Shakespeare Lives

During snack each week we have been listening to the plays of William Shakespeare as retold by Bruce Coville. We started with Romeo and Juliet and then moved on to the dark tragedy, MacBeth. In our discussions we have talked about the characteristics of a tragedy and spent much time getting to know Shakespeare's characters. Which ones did we most admire, revile, or enjoy? Soon we will move on to learning more about William Shakespeare, the playwright and how theaters were developed in the Elizabethan era. Once a month Shakespeare Movie Night will allow us to watch Shakespeare in action. The first film we watched was West Side Story. A lively discussion followed about why Leonard Bernstein changed the ending of this version of Romeo & Juliet. After learning about William Shakespeare and hopefully building a model of the Globe Theater we will listen to Midsummer Night's Dream and enjoy memorizing some of Shakespeare's famous words.

Place Value

In our place value class, five students learn how to use the number grid to quickly add and subtract numbers. Along the way, students explore how there are many ways to get a single answer. Students learn the value of the ones and tens place, as well as how to move up and down the hundreds chart by other methods than simply counting by ones. We are exploring the different patterns that can help students navigate the chart.

The Dragonling Book Club

Sometimes doing what is right is not what is easy. Four of our younger students are learning about this through the book The Dragonling by Jackie French Koller. Here students try to put themselves in the shoes of the young boy in the book, Darek, who is going against the wishes of his village in order to save the life of a young dragon. Throughout the book, students are asked to reflect on key themes that run through the book such as loyalty and values. Would you be able to go against the norms of society in order to do the right thing? The students try to put themselves into Darek’s shoes by writing diary entries, having group discussions and using this book to make connections to other books, the world and their own lives.

Worms are Fun

What fun our youngest students had learning about worms! We were lucky to have live worms to study and draw this fall. We observed how worms moved and dug their tunnels. We also conducted an experiment to see whether worms like to be in the light or dark and wet or dry. Although some of us still think worms are “yucky” we all agree that worms are wonderful workers, helping to loosen soil and digesting rotting matter to make food for plants. Here we are with our finished display of our drawn and bas relief worms, labeled inside and out.

Wonderful Water

Molly Molecule is a song that you may hear around the New School in the coming weeks. She is made of H2O (which is water you know). Stay tuned for more about Molly and her adventures in the water cycle as we learn in science class about where we find water in the world, and how we use all that wonderful water!

Decimals

We began our decimal class by making connections between decimals and our last unit on fractions. We discovered that decimals are fractions with denominators that are a multiple of ten. Comparing decimals came next as we placed ourselves in order on a giant number line according to the decimal or fraction card chosen. We had fun creating our own decimal word problems on graph paper with problems involving sharing chocolate bars and cake. Then we moved on to learning how to properly line up decimals in order to add or subtract them. Subtracting across zero was tricky but what joy when we were able to complete a problem on our own! Playing Decimopoly has been a favorite game request on contracts. We are moving on to percent and have been making matches of an equivalent fraction, decimal and percent. We will once again use our giant number line to add our percent cards. This has helped us to have a better understanding of whole numbers and parts of a whole.

Worms

Students in grade 2 spent 6 weeks observing worms and their behavior. First we predicted whether worms prefer light or dark, prefer moist or dry areas, and how they react to touch and then we set up experiments each week and watched them. We witnessed within minutes that worms like dark and moist surroundings.

Together with the youngest students we created a mural showing their preferred habitat and their predators.


Finally we each created a graphic poster showing what we learned about worms in words and pictures. We learned how worms help the earth,we learned about their predators, what they eat and much more.

Light

A good question can lead us to a lot of learning. How do you see with your eye?
We started our 6 week unit studying the human eye. Each week we learned about a new feature of the eye. So far we have learned about the iris, the pupil, the lens, muscle, retina and optic nerve.

Then we asked, Which light sources would you not want to be without?
We considered many objects that give off light but life without the sun we could not quite imagine! While all objects reflect light we were interested in identifying in the school objects that are light sources.

How does light travel?
Mirrors helped us answer this question. We learned that light travels in straight lines. We learned that a mirror reverses what we see. We learned that depending on how we set up mirrors we can change how many bears were in the reflection! We could even make the bear disappear!

What is the difference between translucent, opaque and transparent materials?
We will enjoy experimenting with these materials and using what we learn to create shadow puppets.

Finally we will observe how white light is made up of different colors. Now, how will we do that?