oh january...

this week flew by...

MONDAY

we were supposed to participate in some MLK day volunteer activities, but a snow storm on sunday night through monday morning prevented us from going. we did spend some time talking about the significance of the day, but spent the rest of the day lesson planning.

TUESDAY

we have the older students (grades 4-6) on tuesdays. our first class is 6th grade. we finished a bit of our discussion defining global issues and then set off to talk about sustainability and finding solutions to global issues. we used the recent earthquake in haiti to illustrate the iceberg model of global issues...that often a catastrophic event is just the tip of the iceberg and that many complex, interrelated issues lurk beneath the surface. good lesson all in all! our education manager came to observe us and saw the tail of that lesson as well as our lesson with 4th grade. we had them do an interactive water cycle game using dice to determine where they go in the water cycle next. it was a lot of fun! we then had the students chart out how often they visited certain sites (clouds, ground water, the ocean, etc) on a bar graph (integrating science and math with interactive games!!!). it was lunchtime...and then art class with 1st grade. they are adorable...then we headed to 5th grade for a review of simple machines. caleb let a big version of "captain's coming" but instead of ship-themed actions...they all had simple machine actions (screw, lever, wheel and axle). they really enjoyed the game! at the end we had some extra time so we played the jedi mind trick...they loved it!

caleb started his after school chess program and i helped out with the drama club. hooray!

finding a routine again

MONDAY

caleb and i spent the day planning, but i was super tired after going to see city and colour in somerville, ma the night before. it was worth the tiredness, but we didn't accomplish much through the day.

TUESDAY

we were at school early. i was still super tired and actually drank coffee. we attended a staff meeting in the morning and were able to discuss potential service learning projects, including the rainfall program option. the staff seemed interested in what we were doing and very supportive of whatever project worked out best. then we went to 6th grade and taught a lesson on understanding global issues. it was awesome! we reviewed concepts from the previous class then looked at this quote:

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." -John Muir

afterward, we discussed the definition of global issues, brainstormed global issues, and then had the students make an issue web with a ball of yarn to show how global issues (poverty, the environment, the economy, etc) are interconnected.

next, we headed to pre-k! yaaayy! they. are. adorable. we ate snack with them and talked about fun things like birds and butterflies and coffee. then we talked with marge (one of the language arts specialists) about helping with some reading groups : ) that should be a lot of fun.

our next stop was 4th grade. i just love them...the lesson was AAWWEESOME! we had fun with drawing water cycle diagrams. it was interesting to see how the students represented the water cycle in different ways. one made it into a math problem (ice+sun=liquid water; liquid water+cold=ice), some drew pictures of what would happen is the sun stayed constant on a glass of ice, and some wrote out a paragraph describing their version of the water cycle. caleb then led them in a good discussion and guided imagery taking them through various parts of the water cycle. the students actually started moving like the water and even formed a snow crystal with their hands! we didn't tell them that they could react in that way, but it was great to see the students so engaged. on the way back to their desks, one student farted really loud. some of the kids started laughing (i did, too), so we had to have an entire gigglefest in the middle of the lesson. i loved it. to wrap things up, caleb and i had the class make a 4th grade water cycle. we started with a glass of ice, a dog ate an ice cube...which by various means ended up in the ground water, came up as a spring through the parking lot, ran off into the storm drain (yay stormwater!), into the river, then the ocean, evaporated into the clouds (then we ran out of time) and ended up raining back into an ice cube tray. it was hilarious!

tuesday was a half day, so after lunch, we got out early.

back from winter break...

...and it has definitely been a busy week. 

MONDAY

monday found us lesson planning for some events on friday (even though i would end up snowshoeing and clearing trails all day at some land trust properties) and lesson planning for the week. caleb and i seemed to zoom through everything and even made prototypes for our water molecule hats (to be explained later).

TUESDAY

on tuesday morning, we had fun scraping a thick layer of ice off the van before we even left the forest. getting down the driveway was also quite interesting...once we got to school, caleb and i ran around getting some last minute tasks done. we taught a lesson in 6th grade on ethical reasoning with environmental issues. we first asked them what they knew about global environmental issues and what they wanted to know (KWL assessment: know, want to know, and fill in what they learned after the lesson or unit). at first, they seemed unsure of what they wanted to learn much about environmental issues. after the KWL, we split the class into groups to discuss environmental dilemmas. the groups worked very well! since the class enjoys talking in general, organized discussion was perfect. after the students discussed their dilemmas for about 20 minutes, we brought the class back together to debrief and see what they gained from the discussion. from the responses, the students displayed a growing curiosity about the complexity of environmental issues. one student even asked, "does this problem really happen?". others appeared rather shocked that finding solutions to these dilemmas can be complicated and nuanced. caleb and i are very excited for our next lesson with them!!

we then helped with 1st grade with reading...they have so much energy...

our 4th grade lesson on properties of water went so well! the students are curious about water and seemed to be fully engaged in learning about properties of matter and the amazing qualities of water. they loved making water molecule hats and even wore them to lunch!

during 1st grade art class, i got hit by the tired bus...and the kids were rowdy. one didn't want to cut out his coyote at all...i tried to use some of the responsive classroom language with him, but it didn't work.

afterward, we headed to 5th grade. half of the kids left for choir soon after our name game, but the small class was great. we played lots of games (paperclip game, seismologist, mechanic's coming). they had played most of the games in some form or another before, but they seemed to love our versions!!