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Sunday, February 28, 2010

snow, snow and more snow.

it snowed every day this week...i think it's weather's way of making up for the snow we haven't had this winter.

MONDAY
adjusting back to the life of lesson planning and teaching...

TUESDAY
taught 6th grade, 4th grade and 5th grade. the lessons were all okay. nothing spectacular...and i was trying to get over a nasty cough. not a bad day, but not amazing.

WEDNESDAY and THURSDAY
snow days! the days are running together in my memory, but each one involved A LOT of snow shoveling, a few snow games, and making animal tracking stamps. all in all, nature dumped about 3 feet of snow on us by wednesday night...and then rained on us all day thursday. our winter wonderland on wednesday quickly deteriorated to a slushy mess by thursday's end. it was a good night for boardgames and a good book.

FRIDAY
it was still snowing, but the interns all broke out into different projects. i went with a group to notchview, a place with cross country ski and snowshoe trails. our main task was to pack down the trails with our snowshoeing and pick up any big branches so the trail groomer could come in. i got paid to snowshoe all day. the snow was gently falling all day. at one point on a trail appropriately called "elbowtucker" for how narrow it is, everything was white around me. i felt like i was in a cloud. i haven't experienced that feeling since when i was actually hiking in the cloud forest of ecuador.

when everyone finished with their day's projects, we all met to talk about Hawley Nature Camp, an event we host in april.

my day ended with finally being able to watch some of the olympics... : ) beautiful.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

life in massachusetts.

here are some random thoughts about life in massachusetts.
  • there is a dunkin donuts on every street corner. dunkin donuts appears to be the starbucks of new england.
  • massachusetts drivers are crazy.
  • the accents here are very entertaining.
 today, nearly 3 feet of snow dumped on us. it was awesome. it's the most snow i've ever seen in my life.

Monday, February 22, 2010

boston service week (aka, my first trip to downtown boston!)

last week, our students were on february vacation (that's right, they have a week off in february AND april. what's up with that??). that meant we got to hang out in boston for a week serving in urban parks, learning about civic engagement, and exploring a fun city!

MONDAY
after our community meeting and chores, we hopped into the vans and trekked out to boston.

once we arrived at the blue hills reservation (the chickatawbut education center to be precise), we ate lunch and headed out to clear out some small pine trees from a forest buffering the road. this may seem a bit anti-conservation-esque at first, but we learned that that stretch of forest has been known to house some sketchy activity, so clearing the road is good for police and other park officials to view what is going on. also, there is a walking path along that way, so removing the saplings before their roots start to ruin the paved path is great for keeping the park accessible (and keep maintenance costs down with not having to repair the path so often). but, the best conservation benefit was that by clearing most of the saplings and allowing only one or two in a stretch to remain, it is more likely that those one or two trees will make it to maturity than if all of those saplings competed with one another for space and light. plus, sometimes it's just really fun to use a bow saw and haul trees through the woods.

TUESDAY
we began at a farm (brookwood) doing some more trail pruning and brush clearing. when it started snowing, we moved over to clean exhibits at the trailside museum. my favorite part of the day, though, was hiking up to the blue hills observatory where we got to see the inner workings of a weather station. i'm not sure if all of you know this about me, but for a really long time (and still sometimes today), i've wanted to be a meteorologist, so i was pretty darn excited to see all of the cool weather equipment : ) the neatest contraption by far was the magnifying glass (crystal ball, rather) that measured the cloud cover. when the sun shines, the light goes through the glass ball and burns a hole onto a paper underneath. the paper is designed to reflect the time of day so that observers can go back and figure out when the sun was shining and when it wasn't. so simple, but so cool.

tuesday night, all of the corps members and staff had a family fun night full of games, props and skits : ) fun times indeed!!


Friday, February 12, 2010

the week before winter vacation!

and there was an early release for snow AND a half day. that cut our lesson load a bit!

MONDAY
a planning day...not very eventful. a couple of us walked around the pond looking for animal tracks. here's a list of what we saw:

- lots of squirrel tracks (they go EVERYWHERE)
- cute mice tracks
- what we later identified as shrew
- either canine (dog) or beaver...

in the evening, a few of us went to a farmer's gathering in north adams to mill around and help take down tables at the end. i had some really great food and met some interesting people : ) usually a good way to end the day.

TUESDAY
our only full day at school. our lesson with 6th grade went really well. we had them looking at their ecological footprints, starting with just one aspect (food, clothing, transportation). it was interesting to see the wide variety of thought processes as well as the depth of understanding about how we live our lives and the products we use to keep our lifestyles consistent.

after that lesson, we got ready for our fun with 4th grade. we did a bunch of water activities to illustrate dissolving, surface tension, ice expansion, and evaporation. gooooood times! caleb and i had lunch and then recess duty (see previous blog entry for recess details).

our next stop was 5th grade. it was our best lesson yet! we reviewed adaptations and let them create an original bird using adaptations. they were really excited and engaged throughout the lesson.

i spent the afternoon hanging out with drama club filling in for some of the girls who were absent.

: )


Tuesday, February 9, 2010

anatomy of a recess.

today caleb and i had recess duty. no other teachers. just us, a radio, a playground, and a bunch of 5th and 6th graders...here are some of the highlights:

- i wore a super cool fanny pack first aid kit.
- i had fun talking with one of the 6th grade girls about her desire to become a writer.
- i observed a bunch of a 5th graders huddled in a corner being secretive 5th graders.
- i played "evolution", a game involving turning from an egg to an ultimate being (via chicken and human stages) through rounds of rock, paper scissors.

: )

Saturday, February 6, 2010

conversations with kindergartners.

i forgot to mention some adorable conversations with kindergartners on thursday in art class. they were making snowpeople collages (cutting out shapes of paper and gluing them down to a big piece of paper).

art teacher: what is the shape of a carrot?
kindergartner: BLUE!
art teacher: that's a color.

--

(when cutting out circles for the snowpeople bodies)
kindergartner: i accidentally made an octogon.

--

me: (helping a student add some more details) what shape would you make the arms?
kindergartner: BROWN!
me: that's a color.

they'll learn someday...

Friday, February 5, 2010

it's really february already?

this week's entry is going to be a bit abbreviated as i'm trying to recover from an icky cold. but, exciting news! i reformatted some aspects of the blog to make it more robin-ish and now have a functioning link to some photos. 

MONDAY
planning day. yup. learned some wilderness skills: building a fire and making rope.

TUESDAY
morning...6th grade. went well! enjoyed discussion and systems activity.

4th grade. polluted water (using vegetable oil, food coloring, leaves and soap). hooray! came up with good solutions to clean the water.

1st grade art. c-r-a-z-y.

5th grade. water cycle review. much better than last week!

WEDNESDAY
felt like poop in the morning.

a moose visited preschool (aka i dressed up as a moose named alice. the scientific name of a moose is alces alces). amazing fun! afterward we made moose hats : ) great time.

kindergarten...lesson was okay. all the students wanted to do was make purple water.

lunch and recess (played basketball with kindergartners as much as you can actually play basketball with kindergartners).

2nd grade. animal charades. fun times. short lesson.

made a bee costume! hooray!

nature club = success.


Monday, February 1, 2010

why some trees are always green

in my last entry i talked about how the week flew by, but this week flew by even faster. here i am on monday...trying to remember all of the events from the past week before another one starts again. let's see if i can recap it all.

(oh, on a side note, our SCA crew made it on one of the SCA website, check it out: http://www.thesca.org/hands-on/2010/01/see-whats-tap-2010. paraphrasing one of my friends, i'm the silly one in the front with the hair).

MONDAY
a planning day as usual.

TUESDAY
started the morning off with 6th grade. our lesson on food security went well! after a discussion of some of the key terms in the food security world, we broke the class up into groups (representing villages) and assigned them to the task of coming up with a name for their village and deciding what they wanted to plant in their 10 fields. there were lots of nuances (how much each crop would yield, the different types of crops, whether it was a wet year or a dry year, etc), so it was interesting to see how the different groups worked together. i've noticed that class works very well in groups. it allows them time to talk with other students while accomplishing something at the same time!

our next lesson was 4th grade. they built their own watersheds which was a lot of fun! they are such a good class...when they were done building and polluting their watersheds, we did some discussion about stormwater and played a fun game.

then we were off to lunch...art class with 1st grade...and then our lesson with 5th grade. that...was interesting. the topic of the day was trees. i started with the tree song, which was crazy. i saw a lot of them had enthusiasm...and a few of them lacked it...we eventually made the tree song work, but once they were back at their seats, the lesson went better. i read a native american story about why some trees are always green. those students did not know much about evergreens or conifers. it was surprising, but it made me glad that we were there to help them re-learn. they seemed to enjoy the story and relating the rest of the concepts from the lesson back to the story : )