Investigations

Every day we have "Investigations" at school in the afternoon. This is a time for students to have a choice about how they spend about an hour of their afternoon. Choices this fall have ranged from RazKids and Kid Pix on the computers to gross motor play with Dance and Wooden Marble Run to pretend play with the dress up materials. This is also a time for parents to come in and share their passion with the students. This fall we've had a parent come and cook Chinese food with students and a grandparent of an Alumni teach origami. Our afternoons are pretty flexible and we aim to have students trying 3-4 different choices each week. We also use this time for students to teach what they are interested in or like to do. We call this a "Legacy" as it will be how they are remembered throughout the year. Some Legacies students have taught and participated in have included: Archery, Paper Airplanes, Star Wars Game, Target Practice and Board Games brought from home.

Halloween Collaboration with SU students

In 1999, The New School started a tradition of celebrating Halloween with sophomore students from Syracuse University’s Communication Design Program. A few weeks prior to this annual event the SU students visited The New School to work in small groups on a collaborative, problem solving activity. This year each group of elementary and college students were challenged to invent and design a new game. Last year they had to design and create a way to protect an egg, which was later dropped from 14 feet!
For Halloween these same small groups of New School and SU students collaboratively created a 5 minute skit based on their costumes. This time the New School students visited the Warehouse to perform their skit which included music, props and our year long theme: “Inspiration, Imagination and Invention”

China Mystery Guest

On Thursday, October 28, 2010 we were hosts to our first Mystery Guest of the year. Our thirty students had three minutes to find out why Emily was at our school. In those three minutes they could only ask Emily yes or no questions. Our students quickly guessed Emily was with us to teach us about China so then they tried to narrow down the focus of her visit. They asked, "Are you here to teach us about the Great Wall?" "Are you here to teach us about Chinese culture?" After the three minutes were up, Emily shared an informative power point presentation on life in China, its history and its culture. Following the whole group presentation Emily taught two smaller groups of students the art of Chinese calligraphy.  It's trickier than it looks to hold the brush the correct way and to keep the point on the tip of your brush!

Ancient China with older students

China is a fascinating country full of many ideas and technology. Many great inventions, which we still use today, originated in Ancient China.  The landforms in China served as barriers and isolated the country from the world around it for many years. Travel and communication, within as well with neighboring countries, was difficult. 

Students, grades 4^th through 8^th,  learned how China’s geographical features have impacted China. To start the unit off, the students were introduced to China through its inventions. The students were assigned four inventions and were asked to determine where and when the invention was made. When they convened later they found out that these inventions were mostly invented in China. Only two inventions they discovered were invented in India and Europe. Later the class discovered both these inventions were in fact originally invented in China, but because of China’s geographical isolation other countries, such as Europe and India, received credit for the invention. This fact led us to develop a timeline comparing the dates when inventions were made China and in the Western World. We then asked the question, "Could the time difference in the date of inventions have been caused by the geographic barriers in China?"

China’s barriers of mountains, plateaus, deserts, rivers and seas made it difficult for even the Chinese within China. One activity demonstrated to the class how difficult it was to communicate and travel within China. Each student took on the role of one of these barrier and had a visual of what China’s barriers looked like. This led to a map activity in which the students had to identify the major barriers by color as well as answer questions based on the labeled map.

To end our unit the students were given articles about two major rivers: the Yellow River and the Yangtze River. While reading these articles, the students realized that these rivers were unlike the other barriers because they benefited China. The rivers provided rich soil, a source of food, a way of travel, cooking, as well as cleaning.

Field Trip to see Laura Heyman’s photographs

On Thursday, October 14, the older students went to the Lightworks Gallery to see an exhibit of Laura Heyman’s (Ace’s Mom) photographic portraits taken in Haiti. Prior to leaving the school the children located Haiti on a map. We also reflected back to last year’s explorer unit and asked the question, “Who from the west might have ‘discovered’ the island? We also discussed Laura’s question, “Can someone from the first world see/photograph within the third world without voyeurism or objectification?” Much of our conversation was about the meaning of the label 1st  world and 3rd world.

Once at the gallery, children were asked to study all the photographs and select one that was especially interesting to them. They were then assigned to draw from Laura’s photograph and write about what they felt the subjects were feeling, what were their interests, and what were the relationships between subjects in each photograph.

Laura was able to come and answer their questions and engage in a lively discussion for the final 20 minutes of our visit. 

Ramps

The younger students in Karen’s ramps science unit have discovered ramps all over the New School.  They tried climbing to a platform on the playground without a ramp and with a ramp and discovered that ramps make our work (and play) a lot easier!  Sharing places where we have seen ramps and inclined planes, helped us realize how often ramps are used in our community.  This week we experimented with designing ramps with different lengths and heights in the block area in preparation for our ramp experiments next week.

Book Clubs