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