The Rookery

Declaration for Independence

Friday was gross.  It was cold, it was wet.  It definitely wasn't the 70 degree day we had enjoyed on Thursday.  But Friday was our field trip - the first in two years. I was excited but I was worried the Herons might not be.

But each and every one came through the door with a smile.  They were psyched and they were ready.  Every kid was wearing layers.  Every kid had water proof shoes and pants and coats.  Every kid had a hood that would keep their head dry.  I read off the attendance with a flourish, asking the students to respond to their name with "Ready!"  They improvised a variety of responses, all in the affirmative.  We had 100% of the class...and there was much rejoicing.

They sang all the way to Miesville and when we disembarked they were eager to set out on our adventure.  We were going to look for geocaches way off the beaten path in the park.  I handed them my phone which was set to navigate to the first cache and we were off - straight up a very, very steep hill that was very, very slippery and full of ancient downed trees. (A huge shout out to Kyle David who was an awesome chaperone and charged up the hill along with the Herons).  Along the climb, the students found wonder after wonder - mushrooms, moss, hollow birch bark.

It was still pelting rain but no one really seemed to notice.  We hiked on in search of the cache and then triumphant cries rang out.  They'd found it!  But by the time I caught up to them, they were still puzzling out how to get to the cache.  It was about 12 feet up.  Kyle was tall...but not that tall.  One child started to shimmy up the very slippery tree. I cautioned that there must be another way but he and the other Herons assured me there wasn't...and they urged him along, chanting his name.  He got to the cache and dropped its contents down.  We signed the log and traded trinkets, took our celebratory picture and then set the coordinates of the next chache (we found four in all!)

I've been thinking a lot lately about the importance of autonomy and independence. The New York Times had an opinion piece about the Japanese show "Old Enough (I hope the link will work but it might not...).  The show is about very young children who are sent on errands and filmed as they try to complete the errand.  Three year olds cross city streets and navigate a grocery store.  Five year olds head to a fish market and get food to make lunch.  The article explored childhood in America and at what age children should be gaining certain aspects of independence.  During our professional development this past week, we read a piece about how adults can pass along fear and insecurity to their students when they are unnecessarily protective.  The article looked specifically at students who were involved in outdoor activities in bad weather and how they looked to adults to know how to react to the situation.

So these things were on my mind as I watched the Herons on our rainy, cold field trip.  The first thing I noted was that these kids knew how to be in the outdoors.  They were dressed for it.  They were comfortable walking through the muck and ducking through the undrebrush.  Seven years ago, when I started taking kids outdoors every Wednesday I made a commitment to head out for the whole morning no matter the weather.  There were definitely uncomfortable days, but students quickly learned that they were responsible for their own gear.  They took that responsibility seriously and soon there were fewer kids unprepared.  We built up our collection of extras in case someone forgot something and, students supported each other, often having friendly competitions for who had the most layers.  So on Friday, the Herons didn't bat an eye.  They were ready.

The next thing I noticed was that I had trouble keeping up with them.  This was in part because I am 49 years old but it was also because they were not looking to me to tell them what to do. They consulted with each other but they didn't defer solely to me. This is a primary goal in the progressive classroom.  The teacher has a special position but it is not a position of absolute authority.  Students learn to how to consider situations and make decisions. They pause and seek guidance when they are not sure (such as when a geocahce is 12 feet above the forest floor) but the students have agency.  They decide what happens. They work together to solve problems instead of waiting for an adult to save them. (This is a theme in the Old Enough episodes that I have watched.)

Forest school offers so many opportunities for students to problem solve in creative ways. Amber and I brought a lot of different ingredients for students to cook with on Friday. We had eggs that we had intended kids to boil if they wanted to (indeed one child worked diligently to create perfectly soft boiled eggs).  But another group wanted to scramble their eggs. "Do we have a pan?" they asked.  "No...but we have aluminium foil." They quickly fashioned a pan out of foil.  They cracked the eggs into their "pan" after coating it with butter.  "Do we have a spatula?"  "No."  The students hunted around and found our metal cups would do the trick of scraping and stirring the eggs.  Soon they added a few Cheezits for the sake of cheezy goodness and they declared the scrambled eggs "the best ever."

Forest school also encourages responsible risk taking.  As a teacher, it's my job to assess situations and set boundaries for safety.  Most of the time, I can do this pretty invisibly.  On Friday, a dip in the 50 degree water was ill advised as the first activity.  However, as the last activity 15 minutes before we got on the warm bus, it was just fine (but still very chilly!). So the creek was the last place we explored.  Predictably, some students stuck to the shore and some started to edge toward the deeper water.  One brave soul sat down in the water and let out a howl.  Another student quickly joined him.  Many of the students didn't go above their boots...a few went all the way under. Each student was able to choose their level of responsible risk and, in the prepared environment, anything they chose was responsible. There were a few kids who hadn't packed dry clothes - they were uncomfortable but still safe - and my guess is that they will remember to pack extras next time.

And that's, I think, why I love Forest School so much.  Students learn to take care of themselves.  They learn that they are capable of problem solving and decision making.  They learn that they can set their own course and tackle their own challenges.  Our trip to Miesville gave us an opportunity to do all of these things - a very fitting culmination to our adventures this year.

 

 

Can You Convince Me?

"Is this right?" Way too often that is the main question students ask in a math class.  So much of traditional elementary math curriculum is focussed on computation - it can seem as though getting THE RIGHT ANSWER is the whole point of mathematics. 

Of course, that's not the point of mathematics. I don't claim to have the right answer for what mathematics is - some of the Herons are engaged in an ongoing debate about whether math is invented or discovered, but that's another blog.  What I do know is that in the best math lessons, the point of the math isn't to come to a single foregone conclusion but rather to push and prod on our understanding of how numbers work, to make and test conjectures about patterns we think we see and to explain the validity of how we are using numbers in a way that can convince others.

Over the years, we have collected and created a large repertoire of lessons and routines that emphasize authentic math explorations and discussions.  Illustrative math, the curriculum we adopted more fully this year, has been the source of many of those explorations.  A typical lesson has only one or two deeper tasks in which students seek to use math meaningfully and then talk to each other about what they are thinking.

This past week, the fourth graders were engaged in just such a task.  They were given three solved problems and told that there were either two truths and a lie or two lies and a truth and their job was to figure out which problems were worked correctly.  Each group tackled a different problem.  They worked to understand what the situation was and then to figure out if the solution presented was correct.  They used diagrams and estimated; some groups solved the problem themselves then compared it to the solution presented.  All three groups decided that their problem was not solved correctly.  All three were lies. (Here are the problems)

"Wait a second, I thought there were supposed to be two truths and a lie!" one Heron exclaimed.  Hmmm...

Each group got up to the board and explained the math they had done to get their answer.  After each one we discussed and agreed that the group was right and that the solution as written was a "lie."  "Maybe they're trying to get us to think!" I said hopefully.  We checked the teacher manual...and made a startling discovery:

 

 

 

 

"They multiplied by 53 instead of 52!"  "They didn't take out the bottom floor that's not 11 feet." "They did the bottom floor twice!"  The students were jumping up and down and...dancing (this is a group that likes to dance!) "They're wrong!!"

I calmed them down (just enough...it's important to ride the wave a little in these kinds of situations) and asked them what we should do.  "Write them a letter!" was the response.  "O.K. when you do it, make sure you explain yourselves really well.  After all, you have to convince them that they are wrong so you have to be very persuasive, show them your solution and explain how it's different from theirs."

Here is the result:

This is the goal of math at Prairie Creek - to empower students to understand their world and to be able to explain their understanding effectively.

"Is this right?"  You tell me.

Can We Talk?

At the end of the week, the fourth and fifth graders will be engaging in a series of three lessons on puberty education.  Some of the kids call it "The Bad 'PE'" (as opposed to "Physical Education" which is the "good PE") and there is much giggling and groaning when it is brought up in class.  However, it's been my experience that the conversations aren't as cringey as they are expecting and, in fact, kids are very curious and have A LOT of questions about the process of growing up.

There are times I think we might do well to reframe the conversation as one about "growing up."  While we do talk about bodies and changes to bodies during puberty, that's only about 1/3 of the content.  We also talk about brain development and social development.  We talk about the growing importance of peers and strategies on how to handle peer pressure.  We talk about personal safety - both on-line and in person.  We talk about the role of trusted adults and how important it is to have someone you can ask questions of who will give you true information.

The structure of the conversation is a little different than most of our learning - but we hope it's still authentic in that students feel a need for the information.  We encourage students to write questions on index cards.  This enables us to combine questions and also insures that questions that are beyond the scope of what we talk about aren't awkwardly denied answer.  Instead we explain to students that if we don't answer a question they have it is one that is best asked of their trusted adult.  We get hundreds of questions over the course of the lessons. 

This is the perfect time to start (and continue) conversations with your child about growing up.  It can seem like a big leap for some families and, instead of thinking of it as THE TALK, it can help to think of it as many, many small talks.  A great place to start are stories of what you remember from middle school.  We have a list of resources - some are geared toward children, some are designed to help parents engage with their children.  Because every kid develops at a different pace, what we share at school is really just a starting place.  Your child may have questions that are beyond the scope of our school conversation and asking them about those questions in the course of the coming week will help establish being a "goto" person for your child.

One new resource I've added is a podcast about "the liking gap" that was on Hidden Brain.  It's about how our perception of others' feelings toward us is more negative than how they actually feel about us.  The research was done about adults but I think it's even more true of middle schoolers.  Listening to the podcast together might be another great entre into conversation. -mmm

Setting Our Own Course - the Project Process

At Prairie Creek, personal projects are authentic, real research.  We don't set out the topic for the students and tell them what they must find (although it would be infinitely easier to say that everyone had to do a biography and find the birthdate, birth place, and three significant accomplishments of a famous person.)  Instead, we work with students to find good topics.  Do you know enough to ask good questions?  Do you know too much to be curious about a lot of things?  The topics in the Herons are very, very diverse:  The Great Lakes, Lego, the platypus, football and young people's brains, the kraken, The Simpsons, the black death, the history of candy and more.  Finding resources can be a challenge - but that's part of the point.  How do you learn about something new?  Where do you look?  How do you find things? (We have a series of video lessons that can help answers those questions!)

Students ask questions about their topic, pushing for deeper questions that will require synthesis of information.  In kindergarten, the scope of their project was finding 3-4 facts.  Now the expectations are far greater.  Doing a project each year enables children to build sophisticated skills.  Students categorize their questions and begin looking for answers.  Importantly, they don't stop when they find an answer.  They know that, because they will be teaching, they need to know the information that surrounds the answer, too.

We learn how to take notes.  It is, for most, the hardest task. Some students write down everything making it very hard to find one's own voice when writing later.  Some students don't know what is important enough to write down.  Some students write down too little and end up digging back through books finding the piece of information that they think they read.  Many students struggle to write down only what they truly understand and can put in their own words.  We encourage students to read, close the book, and then write down what they think they might want to teach to others (perhaps peeking to get a spelling or a date right.)

 As our pile of note cards grows, we take occasional stock of what we have and what we might still need. Almost every child asks, "Do I have enough notecards?"   "That depends..." I always answer. In a recent mini-lesson, I developed the metaphor of a tree with the students.  Each of their categories was a main branch and the questions, perhaps, smaller branches from each category.  The notecards were leaves.  Which branch had many leaves?  Which branch had only a few?  If the branches were uneven, it was time to look for a resource or a part of a resource that could help you fill out the leaves of that branch.  Sometimes, we think a branch might be a good idea but then we can't find any information or another branch gets a lot stronger.  We can lop off a branch and split another into two different main branches if we need to.  It's important to give children permission to allow the focus of their research to evolve.  It's also important for them to know that there is no one "magic number" for notecards.  Typically a paragraph takes 4-5 pieces of information so you can extrapolate how many facts you need - but some notecards might have three facts.  Others just one (or half of one!)  

And this is one of the reasons I love project time.  As students realize that they are empowered to make the decisions, they begin to take their work very seriously.  This is real.  They will be the expert.  They will be teaching us.

 The 4th grade project exactly mirrors the honors project except that it is "mini".  Instead of an article with 5-10 pages, students write an article with 5-10 paragraphs.  Instead of speaking for twenty minutes, fourth graders speak for five.  The 5th graders serve as mentors for the 4th graders, teaching the skills that they themselves are using.  Teaching is a great way for students to solidify their understanding of what they are supposed to be doing.

In April, it all comes together - the article, the visuals, the oral presentation.  But right now, it's one step at a time - and I'm so glad that every journey is different.

Industrial Revolution World's Fair

We missed you today.  I love the bustle of culminating events; the urgency of the students as they set up and teach their "customers" about what they've learned.  One of the things I most love is the students' opportunity to "wow" their parents with their professionalism and how they're able to communicate what they know. They are so proud when they get to teach you.  I hope they'll still have that opportunity at home, perhaps as you peruse the souvenir program they'll bring home tomorrow or perhaps as you look through the photos below.  But one of the things I cannot recreate is the power of someone else's parent taking the time to learn from you.  I am always so touched with the time that parents take with everyone's children, not just their own.  It is a precious gift. I cannot wait until we can welcome you back into school.

Today the Herons and Robins did a great job turning the whole school into the 1860 Prairie Creek World's Fair.  The Political Pavilion literally popped with action as students used party popper cannons in a reenactment of the burning of the White House in 1812.  Students taught about the Louisiana Purchase, child labor and the North Star, Frederick Douglass's newspaper.  You could walk a scale model of the Cherokee trail of tears and learn about the Supreme Court's rulings on The Indian Removal Act.  You could make protest signs about abolition and women's rights.

At the science pavilion, you could meet Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor in America.  You could also learn about the smallpox vaccine and the discovery of the cause of cholera - both medical breakthroughs of the age that saved millions of lives.  You could dig for dinosaur fossils with Waterhouse Hawkins and then, in a dark corner, you could learn the grisly details of the hole in Alexis St. Martin's stomach that led to our first understanding of how digestion worked.

Then you could head upstairs (by way of the elevator demonstration!) to the Invention Pavilion to learn about graham crackers, canned food, potato chips and donuts.  The sewing machine and mechanical looms were also on display.  A clipper ship demonstration competed for your attention with a steam boat booth.  Finally, you could send a message across the room using our working telegraph.

Here is the overview of the theme that Amber and I wrote for the occasion:

Industrial Revolution Theme Overview

            The Industrial Revolution was the perfect match for the Herons’ and Robins’ interest in history, role play, inventions and business.  We have spent the last two months studying the complex interplay among commerce, expansionism, immigration, technology, innovation and labor.  It’s weighty stuff, to be sure, but our role play made these huge topics personal and meaningful.  Each labor saving invention was celebrated or, if it meant losing one’s job, feared.  Each political happening was debated from multiple sides.

            We studied the scientific understanding of the time – taking a close look at steam engines and mills.  Students were shocked at the pace of change during the nineteenth century.  In their lifetimes, the agrarian world that had been human existence for millennia, changed completely.  In 1804 we tried our hand at weaving and spinning.  Meeting our basic needs would have taken all day.  By 1859, when our role play ended, threshers and reapers did the work of 20 men, mills operated 14 hours a day to produce cloth, messages could travel over wires, and rails and canals transported goods hundreds of miles – farther than most people traveled in their lives just a generation before.

            We learned about the medical understanding of the time – from the first ever vaccine that eventually eradicated small pox to a map that helped us understand the source of cholera.  The industrial revolution was the beginning of modern medicine when we first began to understand how our bodies functioned and what caused them to become ill.

            Role play helped us think about whose stories often got told and whose didn’t.  Women’s viewpoints were often missing – even as their role in society began to shift dramatically.  Black people had to start their own newspapers, like the North Star, in order to share their stories.  Because of laws against educating enslaved people, many stories were never recorded at all.  Likewise, indigenous people rarely had a voice in the debates of the time.  News coverage in white newspapers was biased and one sided and few people at the time thought to challenge those representations.

            Through our discussions and debates, we were able to see that every event had many different impacts.  Every issue had many different sides.  History is never a simple narrative – it is many truths intertwined. 

And here are some pictures:

 

The Quest for Math Meaning

I love teaching math.  I was an English major in college and one of the reasons that I became an elementary teacher was because I would get to teach math (and weave all the subjects together and really get to know a single class instead of teaching English to 150 kids...but that's another blog post.).

Through our professional development, Prairie Creek teachers have worked for years to hone our understanding of numeracy development.  How do kids understand numbers?  How do we deepen that understanding in a way that helps students be flexible, competent and joyful users of math.  We have explored how to use math discussions and "number talks" to push on students' misconceptions. We highlight conjecture making and testing as part of our everyday math work. We celebrate the "Oh!" moment one experiences when one figures something out, especially when a student straightens out a misconception.

For years, an organization called Illustrative Math has shared tasks that we incorporated into our instruction.  They were designed to reveal the underlying mathematical ideas to students as they worked on them. They were teacher created and there was a community of math teachers who shared ideas about the tasks and made them better.  The organization received a grant several years ago to develop a whole curriculum that would be free for all schools.  They began with a high school curriculum and this year is the first year that their elementary curriculum was available.  Their philosophy mirrors ours.  The lessons support the creation of a math community that build their understanding together.  Number talks and math discussions are integral to every lesson. Students are encouraged to explain and support their ideas about math.  Fewer, quality tasks are assigned so that students can wrestle with the math and correct their mistakes in a meaningful way.

I am excited about the curriculum and challenged by it.  For years we have used formative assessments - work that we give before we begin a math unit in order to see what students understand - to create fluid math groups.  A child who needs more support for fractions may have a really solid understanding of multiplication.  But that fluidity meant that we were pulling content from a variety of sources and, honestly, it meant that there were sometimes gaps in a student's instruction.  Over the years, I came to see believe that there was a real value to having a solid scope and sequence so that students encountered math ideas in a logical and structured way.  Vocabulary and experiences could build on each other in a way that helped students construct a deep understanding of how math ideas are connected and build on one another. 

Illustrative math provides that deep, logical instruction.  But it does so by grade level.  In this, our first year with the curriculum, we decided that we wanted to use it as it was intended - which means separating students by grade in a way we rarely do.  We have been experimenting with structures to do this.  For the first unit, I taught all of the fourth graders while Amber and Ryan taught all of the fifth graders.  We weren't happy with the amount of individual attention students were getting - and we also lamented that we didn't get to see some of our "homeroom" students.

As we made the transition to indoor learning in late fall, we decided to teach our own students -- both fourth and fifth graders.  We are trying out different structures to do this.  I have "foundation math" work in our first 20 minutes of math.  Students work on computation skills.  I assess what they need to work on and provide mini-lessons of targeted instruction.  This foundational work is proving very helpful to address any gaps caused by our disrupted learning in 2020-2021.

I then teach the 4th graders that day's Illustrative Math lesson for thirty minutes, sending them to work on an independent task while I teach the fifth graders.  (The fifth graders work on independent work from the day before or new work that we then can bring in to that day's lesson while I am teaching the 4th graders.)

I really like being able to work with every student in small groups every day.  Students are participating eagerly in our conversations - and with groups of no more than ten, I am able to get a good sense of exactly where everyone is in their understanding every day.  One opportunity we identified when we were in the larger groups was that students needed help talking substantively about the math they were doing.  With these smaller groups, everyone is getting a lot of practice explaining their thinking.

We've been able to link up the fourth and fifth grade learning so far this year. We began the year together learning about factors and multiples.  Then we moved into working with fractions - the fourth graders explored a lot of equivalent fractions, ordering fractions and combining like fractions.  The fifth graders explored how to multiply and divide fractions in a way where they were pushed to really understand what was happening and not just apply an algorithm. Right now we are exploring multi-digit multiplication and division.  Fourth graders are just beginning to learn these skills and fifth graders are shoring up what they've learned in the past.

It's exciting to see the students building on their skills and seeing the connections among the concepts they've been exploring.

 

 

Things Aren't Always Black and White...a Flowchart Can Help

As students get older, their social worlds become much more complex and nuanced.  Things that were once black and white - teasing, friendships, rules - begin to shade into more gray areas.  This is appropriate -- developmentally they are more ready to understand context, tone, nuance and exceptions to the rules.  However, it is also confusing, especially since different kids begin to experiment with things like sarcasm at different times.  Classmates that were once on the same page socially can suddenly just not get each other.  This is hard for everyone and that's why we focus on friendship a lot in our fourth and fifth grade social and emotional learning lessons.

Last week Kelsey came in to work with me and the Herons to explore friendly teasing.  We used puppets and exaggeration to help students understand "friendly teasing."  When kids are little, they are told "teasing is mean."  And it is.  But as we get older, we often gently tease friends or trash talk during a game.  How do you navigate this new space - and also take responsibility when your words do hurt someone, even if it was unintentional.

The Friendly Teasing Flow chart allowed us to solidify what often seems pretty hazy.  Just how and when is it OK to tease someone?  Use the flowchart to find out. 

Students enjoyed putting the scenarios that Kelsey and I created to the test.  Friend having a bad day?  Stop at step 2.  Random kid on the playground?  Stop at step 1.  At lunch? Proceed with caution and make sure you aren't trying to show off to other kids and put your friend down.

What happens when you make a mistake (and we let them know they will make mistakes.). We as adults make mistakes in friendships, too, and it's important to know what to do.  We practiced taking responsibility -- and not blaming a friend for "not getting the joke."

So many times, people couch truly mean things by saying they were "just kidding" or it was "just a joke."  We felt it was important to address these "sorry, not sorry" statements directly.  (And it might be an opportunity for continued family conversations.)

In fact, all of our social and emotional lessons are great opportunities to have conversations at home and many families have found the language useful in their work at home.  Here is a toolkit we wrote to explain the "Full Plate" analogy we use to help students develop empathy.  Here, too is a useful toolkit for friendship role play, including friendly teasing.

These conversations never happen singly.  Indeed, we have had several opportunities to freeze a moment and put our friendly teasing flow chart to use in the classroom.  Who knows, maybe this week's family gatherings will afford an opportunity to talk about friendly teasing!

Sharing the Joys of Learning

A picture of dead man's fingers in a kindergartener's journal after going to the Mycology Museum.

On Wednesday, the Herons taught the rest of our community about what we had been learning.  The event had the excitement and energy that I always love about culminations.  There were missing copies to be found and last minute touches to be added.  A forty mile an hour wind made the transformation of the Albero into a shaggy mane inky cap much more of a group challenge than I had anticipated (I can't believe they did it!!) The Herons were all business.  I didn't re-direct a single child as they worked to teach their peers.

But culminations aren't just about the class that is presenting.  They provide energy to the rest of the school, too.  Information that is gleaned at a culmination filters back into every classroom. Drawings are made and questions are asked.  Younger students find their teaching role models - soon they will be doing this with their peers, too.  Big, whole school culminations show our students what is valued at Prairie Creek - their curiosity, ideas, and learning.  EVERYBODY in the school took the time to listen to the Herons and learn from them.

One of the things that we have been talking a lot about as a staff is how to rebuild our traditions this year.  We are working to help students rediscover their capabilities as learners and teachers.  We are working to re-establish the connections among classes that had to be isolated all last year.  We are working to recapture the joy that learning should have when students are doing things they care about.  The Herons took a running leap and ran a whole school culmination just five weeks into our school year - we are so proud of them.  (Below is the letter Simon shared with them on Wednesday afternoon.

 

 

Finding Out What You Know - the Joys of Culmination

It has been way, way too long.  On Thursday, I looked across the Herons' room to see students bustling this way and that.  Several were headed to the basement to find puffball costumes.  Two were climbing the spinning Albero on the playground to figure out how much paper it would take to turn it into a giant inky cap mushroom.  Three were mapping the location of dead man's fingers, pheasant backs and turkey tails on the school grounds to create a guided tour of our fungi.  They were all on a mission - busy and happy - and I was...unnecessary. The students were driven by their own vision and were completely independent. It felt indescribably good. 

This is what I strive for as a progressive educator.  I work to create an environment in which learning and teaching is who we are and why we are.  I try to give students the tools they need to ask questions, find answers and teach others independently.  The students have spent the past month learning and exploring and now they are ready and eager to teach.  They are deepening their understanding as they shift into teaching mode - discovering gaps in their knowledge and filling them.  They are synthesizing what we learned as they work to communicate to a new audience.  Their creativity and energy is palpable; we are on the crest of a fantastic wave that has been building for a month.  We know so much and we are bursting to teach it.

Last week we filled the board with what we had learned so far in the theme.  I let that ferment over the weekend and we returned to add to our list and brainstorm how we might want to teach.  Students volunteered for the eight big concept areas we decided on - and I put them into groups.  In their groups, they determined the key information they wanted to share with their "customers" and how they wanted to teach it.  They created their "to do" list and...got to it.  In the coming days, we'll practice exactly what we will say to the people who come to each exhibit and put the finishing touches on our props and teaching aids.

Culminating events are meant to bring things into focus.  I think that those "things" often go beyond the informational content of what we have been learning about.  Students learn to bring their work into focus, setting goals and learning how to reach those goals independently.  We come into focus as a class, too - we are often amazed by what we've learned and what we can do together.

Captions on images (the blog program is being grumpy tonight!): Lions' Mane treat, culmination planning, line plot for our mushroom homework data, oyster mushroom growth, dead man's fingers, planning a mushroom ramble in the creek, finding costumes to be a puff ball and inky cap, and many of us holding our harvested oyster mushrooms, 

The Emergence

On our very first day of Forest School we went on a mushroom hunt.  I wasn't sure what we'd find - although the week before I'd found at least a few mushrooms around.  Within moments, there were squeals of delight. A patch of giant mushrooms were growing under a pine, tiny ruffles attached to a bench, a circle of giant puff balls in our field...everywhere we looked there was something to marvel at.  And we were off.

Teaching in a progressive school demands a leap of faith every year. There are certain things that we always learn in fourth and fifth grade - similes, multiplication, topic sentences - but those things are woven into our other learning, learning that emerges from our interests and personalities.  Every class is different and I never know the precise direction we'll go.  I'll admit to a knot in my stomach that first day as the kids quietly come in to the classroom.  Will it work?  Will we find things to wonder?  WHAT IF WE DON'T?!?!  But then, within a day or two, we become the Herons - a class that has never been before and won't be again.

Mushrooms

Back to those aforementioned mushrooms - we have found an amazing assortment and are working to deepen our understanding of just what mushrooms are. We've dug beneath the mushrooms to find the  tangled web of mycelium that makes up the main part of the fungus.  Students are amazed to see how big the mycelium can be compared to the mushroom.  We've begun to formalize our ability to talk about what we're observing by creating a diagram of mushroom parts in our Blue Books.  We've also worked on our nature journaling skills, slowing down to observe, wonder about what we see and connect it to what we know already.  The Herons have had a ton of questions and we are beginning to do research to help us answer them, including a search for the world's biggest fungus.  When we found this:

This is NOT a real picture of the world's biggest mushroom. The Herons weren't fooled but thousands of other people were.

we had an opportunity to debunk an Internet myth using Snopes.  Doing real life research like this together enables students to hear my "think aloud."  How do we vet a source?  What tells us we can trust it?  These are skills we'll use throughout the year when we look for answers to our questions.  We also tried to make spore prints.  It completely failed. We had left all of our mushrooms overnight on the special paper we made.  Students had waited patiently to do the reveal and I was projecting up to our TV so that everyone would be able to see without crowding and then...nothing!  None of our mushrooms dropped spores.  It was a great opportunity to talk about variables and how we might change our experiment to get different results - time, humidity, age of mushroom and type of mushroom are all things that we want to change in the future.  These seemingly serendipitous lessons are the stuff of progressive ed.  It's my job to see the opportunities to bring our standardized curriculum into our work in meaningful ways.

A successful spore print.

Our spore print.

Our mushroom anatomy lesson.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finding Authors' Craft

In fourth and fifth grade we spend a lot of time observing while we read.  How do authors do what they do?  How do they create worlds?  How do they teach us new things?  By analyzing the tools authors use, their craft, we can become better readers and better writers.  The Herons are proving to be very careful observers.  So far we've learned about similes and metaphors and have found them in spades (don't worry, we'll do idioms, too) in our current read aloud Mañanaland.  We've also started our collection of strong words which we call our word hoard -- a nod to Beowulf who "unlocks his word-hord" and tells about his battle with Grendel.  Among our favorite words that we've found in our books so far: blasé, luxurious, gritted and phosphorescence.  By celebrating great words together, students learn to slow down and ask when they encounter something new in a text.  Who knows, it might be a jewel we need to add to our hoard.

Factors and Multiples

Much of our math work this year will come from the Illustrative Math curriculum.  This curriculum has existed for years in the form of rich tasks that teachers developed and shared with each other.  We've used elements of it at Prairie Creek for about six years.  The creators received a grant to expand from the tasks to an entire curriculum including number talks and other routines that deepen students understanding of number.  I've always loved the tasks because while doing them, students uncover the math for themselves instead of just being told what to do.  Now, with interwoven numbertalks and conversational prompts, we are able to build a more cohesive understanding and use the math we are learning in authentic ways.

We are beginning as a class with an exploration of factors and multiples.  We built rectangles to determine what areas can be created by several rectangles and which have only a single form.  We are using multiples to quickly estimate and figure out the best way to parcel out objects.  We are also learning about composite and prime numbers as we explore numbers we can split in many ways (composites) and numbers that can only be split one way (primes).  It's a lot of new vocabulary so we spend some time talking about how to build synapses in one's brain to remember new things (it takes a lot of practice and repetition.)

Being a "Big Bird"

We have been isolated in our individual classes for over a year so we are spending a lot of time in these first weeks exploring what it means to be a "Big Bird" in the wider school.  We're the big kids now.  What we do is watched by the youngers and the 4/5s have a responsibility to teach the other students what it means to work to make the world a better place.  It starts small by how we interact with each other.  How we talk and how we listen.  We are in the midst of our "Big Bird Training" in which the 4/5s talk about how they want to help younger students at recess and throughout the school day.  We will be getting into our bird buddy groups regularly this year and the older students will be able to build meaningful relationships with our younger classes.  I'm so excited.

We are also learning and defining what it means to be a Heron.  We have written a series of statements about who we believe we are as a class (or what we aspire to be." To do that, we are using more formal discussion structures including accountable talk and consensus.  Unless we all agree on a phrase, it does not make it into our final document.  The final list is not really as valuable as the conversations that lead into it in which we really dissect what we mean by such things as "respect" and "kindness" and "challenge". Through these discussions, students begin to see what we hold in common as a class and we begin to become the Herons.

Whew!  You've made it this far - how about some pictures (who says Prairie Creek never uses extrinsic rewards?!)

Boiling water in a paper cup - so cool!