Newsletter: Monday, 4/20

These are the insulators the kids designed and tested last week. The final challenge was to put
a single cube of ice inside for a few hours and lose as little as possible.
It proved to be a HARD challenge!!!

Hello Everyone,

It's a busy time in the classroom. We had special visitors here on Friday, a conference on Saturday, Curriculum Night this Thursday, and ACT Aspire testing begins next week. It's enough to keep the building abuzz.

As you probably already know, this is our final week with Mrs. Jones. She is completing her internship on Friday and then will work to finish up her last few assignments and hopefully secure a job for next school year. She's done a wonderful job in our classroom and we're surely going to miss her! Please don't forget that Mrs. Yeon and Mrs. Young have asked for gifts to be left with Ms. Angie by Wednesday. The kids also have a special homework assignment on Monday they'll need to have back in on Tuesday. They know exactly what they are supposed to do.

In reading this week we explored biographies. We read about Sacagawea, Bessie Coleman, Frederick Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln. With each of these books we identified the sorts of information the author was giving us (birthplace, education, family, job, etc), the things we would have liked to have heard about, and the places where we questioned the author in regards to how something was shared. An example of "Questioning the Text" was during the Bessie Coleman book when someone asked why the author kept saying she was working to "be somebody." We wondered if this meant she was "nobody" before she traveled to France to become a pilot. We also wondered if this meant all her friends and family who remained poor were "nobodies" as well. We've been exploring biographies in preparation for our upcoming biographical expert projects. We are beginning those today. We are focussing on people in history who are often overlooked or represent populations who don't get enough attention in textbooks. It should be a fun study.

In social studies we've been studying the Civil War. We began with the institution on slavery and then discussed the differences between individual rights, state rights, and federal laws. From here we moved into the war, taking a close look at Abraham Lincoln. We watched a cartoon about him, studied some of his quotes, and watched clips from a documentary, Looking for Lincoln, by Henry Louis Gates. Much of our discussions about Lincoln have been to understand his motives for freeing the Southern slaves and his views on differences between the races. We found that some people feel like he is a great hero and others feel like he is very flawed. An important question from this study was, Does it matter to you WHY Lincoln freed the slaves? There were many perspectives shared, for sure.

In writing the kids have been publishing their ABC books as well as the letters they wrote to publishers, authors, and bookstores about the findings of our Scholastic study. In case you didn't hear about this study, we tallied each book from the Scholastic order forms this year to see what sorts of kids were being features. Out of more than 1,500 books, 93% were about White characters or animals. That left only 5% about Black characters and all other groups were 1% or less. The letters the kids wrote were an opportunity for them to describe the study, share their feelings around it, and make suggestions as to how this could be addressed.

Finally, we are nearing the end of the month which means we need to make sure everyone has shared a news article or a journal. The kids are always free to bring in an article from home or work on this in the classroom during Explorations. A few days ago, Mrs. Jones shared an interesting article about a transgender man who had entered a competition in Men's Health Magazine for the "most fit man." He was leading by quite a few votes. I related this to a story I heard a few weeks ago about a transgender high school student who committed suicide because she had been bullied for years at school. This was a great reminder for all of us to treat others with kindness and look out for those who are being singled out. Together, we can make a difference!

I hope you all have a great week and we look forward to seeing you at Curriculum Night on Thursday.

Chris