Chittenango Landing

Chittenango Landing
Originally uploaded by New School-Syracuse
To support our study of local history the whole school visited Chittenango Landing where we some of the things we learned about archeological digs, what it was like to live on a canal boat and how canal boats were brought into a dry dock and repaired.

Rock Art

Rock Art

Students transformed rocks into animals using acrylics

Map-it on Ipads

What on earth?!  Alan (Ben and Greer’s dad) taught us how to use the ipads he brought in, to make our mark in mapmaking.  Now we know how to find the school, and our own house, spreading the image to even ‘drive’ the route home.  We went outside to take pictures with the ipads, of locations and images we want on our map of the area around The New School.  An exciting afternoon--and more to come.  We will be working with other groups over the next few weeks. 

Electricity!

The second graders have started to explore electricity this spring in their science class.  As a start to this unit, we have been exploring static electricity using plastic wrap and paper towels.  We've discussed, explored and read about positive and negative charges atracting and the students have had a blast!  What we enjoyed watching the most was salt particles practically "flying" up to meet the charged plastic wrap.  We had to check that one out a few times.  Sticking balloons to walls and friends has also been fun.  Or latest experiements include trying to charge balloons with different products - such as nylon, paper towels and plastic wrap.  Then we put the balloons near each other to see what happens.  There is a lot of sparks flying in this class lately.

Read Aloud

At the end of every day, we schedule time for Read Aloud. During this time a teacher reads to a small group of students.  Students often choose to draw in their sketchbooks as they listen. The groups change according to the book we read. At the beginning of the year we split into two mixed age groups and read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis. We needed to read the book before attending the Syracuse Stage’s musical adaptation of the book. in November. We have also divided groups according to age. The oldest children enjoyed listening to Johnny Tremain, the middle group listened to the fascinating story about the building of The Erie Canal and the youngest children listened to Search for Delicious.  Other titles read this year include Lafcadio, The Magician’s Nephew, and Animal Family, 

Science Celebration 2012

Each year all students present a science experiment or research study at our Science Celebration. While the older children do most of their work at home, the youngest students work on their projects at school. This year children shared what they had learned from a unit where we studied Heat. Working with one or two partners, children either shared what they learned when they designed and built a container to keep a cube from melting. Or they shared an experiment where they tested how lining cups with different materials effected how quickly hot water cooled off,  By presenting their Keep it Warm and Keep a Cube experiments children were introduced to the scientific method as they shared their hypothesis, described their procedure, showed their results using a graph and came to a conclusion. Finally they considered what would they would do next time to learn more about heat. 

Local History

Each  child at The New School was given a replica of an old postcard of a Syracuse scene. Postcards showed parks, downtown scenes, and places of interest such as Oakwood Cemetery. Using VTS (Visual Thinking Strategies) children were asked to look at the picture and describe what was happening, and what made them say that? Then with their families they went to find the same location and were asked to take a digital photograph showing the exact same perspective of the location. Children were asked to record what had changed, and what had remained the same. At school, each child presented their findings and marked the location of their postcard on a map of the city. It didn’t take long before we noticed that over 80% of the postcards were located downtown. Children surmised this was because downtown was where all the “activities were.” Where things were happening! To further explore how things in Syracuse have changed over time, children working in groups have generated a list of interview questions, which they will ask of senor citizen residents at The Nottingham. We will start to tape record our interviews in late April. In the process children will learn the value of oral history and primary sources.