Friday, April 28, 2017

Week 30 -- Choose your own adventure




This week has been a whirlwind of collaboration. On Monday, we began working on an all-class choose-your-own-adventure story. We began by composing the first portion together as a whole-group activity, projecting the story on the big class TV. We took turns offering ideas for plot points and dialogue, finding our way to the first big branching point. We continued on and wrote the first parts of each branch as a group. At that point, we had four stories to continue, so we broke into smaller groups. Those groups continued autonomously, each coming up with their own subsequent branching points and splitting into smaller and smaller groups as the stories progressed. Eventually, everyone will be writing endings individually (and contributing to other storylines as they develop). It’s all being recorded in a crazy shared Google document. It's been a delight to see how the kids have taken the stories in radically different directions. You can sneak a peek of it here, with the caveat that it has not been completed or edited yet.

Friday, April 21, 2017

Week 29 -- Reflections, presentation, and 20 words


This was quite a varied week. As Place Out of Time draws to a close, we are taking time to look back on the experience with a reflection assignment. Our first Into the Biome project group placed the order for their game cards, which we are all eager to see in person. Sana shared a presentation on her recent trip to India, complete with an assortment of snacks brought back from the other side of the globe. One writing prompt asked students what items they would save if their house burned down (assuming all family and pets were already safe), and another asked them to imagine a world in which they could only use 20 words for the rest of their lives. (Making a list of 20 essential words is challenging, to say the least.) Perhaps the most animated discussions this week surrounded the first hints of our annual Spring trip, the details of which are currently being nailed down. (Families, expect an email about this soon.)


In Math group, we continued learning some of the rules of the Roman numeral system, while also devoting a fair amount of time to our Singapore books.