The Rookery

Doing Time

On Wednesday, the Herons created sundials. We began with a lesson on how to use the scroll saw.  Ryan, Amy and I are trying to introduce more tool use into the curriculum before the students use the tools in Village.  Needless to say, the opportunity to use a power tool to cut our gnomon to size was greeted enthusiastically.

The sundial needs to be aligned east and west so we used a compass to find north.  However, when we laid our compasses down on the plaza to set everything up, the needle spun wildly.  After a lot of good hypothesizing, the Herons surmised that there must be something magnetic in the cement.  (Indeed, way back in 2009 we paid extra to have sparkly concrete in the plaza checkerboard.  I suspect that is the culprit foiling our compass readings.  Curse our vanity!). We ended up using the edges of the concrete that are very close to east and west.  On the hour from 10:00 to 2:00 we marked the progress of the sun's shadow.  A lot of the Herons were surprised to find that the shortest shadow (solar noon) happened just after 1pm.  We'll be exploring more about that soon.

Today we learned more about how the Egyptians used sundials.  They divided the daylight into twelve parts and each part was called an hour.  The Herons quickly realized that Egyptian hours would be longer in the summer and shorter in the winter since it's just 1/12 of the daytime.  They also realized that cloudy days (and night) would make it impossible to tell time.

We paired up to brainstorm possible solutions to cloudy day time keeping.   They had plans for a clock that dropped water at a steady pace into bowls that would fill in an hour.  Another suggested that instead of a bowl, you use a rain gauge type tube that would be marked in hours.   Another student suggested a candle that would burn down in an hour and you would use twelve candles throughout the day.  Several students remembered the noria from our Silk Road adventures last year.  They thought about a water wheel that filled up a bowl with water and that then dropped down so that the next bowl would fill up. One group created a plan for a round pebble to travel down a path that would take a certain amount of time. All of these are close to actual solutions that humans created over the course of a thousand years.  I'm still amazed that the Herons dreamed them up without knowing that it took the ancients hundred of years to come up with the same ideas.

Some of the Heron's ideas were completely original.  One child suggested that water could be put into a circular canal that would move a large lamp around a sundial at the same pace the sun would move at.  Another suggested a giant boulder that would be released at the top of a mountain and would crush a series of candles so that you could watch from across the valley and tell how many candles had been crushed to be able to tell the time.  When one of the students wondered how you would reset the clock there was some discussion until it was decided that a giant catapult would be the best way to get the boulder back up the mountain.  That's my kind of solution!

All of the students soon realized that having a steady, measurable unit was key to keeping time.  It was not long before "The Macarena" was suggested as something we could repeat to keep track of time.  A single Macarena took 9 seconds (well, 9.14 seconds but we've not yet discussed a "leap Macarena"). So by singing the Macarena over and over and over and over, we could keep track of time in 9 second intervals.  The hilarious (at least to me) results are below.  Enjoy!

 

Getting to Know You

The Herons Being Herons

The first six weeks at Prairie Creek are special.  We develop routines and establish classroom norms.  We learn how to navigate our schedule and we work to become leaders in the school.  But I think the most essential work is getting to know and trust each other.

No learning can happen if students don't feel comfortable enough to try and fail in front of each other.  Learning involves risk.  One has to be willing to say, "I'm not sure..." and "Maybe..." and "I thought it was this...but it's not."  If kids don't know and at some level like each other, they will not learn.

In the Herons, I do so much intentional work to develop a trusting community.  It starts, I suppose, with our class name.  I use it all of the time in the first weeks.  "Herons, come over here and see what ______ found!"  "What do you think, Herons?"  and my favorite, "Oh, that's just the Herons being Herons."  I tell stories about Herons of the past. 

We also establish a sense of place. We explore the classroom and the students share their favorite nooks and crannies with each other. We spent a part of our first forest school sprucing up the Heron's outdoor encampment (which we've been using since the very first year of forest school.) I try to build the feeling that they are a part of a tradition and that the class identity is now part of their identity.

We also play a lot.  This year, the Herons have gotten really in to shelling acorns.  I've encouraged them to create systems, keep track of how much they're shelling, share their shelling strategies with each other.  I get pretend angry when they are so in to hammering shells that they have trouble stopping when we move on to something new (sometimes they try to sneakily hammer a few shells!  Good luck with that.) Making acorn flour is not, sadly, on the MCAs but having a shared memory and a shared goal helps to bring the class together so they are familiar with each other as we embark on other group work.  At every meeting, we play a game.  It's usually only 3-4 minutes of our day but we laugh together and, inevitably, someone says something that becomes a catch phrase -- part of our shared language.  We also have a ton of games and crafts for after lunch.  This year, kids are braiding yarn, playing chess, doing cat's cradle, exploring a lot of the math puzzles we have, playing "Oh Snap!" and Mastermind and building with some interlinking blocks.  These activities start to build a shared culture in which we've had a lot of the same experiences.

Students also learn about each other through interviews and summer shares.  They survey each other to learn their preferences in everything from colors to reptiles to car makes.  At every meeting, students offer "short shares," little moments in their lives that others can ask them about at lunch.  I use a lot of different groupings in our lessons so students get to know a lot of different kids in a lot of different contexts.  We look for commonalities and explore differences.

The work of connecting continues after these first weeks, but it's most intense right now.  If we all have a silly moment or two or three in which we learn to trust each other and laugh along, then we'll be able to take a deep breath and smile when our first try at a math problem isn't successful or we cannot for the life of us say "onomatopoeia". These are small moments but they add up so that, hopefully, when your child thinks of "Herons being Herons" they think of a lot of awesome kids who don't know everything...but aren't afraid to figure it out.

Stepping Up

The Herons heading in for our first day.

Coming upstairs.  When we built onto Prairie Creek in 2009, we didn't mean to create a metaphor for growing "up" when we put the 4/5 classes on the second floor but it was evident that was how kids felt as they came up the stairs for the first time as fourth graders.  They are the "big kids" now.

We often see a change in kids over the summer between 3rd and 4th grade.  Students are more independent.  They are more able to manage their feelings.  They are able to shift gears between being silly and serious more purposefully.  They are more aware of the needs of others and more able to articulate their own needs successfully.  4th grade is a big deal.

These are nascent skills, to be sure.  Sometimes kids are more independent at school where the positive influence of their peers motivates them.  Home is a safe place (which we want it to be) and it can also be a place where kids do things (or don't do things) out of habit. Your fourth grader is ready to take on more responsibility including waking up with an alarm clock, getting breakfast and lunches ready for themselves, doing laundry, helping with cooking and cleaning, and managing things like paperwork in the backpack express.  Whew.  That's a daunting list. It won't happen day one and there will be mistakes, but your child is ready.  More importantly, your child will take great pride in all that they are able to do now.

And what about those 5th graders who arrived upstairs a whole year ago?  Fifth grade is often a year of refinement.  Fifth graders are able to see opportunities for growth in themselves and can set goals to tackle challenges.  (Fourth graders are often just surprised at what they can do!) 5th graders are often able to see the slightly bigger picture. In groups, they'll figure out the steps between Point A and Point B or they'll corral the team to get to work even though the deadline seems a long way away.  Fifth graders are also gaining an deeper understanding that what might be easy for them, might be hard for someone else (and vice versa).  They have more empathy and they are really good at encouraging each other.

We talk a lot these first months about "4/5 Skills."  "Fourth and fifth graders are able to laugh at a joke and get back to work." "Fourth and fifth graders are ready to take things out of their backpack express." "Fourth and Fifth graders are ready to have snowball fights and gauge when they need a break." "Fourth and fifth graders can work independently around the school and stay on task." "Fourth and fifth graders can check the weather and choose the right gear for forest school." There may be a bit of aspiration in some of the skills we talk about but it's good to set a high bar and, in my experience, fourth and fifth graders often soar over it.

I've been waiting a long time for these kids to come upstairs.  I'm so glad they've arrived.

Below are some scenes from our first day.  Students did a lot of work getting to know each other - designing surveys, conducting interviews and sharing stories about Habits of Mind they used over the summer.

The Wonder of Wolf Ridge

On Monday morning as the bus pulls away from Prairie Creek's curb on its way to Wolf Ridge, I always feel elated.  Behind us are the meetings and the forms and the e-mails and the checklists and the fundraising.  In front of us, Wolf Ridge.  Five whole days to live and learn together in one of the most beautiful places I've ever been.

Wolf Ridge has been a Prairie Creek tradition since the mid-80s.  But there are a lot of things we were doing in the mid-80s that we don't do today (my asymmetrical haircut for one) so why have we continued go to Wolf Ridge?

Simply put - discovery.

Wolf Ridge's naturalists always seem as excited as the students about what we are learning.  While I know that they have all seen snowshoe hare scat before, you would never be able to tell by the gusto with which they wade through snow to see the round pellets a child has found under a tree.  Joe Walewski, who developed the graduate naturalist training program at Wolf Ridge, espouses an improvisational teaching approach in which naturalists say "Yes...and..." to the discoveries and interests of the students.  As a result, we never have the same experience at Wolf Ridge but it's always a great adventure.

A few examples: 

• The Herons have been keeping track of phenology signs for many years and when we heard the chickadee “fee-bee” call I knew that it might be one of the first of the season at Wolf Ridge.  We checked the phenology board and it hadn’t been recorded yet.  The student who first heard it gathered up her courage to find Charlie and tell him the news.  And Charlie?  He stopped everything he was doing to have a conversation with her.  He put down his lunch tray and got out his notebook to write it down and then he asked her name so that everyone would know who the observer was.  “This is your observation!” He didn’t know that the child was a kid who doesn’t always get that kind of affirmation.  He didn’t know how huge it was for her to be celebrated by a “real scientist” (her words).  He just cared for her and honored her science observation as real.
• 

  The Herons' new burl.
  We were in waist deep snow when a child called out to me (from very far away) “MICHELLE!  I FOUND A BURL!” I waded toward him and he waded toward me (much more quickly) and when we met up the words tumbled out of him, “I found a burl in a tree.  It’s a big ball thing and Joe [Walewski] told me it’s like a scab except it doesn’t fall out and it’s from a bacteria or a virus. And the tree keeps growing around it and it gets bigger and bigger and the virus can spread to other trees so they get them too…”  This was not a child who usually effused like this but he had seen something that made him curious and Joe was right there in the waist deep snow to recognize that curiosity and stoke it.  Joe wondered along side the child and validated his amazement.  Soon he was seeing burls everywhere and the other kids were finding burls for the child.  That would be a good story, of course, but Joe went out with a chain saw the next day and cut a burl from a white spruce. The kids had wondered what was in the middle of a burl and Joe came to the end of our frozen lake class, burl and chainsaw in hand.  Together, they planned the cut and then went outside to watch the "Chainsaw of Science".  It was very exciting.  The burl is heading home with us to dry a bit and be sanded.  It will be a part of our classroom’s museum and will, I’m sure, become legendary.
• And there's always the wonder of Chickadee Landing.  By the time they are fifth graders, our kids have been watching and learning about chickadees for years.  But Chickadee Landing gives them the chance to discover the birds in a whole new way. Wolf Ridge has built special benches that have backs that look like people.  They keep a well stocked feeder in the center of the space.  When we arrive, we lower the feeder and sit perfectly still with seed on our heads and mittens.  And the birds come!  They flutter by our ears.  They call to each other from just behind our hats.  They seem impossibly loud for such little beings.  They perch on us and we watch them choose a seed and fly away.  I have lost count of how many times I've been to Chickadee Landing but it's magical to see the students' eyes widen when a chickadee chooses their hat.

 But all of the discovery isn't academic.  Students also discover that they are capable, essential workers during KP where they serve meals and clean up afterwards.  They discover that they are ready to be out on their own (at least for a little while) when they sleep away from home for four nights.  They discover new friends who love to play Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza as much as they do.  They discover new adults who care about them and enjoy swapping dad jokes along the sometimes very long trail.  They discover that they can wake up, brush their teeth, and dress themselves for -20 degree weather pretty much by themselves.  They discover they are responsible enough to belay a friend on a rock wall.  They discover that if they put one foot in front of another, they can achieve their goals on the ropes course (even when it's scary).

Next Wednesday at 12:20, the fifth graders will share their discoveries with the rest of the school at a special all school gathering.  We invite you to join us and experience a little of the wonder of Wolf Ridge.

This is Water - Exploring Culture Along the Silk Road

A letter to Charlemagne sharing newly learned information

One of the things I most love about teaching fourth and fifth graders is that they are just becoming aware of a world beyond themselves.  They are just able to conceive that someone may have a different experience that is equally real and valid to their own.  I remember (with a lot of embarrassment) the moment my fifth grade, suburban Ohio self realized (with some embarrassment) that even though I had to translate a spanish word into english in order to understand it, not everyone did.  My second grade self had thought that all of these words I was learning in an after school program were like a code, my third grade self realized that it was a language that people spoke but didn't interrogate what that meant.  It wasn't until fifth grade that it dawned on me that people who speak spanish fluently don't think in english (unless they also speak english fluently) and that their interior monologue was not like my own.  Woah.

It was the hope of sparking those moments of "woah" that led me to our Silk Road theme.  I often think about David Foster Wallace's essay/speech "This is Water" which is about many things but whose title refers to a parable of two fish who don't realize that they live in water.  Wallace urges us to examine "the value of the totally obvious."  But what is the "obvious?" For the fish - it is water.  But what is the water of a Heron at Prairie Creek Community School in Northfield, Minnesota?  The most "obvious, important realities" according to Wallace are the most difficult to see and talk about.  Travel is a powerful way to challenge the obvious - but school budgets being what they are, a global tour did not seem feasible.  Thus, the Silk Road.

The conceit is that we are a caravan journeying along the Silk Road for Charlemagne.  He has charged us with finding out the secret of silk production -- he is tired of paying such high prices for the luxurious fabric.  Before we began, we had to learn about our water as Europeans in 800 CE.  Charlemagne is Christian so as members of his court, we are Christian (we did a very brief dip into the fact that the Christian church at the time one a single church whose leader was the pope in Rome).  We use roman numerals and Latin is the language of the church and government.  Most people can't read or write.  We use a lot of technologies like Roman roads and aqueducts that were created hundreds of years ago. We stocked up on goods in a roman market and headed east - asking everyone along the way where they had gotten the silk they were selling in the market (so far, the answer has always been the next trading center to the east.).

Our first two stops - Constantinople and Antioch - were easy to get to.  We took boats on the Mediterranean and arrived after a several days trip.  Not surprisingly, the cities we encountered were not too different from Rome.  There were some new foods and there was more Greek than Latin but the ease of travel around the Mediterranean Sea meant that goods, languages, and ideas had all been easy to transfer.

As we headed east toward Merv, however, we encountered many challenges -- weather, bandits, steep mountains. To simulate travel, we researched the

Trying some cucumbers (with our Silk Road map in the background)

geography and the speed a caravan could move through certain terrain.  We rolled dice to determine the weather, hunting and safety from bandits for each day we were on the trail.  By the time we arrived in Merv, we were exhausted and grumpy. 

We reflected on how long in real time it would have taken us and the fact that almost no one traveled more than a few miles away from one's home for one's entire life.  Travel just took too long.  This is why relay trade was the only kind of trade transaction during this time.  Goods were passed from middleman to middleman along complex routes.  Travelers like Ibn Battuta, Marco Polo, and Fa-Hsien were so exceptional they became legends.

In Merv, the language, letters, and religion were different.  There were only ten symbols for all the numbers.  They had frozen ice in the middle of blazing summers and underground canals that delivered cool water from the mountains.  Each caravan had an expert who would explore the city focussing on one area: language, trade goods, food and craft, music and entertainment, religion and medicine, and technologies.  Caravans would re-convene and each member would teach the others what they had learned about this new place.

As we've traveled back through time and space, students have begun to examine some of their own conceptions of what is "obvious."  What would have been "obvious" to someone living in Antioch or Merv?  What is "normal" in one place (like the concept of zero in Kashgar) is treated with deep suspicion in Rome and vice versa.  Of course, when their character experiences these "woah" moments in our role play, many students begin to make the connection to their own life.  What things are they growing up with that might be completely different from some other kid -- maybe a kid half way around the world, maybe the kid sitting next to them.

My hope is that the sense of discovery and adventure we feel as we travel along the Silk Road will engender a similar sense of wonder as the Herons learn about each other and their world.

 

Caravans planning

Engraving "ivory" (soap stone) in Kashgar

Caravans sharing information

Felting in Merv

Pomegranates from Merv

Antioch is famous for its cucumbers.

Caravans planning

Noodles in Kashgar

Caravans sharing information

 

 

What's Going on In There? (The Makings of a Culminating Event)

Culminating events are a longstanding tradition at Prairie Creek.  Over the years, we've transformed the gym into a rain forest, built a scale model of the Great Wall of China and built a 25 foot tall mushroom (in a steady 30 mph wind).  Culminating events are a lot of fun.  They are a lot of work.  But what are the deeper reasons we do the work?

Reason #1 - Review

We have learned a lot about space over the past five weeks.  The first step we take to get ready for a culminating event is to list as much as we can about what we learned.  Things are sometimes slow as we start to build our web but then the students begin to leap frog from one another's contributions.  Soon the board is filled to the brim with content.  Information is much more likely to be stored in long term memory if students have to access it repeatedly.  Reviewing what we have learned is just the start.

Reason #2 - Synthesis

After we've reviewed everything we learned, students choose an area to teach others about.  Inevitably, as they work to "find the words" to explain things, they develop a much deeper understanding of the content.  I'll often watch them use their hands to show a process or relationship and then, with encouragement, they begin to express that understanding in language.  This is much higher order thinking than recalling information.  What is important?  What do people need to know first?  How do you explain the parts so that someone can understand the whole?

The orbital motion group had done an experiment to feel orbital forces but, when they went to present, they realized they couldn't really explain what was going on.  They worked on how to explain gravity and in the process of working on how to explain gravity they realized they had to explain mass.  Along the way, they took a side trip to learn about early gravity experiments by dropping objects of different weights from a table.  This information might not get shared with every visitor to their booth, but it enhances their understanding and their ability to teach others.

Reason #3 - Research

Almost always students identify new things they need to know when they are working on teaching others.  They have new questions or they realize that they are fuzzy on something and want to know more.  Probably a third of the new learning in a theme is done when we are getting ready to culminate a theme.  One of the most valuable things students can learn at Prairie Creek is how to ask questions and how to find answers.  Getting ready for a culminating event gives them an authentic reason to hone these skills. 

The Life Cycle of a Star group realized that they didn't know what a neutron star was.  To learn more about it, they went back and reviewed what an atom was.  They remembered that an atom was mostly space so it made sense that if a neutron star had atoms that had collapsed in on themselves a neutron star would be very, very dense (imagine compressing 1.5 times the mass of our solar system into a star 6 miles across.). They were also excited to learn about the positive charge of a proton combining with the negative charge of an electron to form a neutron.    

Reason #4 - Presenting

Not all culminations involve talking to the public, but many do.  Once students think they are "ready," I ask them to practice with me.  I walk up to them, smile and say, "Hi!" in an encouraging way.  They often stare at me, unsure of what to do next.  We then practice how to engage with someone, how to begin sharing information.  We practice speaking clearly and making eye contact. We work on anticipating questions and formulating answers ahead of time. Some students are more comfortable working from a script at first...others are ready to share information more organically.  

For our space culmination, the students also wrote about a planet as though they were a tour guide.  Early in the theme, they did research and taught each other about the planets through this tour.  Then they revised their scripts so that they would work as a whole.  Students have been practicing how to speak loudly, slowly and clearly.  We've also talked about how to hold one's body when on stage and how to play up funny lines (hopefully this work won't be in vain!)

Reason #5 - An Authentic Reason to Learn

Teaching others is, in my opinion, one of the most authentic reasons to learn something.  At Prairie Creek, we don't use tests or grades as a motivator to get students to engage with material.  Instead, the opportunity and responsibility to teach others drives much of our work.  Teaching gives us the opportunity to go above and beyond - to add sparkle and do extra things to make our teaching even better.  The compliments and wows we get from our audience are evidence that our work is meaningful.

Reason #6 - A Community of Learners

Culminating events often spark learning in the other classes. Students learn about something and decide to do a personal project on it.  Learning from culminating events is woven into themes in other classrooms when children remember information and connect it to the new things they are learning. 

But even when the learning is not tied directly back into other classrooms, culminating events confirm that at Prairie Creek we learn and we are curious.  Younger students see older students who are committed to teaching them (and, soon, they will have the chance to teach the older students). Everyone is asking questions.  Everyone is interested.  We are learners.

Family members expand this community of learners.  Your curiosity and wonder models life-long learning for students.  We don't learn because we have to; we learn because we want to.  When you learn from your child (and, hopefully, all the other kids, too) you are telling them that they are interesting and that their ideas have value.  They know things that you don't (yet).  What a gift you give them when you learn from them.

So...that's why we've turned our classroom upside down this past week.  That's why I was at Menards getting a laser pointer for the planetarium and at Cub getting Tang (yes, they still make Tang!). That's why we have been frantically taping and coloring and constructing.  We are excited to share what we've learned but there's a lot more than that going on beneath the surface.

The Many Ways We Math

A recent exploration of factors

There is a lot out there about literacy and the importance of a literature rich classroom and home.  There is not nearly the same amount of cultural focus on numeracy - and yet number underlies every aspect of our lives -- even as I type my computer has translated my keystrokes into hexadecimal numbers that correspond to pixels on an xy axis. (Woah!)

 

We do math every day in the Herons. We do math in a lot of different ways.  We often do math that the Herons don't realize is math.  I hope that students are able to use number to explore and understand their world.  I hope that they like to play with number.  But I also hope that they develop mathematical habits of mind so that they see math as a process of observing, making conjectures, testing and re-thinking.  Communication is key.  "Failure" is important because it is only through testing a conjecture that we can make it stronger. 

One of the challenges of teaching math is that, in order to discover patterns, make conjectures and talk about math, students need a certain amount of facility with computation and vocabulary.  It's not enough to just explore.  Students need to solidify those explorations and be able to use that knowledge efficiently to push their learning ceiling higher.

To help facilitate that process, our math program has many parts.  I realized that we sometimes don't talk explicitly about the purpose of each element and wanted to take the opportunity to do that:

Exploration Math (often called "Illustrative Math") - This is when we work with children to use numbers, algebra, data, graphing and geometry to make se

A record of our class conversation about the factor exploration.

nse of the world.  We focus on a math concept such as fractions for 2-3 weeks.  The Illustrative Math curriculum guides our work and we supplement it with problems and teaching strategies from many other sources including Marilyn Burns, YouCubed, Nrich, Math Recovery and Think Math.  During Exploration Math time, we use games, open ended problems, and other math experiences to build students' understanding of a mathematical concept.  We do a lot of work that emphasizes talking and writing about math to solidify our own understanding of concepts and master a shared math vocabulary.   Once the concept is solidified, we often introduce algorithms so that students can use their understanding effectively when solving more complex problems.

Foundation Math - This is an almost daily practice session when students are gaining ease with computation.  We focus on understanding algorithms and using them accurately to get answers to computational problems.  While calculators are an invaluable tool, we also want students to be able to solve problems accurately and easily using paper and pencil.  In addition, working problems regularly helps information "stick," solidifying students' memory of a skill.

Fluency Math - It is really important that students know some things in math automatically (Here is a document that explains the "why").  By fourth and fifth grade, we are focussing on multiplication fluency.  We use a variety of tools to track our ability to recall math facts automatically.  Initially, students work on multiplication facts in this order:0s, 1s, 2s, 5s, 10s, 11s, 9s, squares, and then the "last 10 facts" which have not been memorized in the preceding sets:  3x4, 3x6, 3x7, 3x8, 4x6, 4x7, 4x8, 6x7, 6x8, 7x8.  Students then "flip" their multiplication knowledge to master division and finally, common percent/fraction/decimal equivalencies (e.g. 1/5=20%)

Number Talks - We often write a problem on the board and have students solve it mentally then share their pathway to a solution.  This encourages math communication and flexible thinking. It also shores up number sense.

Math Problem of the Week - a multi-step problem in which students are asked not just to give an answer but to explain how they arrived at their answer.  The focus is on explaining the process of solving and it develops students' ability to communicate about math succinctly and clearly.

"Recreational Math" - A lot of elementary math focuses on computation but that is only a small fraction of the world of math.  We take the time to introduce students to some of the biggest questions in math in a way they can understand.  The Game of Sprouts is an example of this kind of math.  Students love exploring these new ideas and, even though some of the math used in explaining will not be taught to them for years, it's valuable for them to be excited by these big math ideas.  (Click on the link to find out just how big an idea our little math challenge was.)

Serendipitous Math - Part of my job as a teacher is to look for ways to pull math into our daily classroom life.  Math conversations can pop up in meeting.  Impromptu class surveys help us crunch data efficiently.  A current event might give us a chance to noodle on the numbers involved (just how much snow does it take to make a giant snow shark?)  Math is everywhere and it helps us understand things.

Whew.  It's a lot of math and, when we do it right, it's exciting and engaging and real.  I very rarely have a student ask, "When are we going to use this?" because they are using it right now.

I will write more soon about the ways families can support numeracy at home.  But I wanted to get the conversation started.

Becoming a Big Bird

The Herons at work during guided recess.

When students travel upstairs and become fourth graders in Prairie Creek, we call them "Big Birds." Their role in the school changes significantly and they are held to very high expectations -- especially when we are with younger classes.  These first six weeks we are very directly teaching what it means to be a big kid at Prairie Creek.  For the most part, the rules around games (gentle tagging, call yourself out) and the woods (stay 10 feet from the creek) were learned long ago.  But now they are the keepers of the Prairie Creek way -- they are the ones who show the younger students what it means to include and care for each other.

During guided recess, we focus on how to connect to younger children. We even have a "Bird Watchers Guide" that's like a field guide to the kids they'll find at recess. Our older students learn to get down to eye level and be gentle in their voices.  They learn how to play tag gently enough to be safe with smaller children. They learn how to reach out to shy kids or kids who have been left out.  They learn how to constructively guide bossy kids and how to manage arguments about missing goldens in the woods (it's always the squirrels who took it).

They learn many kids' names and learn the importance of using those names so that kids feel seen and known in our school.  They also learn the power of their kindness.  By the very fact that they are a "big kid" they can bestow "coolness" on a child who might be left out of a game.  They can make that child feel like the center of the universe just by paying attention and being kind.  Conversely, a harsh word is amplified far more than they might realize so they must manage their impulsivity and think twice before saying something unkind.

Big birds are expected to care for younger students throughout the school day.  If they see a younger child in the hall, they say "Hi" with a smile.  If someone is fooling around in the bathroom, the older students are expected to remind them of the correct behavior and guide them back to their classroom.  If we are at All School Gathering and a younger child is having trouble listening, their Big Bird buddy reminds them gently with our silent signal.  For some kids, it wasn't so long ago they were the ones receiving the gentle reminder!  It's a big step to be the one doing the guiding.

Big Birds have additional leadership opportunities at Prairie Creek.  They often organize a student council and lead school-wide activities, service and celebrations.  Last year, the Big Birds founded an environmental club and with the help of Ryan and some St. Olaf students they build a hoop house. That group will continue their work this year.

The transformation these first weeks is astonishing.  The hesitant almost third graders who walk through the door on the first day become fully fledged Herons (sorry for the bird pun).  They are ready to lead and they are also ready to have more freedoms - the other benefit of taking on more responsibility.  It is truly an exciting time.

The Herons led a gentle game of "Mirror, Mirror"

Connecting one on one build the community

Serendipity and Learning

It is very difficult to write or speak succinctly about progressive education but, when I'm asked to, I talk about authenticity.  Teaching progressively means that the students feel that what they are learning is real and means something.  There are many ways to create authentic moments in the classroom, but one of the most joyful is serendipitous learning.

Serendipity is defined by Oxford as "the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way."  Serendipitous learning is learning that happens seemingly by chance (more on that "seemingly" in paragraph 7).  We discover and explore something together as a class.  The unexpected has happened and we feel a need to figure it out.  An example from this week:

As we settled in to read aloud in the meeting area on the first day, a drop of something fell on a student as she came into the meeting area.  "Something dripped on me!"  Suddenly all eyes went up.  "That tube has lots of drips on it!"  "Is it leaking?"  "Is it water?!?" I asked the students to share what they noticed.  The drops were in a line at the bottom of the tube.  The tube had an air vent in it so where was the water coming from?  I asked them if the tube was going to be hot or cold - almost everyone thought hot.  We sent the tallest Heron up on a chair to test, "Cold!" She reported.

Hmmmm. The windows were open (even with the air conditioning on, I like to encourage fresh air circulation) and it was a warm humid day.  I asked the student to hypothesize where the drips were coming from if it wasn't leaking out of the tube. "The air?"  What do you mean? "Like rain comes out of the air." There was a lot of excited chatter as the Herons considered this.  Several students volunteered how the air has water in gas form in it -- I drew up a diagram on the board to illustrate what they were talking about.  "So how does the water get from gas form to drips?"  Eventually we got to thinking about temperature - it's very cold high in the sky where clouds form and the tube was cold to the touch.  I shared that warm air can hold a lot more water than cold air in gas form and the Herons has an epiphany.  The tube was cooling off the air and the water was coming out of it. "CONDENSATION!" one student yelled.  Another followed with evaporation.  We drew the water cycle on the board.  "We have our own mini weather system in the Herons."  So cool.  Now on to the read aloud.

What is this?!

One of the reasons we began forest school was because of the way it engenders serendipitous learning.  We never know what we are going to find outside.  Just this Wednesday, we discovered three different kinds of bumps on the underside of oak leaves.  What were they?  iNaturalist said they were galls.  I gave a quick mini-lesson on what galls were (fifth graders were already on the lookout for goldenrod galls and the tasty grubs they hold).  These galls were too small for us to find a grub.  What could be in there?  Students build a bar graph out of the leaves they were finding separated into the three different kinds - there were a lot more white fuzzies.  Then we saw a small solitary wasp on one of the leaves.  Was it laying eggs? How could we tell?  (It flew up too high to observe, sadly.)

Another group called us over the the magnolia tree.  It has strange globby growths at the ends of the branches.  Were these galls?  One of them seemed to be splitting open and had a bright red thing popping out.  A seed? We dissected it to learn more.  Students remembered that the flowers were at the ends of the branches and that flowers often turn into fruits...this seemed to be a very strange seed.  "Can we plant it?"

Ironically, serendipitous learning doesn't actually just "happen" even though it feels that way to the class.  As a teacher, I am constantly watching for the opportunity to bring something unexpected forward.  I try to create an environment in which we are noticing things all the time and I'm ready to ask the questions that bring us from noticing to understanding.  The class, too, has to learn to go with the unexpected.  Sometimes we're even conspiratorial about it, "I know we're supposed to be doing this but this other thing is amazing.  Let's go that way for a while and then get back to our "supposed to."  (A secret? A surprising number of our serendipitous journeys actually are standards based (one has to really know the standards to teach progressively because you are always watching for the best moment to bring something forward.))

I, too, have to be learning along side the class to make the learning truly authentic.  I'm modeling curiosity and, importantly, an openness to not knowing (yet).  In a very short time, curiosity becomes the capital of the classroom - that's who we are. The more practice we get as a class finding the fascinating, the easier it is to discover things to be interested in.  Serendipity is what has kept me in the classroom all of these years - I never know for sure exactly what the day will hold and I wouldn't have it any other way.

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.