Immigration Videos from 2012-2013

Last year at The New School, as part of our social studies unit on Immigration, each student interviewed one of their ancestors who had immigrated to America. The students took on that role and were interviewed telling their story. Click on the link below to watch the videos. 

https://cloud.ensemblevideo.com/app/sites/index.aspx?destinationID=7cVkGrwsNkmOpAJdy5uwFA 

Math Problem Solving

We value giving children the opportunity to problem solve and think critically.  A group of 2^nd graders met once a week to tackle problems such as: “How many feet would there be in our room if all the people living in your houses came to our class at the same time.” Or “If I found 50 cents in a parking lot and had to share it equally between 3 people how much would each person get?” It was interesting to see how some children chose to you use drawings, others numbers and some just needed to talk it through. We paid special attention to what children did when they got stumped. Did they get frustrated, try again or ask for help? The 50 cent problem was probably the most challenging. After half an hour of working on this, children came to an answer using different paths. One child drew pennies in the corner of her page, until she had distributed 50 pennies. But that presented a problem when she realized that everyone didn’t get the same amount. What to do with the left over pennies! Another child took a guess and suggested each person would get 15 pennies, but then after figuring out there were pennies left to be shared, he decided it should be 20 pennies each. Then he went down to 19, then 18, then 17 and finally 16 pennies each. 

Poetry with Kenneth Koch

Inspired by Kenneth Koch's book, Rose, Where Did You Get That Red? the older students spent 6 weeks studying the poems of Wallace Stevens’ Thirteen Ways to Look at a Blackbird; John Ashbery’s Into the Dusk-Charged Air: Arthur Rimbaud’s  Voyelles; William Blake’s Tyger Tyger, Rivers, Kenneth Koch's prompts for children are both motivating and creative and a joy to teach.  

By Agnes:

As I lay upon the beach

Dusk has kissed the horizons

Reach, the salty sea spray

Touches my neck as I dive off

Of the deck, the ocean wraps

It waves around me as if

To never set me free.

By Max

RIVER AND THE FIVE SENSES

A fast river looks like sand dunes

With blue sand.

A fast river smells like the ocean

And seaweed

And sweet sand.

A fast river tastes salty

But if you use your imagination

You can make it sweet.

A fast river feels like a snake’s skin

Slithering, slithering

Pouncing.

A fast river sounds like pancakes on the stove

The sweet smell of dough.

By Ace

Vowels

A: in the night some light flows a red cascade of sound past the ears of thousands

O: a bird that has taken flight with wings of wind it soars through the blue and white of the heaven above.

U: a ghost that haunts the world of man and screeches to all the living.

E: the light of the sun as it shines on all the happy children in the world as they dance.

I: the terror of night the darkness of the light a dark face that watches the happy to torment there lives.

Y:an unsure warrior at his last life.

The vowels

Mesopotamia - The Cradle of Civilization

For the oldest students (grades 4 and above), our study of “Mesopotamia” – the land between two rivers - began with a discussion of “How do we know what we know?” How can we possibly know about a civilization that existed over 5,000 years ago? The children displayed a solid understanding of this concept listing “artifacts, hieroglyphics, ruins, when people pass it on and on and on, pottery, scrolls, tapestries, cave drawings, books and tombs” just to name a few.

We then looked at the words nomadic and settled, defining what each word meant. It was interesting to learn that no one knew the meaning of nomad. Again the children were very insightful when asked to list the advantages and disadvantages of each lifestyle. They could articulate how having no school could be both an advantage and a disadvantage for a nomadic child. Other advantages for the nomadic life were “You get to see the world” and “We can live wherever we want to.” Whereas the disadvantage of a settled life included, “pollution, taxes, and bills.”

We watched a video titled Ancient Mesopotamia, which provided a lot more information about this civilization - its religion, writing system, irrigation and life style. Assigned reading from the Cartoon History of the Universe was another way we learned about Mesopotamia. A field trip to Jamesville Beach provided a hands-on opportunity to build irrigation canals. The children were challenged to see how far they could get the water from Jamesville Lake (aka the Tigris River) to their thirsty crops. Working collaboratively, children were able to create a network of canals that reached 30 feet into the sand!

Children created maps to show where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and numerous ancient cities of the region were located. We looked at modern maps and discussed the countries that exist in that region today. In the coming weeks we will be exploring how the Sumerians developed Cuneiform, their unique writing system. We will also be exploring Hammurabi’s laws, considering whether they were fair or not. Finally students will research two aspects of the Sumerian culture for an exhibit we will display at The New School.