First Day/Last Day

September 6, 2016:	June 6, 2017

Scenes from the last couple of days of the year

Field day game: The class had to unscramble a phrase that was related to our school year. They got it! 

FIELD DAY!

2016-2017 -- Greatest Hits

I made a video last year that was a sort of greatest hits from the year (view it here). It was fun to create, and well-received by the kids, so here is this year's version. Enjoy this peek into what we've been up to this year. (Tidbit: The still photos at the beginning were all taken on the first day of the school year.) 

Week 36 -- We have begun our final descent

As I’m sure you know, we had an amazing trip last week, and I heartily recommend you take a look at the previous entries to see what we were up to. We’re not taking a break now that we’re back!

Spring Trip -- Day 4 -- Serpent Mound and HOME

Greetings from Ohio! We woke up in LaGrange, Kentucky this morning and made our way to the Serpent Mound in Adams County, Ohio. Check out these photos from the final day of our trip. 

Spring Trip -- Day 3 -- photos and photos and photos

 Greetings from Kentucky! Please enjoy these photos of our third day of adventures.

Spring Trip -- Day 2 -- photo-rama

Greetings from Kentucky! Here's a trove of photos for you to take a look through. They are barely curated and often blurry, as it is difficult to take photos in caves. Nevertheless, look carefully and you'll see some kids having a blast. 

Spring Trip -- Day 1 -- photos galore

Our little class is on a big trip! Here's an assortment of photos to give you a sense of what we've been up to. These cover day one, which found us departing from S-K, heading to the Creation Museum in Kentucky, and then finishing up the day in Cave City. 

Week 32 -- Reflections and running

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.

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.

Week 28 -- Place Out of Time banquet 2017

Week 27 -- Cover your cough, wash your hands

Checking on the tulips that we planted earlier this year

As I’m sure you’re aware, our class has been ravaged by illness for the last two weeks, making the daily taking of the attendance a somber affair. Happily, we have plenty of ongoing project work that lends itself well to independent and small group work.

Week 26 -- Tom Joad and dying houseplants

Week 25 -- Pi, pi, shoplifting, and justice

Recording our gravity car trials in science 

Week 24 -- Greetings from Livonia

Middle school trip to Livonia 

Week 23 -- Filling in the gaps, fear is a LIAR.

In science, we're continuing to work with our gravity-powered cars. 

After a relaxing week off, we got right to work with an extension to our Place Out of Time timelines project. By now, almost everyone has a detailed timeline of the life of their character posted in the appropriate spot on our giant timeline in the middle school commons. However, most of our characters are clustered in the twentieth century. This week, we have spent some time populating the gaps in our huge timeline to provide more context for the scope of human history. For example, before this week, there were no events recorded in the entire 1400s. Now, there are notes about the world-changing voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492, and another noting that the game of chess was in its modern form by 1475. Each student has been tasked with putting up at least five cards on the timeline this week, with more to come in the weeks ahead. Also POOT-related, Sam led the entire 5-6 group in a discussion about dignity, which is a concept that is the heart of the issue framing Place Out of Time this year.

Week 22 - Archigram and ice capades

This week, we began digging into the issue that will drive many of our Place Out of Time conversations over the course of the semester. It concerns an Italian court decision that overturned the conviction of a homeless man who had shoplifted a small amount of food. The court declared that his act couldn’t be considered a crime because he was in a state of need. To unpack the issue a bit, we went through an extremely simplified example of how societies function. (Ask your child about the desert island example.)

Week 21 -- Writing resumes and eating cake

The focus of our homeroom time remains learning about our Place Out of Time characters. Over the course of the week, the timelines of our lives have been completed and posted in the Middle School Commons, allowing us to see how our characters relate to one another in time. We also began speaking in character with one another, having first learned a little about the rules of improvisational acting.