, Jonas watched as his father injected a clear liquid into the infant’s head. The child squirmed and jerked but then the baby stopped squirming and went limp. The child’s head rolled back and Jonas realized from the blank look on the babe’s face that he was dead. Jonas stared in horror, he started to cry. From that moment on, Jonas knew he could not go home, that he had to escape. He finally noticed that the sameness had become dangerous--dangerous to a point where the people of the community had begun to do exceedingly horrid things. Utopia had become a dystopia. 

Andy Goldsworthy: Environmental Art--Day 1

Grade: Elementary

Object: To observe and analyze Goldsworthy's art in preparation for making our own place-based sculptures.

Sorting and testing rocks

Grade Level: Elementary

Objective: To build on our knowledge of the rock cycle by spending time observing, testing, and categorizing different types of rocks

We charted:

  

-Color

-Texture

-Whether rocks floated (density)

-Whether rocks bubbled in vinegar (mineral content)

Into the Wild

"It shall not be denied...that being footloose has always exhilarated us.  It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road always leads west."-Wallace Stegner, The American West as a Living Space

Grade Level: High School

Objective: To examine Chris McCandless, a modern day American wanderer, in the context of the texts we've read this semester.

Today we:

-Read Death of an Innocent: In 1990 Chris McCandless left his well-off East Coast family, gave his college fund to Oxfam, and took to the road - young, idealistic, invincible. Last year, equipped with little more than Tolstoy and a rifle, he hitched into Alaska. There, the wilderness turned against him

-Discussed Krakauer's depiction of McCandless and our first reactions to Chris's story

-Listened to an interview with Sean Penn on PRI's Studio 360 about the making of the film Into the Wild

-Read the end of Krakauer's article out loud, watched the final scene of the film and discussed stylistic similarities and differences

Plant Cells Models and Metaphors

Grade: Elementary/Middle School

Objective: Students will better understand plant cell organelles and their functions through making models and analogies.

We:
-Talked about cells, the discovery of cells, and how cells do many of the same things our bodies do (make energy, digest, etc.), while they make up our bodies and the bodies of all other living things
-Made a chart of plant cell organelles, their functions, and analogy for something in our community that functions the way that organelle does (for example the leaders of our community function like the nucleus)
-Made analogies for things in our school that function like the parts of a plant cell and put green labels on those things (for example, our school building is like our cell wall)
-Made a model of a plant-cell using a plastic bag as the cell membrane and various other found items as the organelles

Grading Contract

Grade Level: 6

Objective:  To create a learner-centered grading system that gives students a sense of agency

(inspired by a grading system researched and utilized by Professor Schuette of Valparaiso University)

Grades:

We will be using an evaluation method called “contract grading.”  This method entails an agreement between student and teacher about the work necessary to achieve a particular grade.  For our class, this means that if you fully participate in the list of activities, assignments and behaviors below, I guarantee you’ll receive a final grade of B.  Don’t mistake this for an easy grade.  The list will challenge you, and because the activities assignments and behaviors are designed to help you improve meeting that challenge will mean you have earned your B. 

I expect you to…

(General Expectations)

-Come to class on time and ready to learn

-Be an example for younger students in both behavior and academic curiosity

-Keep class materials well-organized, using binders and folders to keep track of all work

-Log daily learning in your learning log

(Language  Arts)

-Use the writing process to complete your essay on The Giver and other assignments which will follow

-Your essays should have: a catchy introduction, an argumentative thesis, and three well organized body paragraphs, using appropriate transitions, and formal style

-Your essays should be well-edited and thoughtfully written, using vivid and precise language

Plant Experiments

"Human nature exists and operates in an environment. And it is not 'in' that environment as coins are in a box, but as a plant is in the sunlight and soil." —John Dewey, Philosopher

Grade Level: Elementary

Experiment 1:

1. Cover a single leaf of a potted plant in tin foil
2. Keep the plant in a sunny place, wait several days
3. Uncover the leaf--look at results, if no results are visual do a starch test (compare to a control sample)

Our hypothesis: We think the leaf will die because it can't get the sun it needs to photosynthesize

Experiment 2:

1. Coat a leaf in Vaseline.

2. Place Vaseline coated leaf in a plastic bag

3. Place another non-Vaseline coated leaf in a plastic bag

4. Wait several days, look for changes

Our hypothesis: The leaf covered in Vaseline will die because it can't get CO2.

Learning Logs, Learning Plans

Grade Level: 6

K and I have been working to develop a learning plan and an organizational system to track the work he does and plan the work he wants to do.  Today we continued forward on this process during our time together.  K typed his goals for each subject while I typed reflections regarding where K is and where he hopes to be by the end of the semester.  We printed these reflections and hole-punched them into a binder we found in the school supply closet.  K likes this binder system. He added his folders while I added the grade-level state standards for each of his subject areas.  We also started a “reading log” to track the books K has read and a “learning log” so K can record what he does in each subject area each day.  We’re excited to feel so focused and organized and to move forward into the semester with a clear sense of direction.

More planting

“Authentic environmental commitment emerges out of firsthand experiences with real places on a small, manageable scale over time.” – David Sobel (2004)

Lately, our little class has had a "if you build it he will come" experience with our indoor garden.  The more interested in seeds and plants we become, the more community members seem to gift us with awesome supplies to build a more elaborate garden.  We began with a couple pots and some cress and cilantro seeds I purchased from a Port Townsend farmer at the Tonasket Barter Faire.  Since then we've been given planters, soil, compost, and almost a dozen different kinds of seeds: kale and chives, majoram and pea plants (among others).  We've expanded our garden so it stretches from end to end of our library window.  Every time a seed sprouts, the second graders come running to show me. 

TED Talk for kids: Part I: Adora Spivak

Grade Level: 6

Objective: To inspire questioning, thoughtfulness, and creativity through an empowered and assertive young role model. (Bonus: She's also from Washington!)

Daring, Defiant, Free: Mark Jenkins' essay on superclimbers in Yosemite

Grade Level: High School

Objective: Students will analyze Mark Jenkins' article Daring. Defiant. Free. A new generation of superclimbers is pushing the limits in Yosemite in the context of the writers they've read in environmental literature.

Today we:

-Looked at some of the first photographs and paintings of Yosemite

-Wrote about the climbers in Mark Jenkins essay comparing and contrasting them to John Muir

-Watched a short video clip about Alex Honnold

-Discussed Mark Jenkins' article 

Student Poetry

Grade Level: 2nd

Jar Garden

By M.

I love the way my plants

grow

and I like

the way my plants

get ready for the winter.

They’re like sprouting

tulips in the garden

pushing their way through

the earth to the sunshiney air.

I Hiked to Hart Lake

By M.

On my way there

I saw an interesting pine cone

a chipmunk must of chewed it.

I threw it in my pocket

as fast

as I could

and then

I kept going

and going

until I arrived at school,

and put the pine cone

beside branches

and that’s the story

of my pine cone.

Some Nature, Some drawing, Some Poetry

"We have lost our sense of time. We believe that we can add meaning to life by making things go faster. We have an idea that life is short — and that we must go fast to fit everything in. But life is long. The problem is that we don't know how to spend our time wisely."-Carlo Petrini: Founder of the Slow Food Movement (September 2008, quoted in the magazine 'Fast Company')

Grade Level: Elementary

Objective: Students will read (and write!) poetry attentively, paying attention to language, imagery, and the poetic devices poets use.

Today we:
-Read "Luna Moth" by J. Patrick Lewis and "Invention" by Billy Collins (I read the poems out loud twice, the first reading students closed their eyes and imagined the images in the poem, the second reading students looked at the poem as I read, picking out words and phrases they particularly enjoyed)
-Created a venn diagram comparing and contrasting the poems
-Created artwork for the poems
-Wrote our own poems inspired by objects in our Nature Discovery Center

A library and a garden--our seeds start SPROUTING!

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need." (Si hortum in bibliotheca habes, deerit nihil.)” ― Cicero, Letters to His Friends, Vol 2: Books 7-12

Snickers Bar Science and the Crayon Rock Cycle

Grade Level: Elementary

Objective: Students will build on their knowledge of plate tectonics and volcanoes, learning about the rock cycle.

Key concepts: Weathering, Erosion, Deposition,  Sediment, Sedimentary Rocks, Metamorphic Rocks, and Igneous Rocks

Today we:

-Did a BBC interactive tutorial on the rock cycle

-Used a fun-size Snickers bar to demonstrate chemical weathering (with our saliva), physical weathering (with our teeth), erosion (swallowing), and deposition (the Snickers bar in our stomach)

-Created our own rock cycle using crayons...

We:

Shaved the crayons (aka weathering) and moved the shavings onto tin foil (erosion and deposition)

Pounded the "sediment" (crayon shavings) with a hammer (aka made sedimentary rocks through compaction)

Hammered(/compacted) the "sedimentary rocks" again then floated them in a mason jar of hot water to make "metamorphic rocks"

Heated the "rocks" on a hot plate and poured them over ice imitating the magma/lava process which creates igneous rocks 

Day of the Dead Boxes

As an art/social studies interdisciplinary activity K. and I created Day of the Dead boxes to accompany the Day of the Dead/Halloween/All Saints/All Souls Day Social Studies we did earlier this week.