Week 14 -- Peer review, myth, and multiplication

Scenes from the Stratford workshop

The week of the school play is almost always wholly consumed by rehearsal and prep, and this year is no different. We’ve spent much of our homeroom time running our lines, practicing the staging, and trying to hone our performances to make sure that we put on a good show. Meanwhile, the students who don’t have roles in the play have been working to design and construct the props needed for the show. We hope to see you at one of the performances of the show!

Week 11 -- Myth, music, and math

Week Three -- Tigers, monarchs, ethnography, and Farkle

A monarch emerges during Math class. 

Our third week of school has been regularly punctuated by excited cries as caterpillars began pupating (ask your child), and later as butterflies emerged. With Lisa’s guidance, we’ve begun tagging our monarchs with tracking stickers, then releasing them back into the wild. If all goes well, we should be releasing several more in the next week or two. We also began reading a book together as a class called The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo. We’re doing a close read of this novel, taking time to think and talk about the craft of the writing and the intent of the author. We’ve also continued learning about the Yanomami tribe of South America, and got to have a lively conversation with an actual ethnographer who came to speak to the entire 5/6 about her work. In our writing journals, we explored the question, "What is the best way to talk to someone with different political beliefs?” It’s a question that I’m sure we’ll be coming back to regularly in the weeks leading up to Election Day.

Guest Speaker: Sam French, writer and director of Buzkashi Boys

On Wednesday, March 30, we welcomed Academy Award nominated director Sam French to our school. Sam was in Ann Arbor speaking at the University of Michigan, and we were lucky enough to have him address the Summers-Knoll middle schoolers for an engaging question and answer session about his work. 

Weeks 9 - 13: Miscellany

I take a lot of photos over the course of a week. Here's a smattering of odds and ends from recent weeks. 

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Juna is camera shy. 

Week 9 in review

Yet another newcomer has taken up residence in the Middle School Commons. Drop by to take a peek at the lovely new habitat the next time you're in the building!  

Book groups

Joanna talks about A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula LaGuin.

Starting next Monday, we'll begin our new book groups. Each group of four-to-five students will be reading one of five different books:

Not pictured: Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli. (Our copies are on order...)

Rachel Goldberg, our resident librarian, came in and gave inspiring book talks about each novel on Monday. We then asked each student to rank them in the order of greatest-to-least interest. We'll be announcing the groups soon, but everyone seems likely to get their first or second choice.

Each group will be led by an adult, who will be reading the novel along with the students and guiding discussions. Everyone seems very excited about it!

ART: Guest artist Jennifer Hoffman

Artist Jennifer Hoffman visited school today to teach us a little about working with watercolors. Everyone tried out different techniques, such as dry brushing and using salt or alcohol on the paint. Everyone came away with a mini-masterpiece or two! 

Artist Martin Cheek presents our new dragon!

Guest Speaker Perry Kulper

On Tuesday, we were fortunate to have architect and University of Michigan professor Perry Kulper in to visit with our class. 

STEM: Chromatography lab

We had a guest teacher yesterday afternoon! Laura Cesa visited from the University of Michigan to lead us in a chromatography lab. We used the ink in markers to get a hands-on experience with the components of solutions, making connections to the often invisible contaminants that can enter our drinking water. 

Read a little more about it here. 

Thank you for visiting, Laura! 

Visitors from Joanna's class

We had visitors from Joanna's class this afternoon, who came to give a quick presentation on the physics of sky lanterns (specifically, how and why they go up). We'll be using them this Friday as part of an end-of-2013 school wide event.

Block printing workshop with Gregg Perez

Guest Artist Gregg Perez was back today to help us create our own block prints today. Each student selected a drawing of their own (mostly line drawings of things we've studied at County Farm Park), then set to the task of carving their block. The results were impressive... 

Guest Artist: Gregg Perez

We have a guest artist in Art today! We're learning about block printing today from artist Gregg Perez. Tomorrow, he'll help us create prints from our own artwork!

Check out his work here and here! 

County Farm Park projects with City of Ann Arbor Naturalists

We spent this afternoon tromping through Britton Woods in County Farm Park with two guest speakers from the City of Ann Arbor. 

The kids explained their various projects to our guest speakers, then set off to data collection and discussion with our experts. Questions were asked and advice was sought. Some students were able to refine their studies a bit, setting the stage for a full afternoon in the park this Friday afternoon. 

Malletts Creek

World Percussion Music clinic

The whole school is gathered in the atrium for a world percussion clinic and performance, organized by Josh. 


Here's a quick video snippet: 

Conferring with Jules on County Farm Park projects

Jules came in this afternoon to help us really focus on our County Farm Park projects. We spent a lot of time discussing each individual's project, exploring how it might be narrowed down, and helped us think about how to meaningfully collect data when we're out in the field. We looked at maps, read through guides, and began creating procedures and data collection instruments. 

They're shaping up to be an interesting blend of studies! Mapping deer trails, conducting a tree census, comparing the same species in different biomes, and mapping the flow of water through the park are just a few of the different projects that individuals are developing. 

Jules will be back next Friday, which will be spent in the park collecting data. 

Classroom guest! Tree identification with Jules

We had a guest speaker today! This morning, Jules came in to talk to us about plant identification. We took a walking tour of the Summers-Knoll campus, examining them and using a dichotomous key to identify the specific species of trees found around our school.

Here, Jules points out the features of the Norway Maple in front of the school. We also examined a large Silver Maple in our courtyard, a Scotch Pine (sometimes referred to as a "volcano tree"), a Black Pine, and some Common Buckthorn.

 Jules will be helping us shape our County Farm Park projects in the days ahead.