For a week or two every summer, my brother, sister and I were shipped off to the wilds of Little Rock, Arkansas to visit my Mom's mother, Grandma Noonie. Grandma Noonie lived high rise for "mature adults" and we were often the only children in the building. My grandmother was a sweet, loving woman with a warm smile, frequent hugs, and a never ending supply of Twinkies and Yoohoos. She was, however, at a loss as to how to entertain children. Plus, we interfered with her scotch and Camel consumption. Her real name was Mildred, and though it's never been confirmed, I'm quite sure the nickname "Noonie" had something to do with her getting the party started long before noon. I have no doubt she adored us. Well, at least she adored the idea of us, but

Small Children+Small Apartment=Spilled Scotch and ashtrays.

So, Grandma would scoot us out the door right after lunch, and we were on our own until dinner.

What to do?

Well, pushing every button on the elevator was a particular favorite afternoon activity.
The old "ring and run" doorbell trick was a winner, too...except the elevator was so darn slow that we were caught more often than not.
We would also spend hours in the outdated basement gym trying to figure out how to use this:

There was also a small lap pool that no one ever seemed to use. Perfect for 3 totally unsupervised kids to splash around in for a while.

My favorite part of Grandma summers, though, had to do with the stack of books next to Grandma's bed. Oddly, all of her books had the the covers torn off. I now know that No Cover meant the books were a tad "scandalous", but as the time I just thought that Grandma Noonie was a bit rough with her reading. These missing cover books were bodice rippers with titles like "Tender Torment" and "Sweet Savage Love".

 Before being shooed out of the door I would grab a couple of Grandma's forbidden books to take out to the pool. Certainly these books were not suitable for children, but they were pretty tame by today's standards. There weren't really any explicit naughty bits and parts, just euphemisms for naughty bits and parts.  I don't think I had any idea what it meant when the main characters "succumbed to their forbidden desires".  I hadn't a clue as to what a desire was, let alone a forbidden one. But I knew that I wasn't supposed to be reading the books, which made them all the more enticing.

The summer I was 8 was especially memorable. I was a precocious reader with a curious mind, and I was excited to get started on some of Grandma's smutty literature. I grabbed the top 2 books from her stacked and ran out to the pool. The pool was empty, as always, and I preferred to read while my brother and sister played happily in the shallow end. I took a long sip of a cold, chocolate-y YooHoo and cracked the first book open to Chapter1.

Ahhh, bliss.

Very, very short lived bliss.

I did not sleep a wink for the rest of my stay in Little Rock that summer. For that matter, I don't think I slept a wink for the remainder of the summer.

Why?

Well, here are the books that were at the top of Grandma Noonie's stack:

or what I like to call:

THE WORST POSSIBLE BOOKS AN 8 YEAR OLD COULD EVER, EVER READ.

It took me a long time to get over those two books. For a while I thought the Manson Family was camped out in the woods behind my house, or  that I was going to start getting visitations from the dead. I was a little girl who already had plenty of typical childhood fears, but this took them to a whole new level.

But, it does explain my penchant for the darker side of literature. I love the creepy, the macabre, and the unexplainable. A good murder mystery or ghost story is right up my alley. The darker, the better. Which is why I LOVE Myths and Fairy Tales. These tales are filled with all of the elements that make for wonderful stories: good and evil, frightening problems, flawed characters. There is a richness to these stories that allows one to read them over and over again, and to find discover something new with each reading. There is a reason these stories have been around for so long.

I am not advocating scaring the wits out of young children. Believe me, nightly visions Charles Manson from "Helter Skelter" and Jack Torrance from "The Shining" were not healthy for little Amanda. But dealing with scary,dark subjects through the safety of these stories is healthy. Making kids feel safe is my job as a teacher and a mother. But no one should be sheltered from tough emotions. Children need to feel scared, angry, and sad. And learning to handle these not so fun feelings is essential for both children and adults. Myths and fairy tales allow us to deal with these emotions, but at a safe distance.

 Because of this, sanitized versions of fairy tales and myths are not for me. Child-friendly is one thing, totally cleaned up, shiny happy endings are another. In class, we have been reading "Pandora's Box" for several weeks. We have read and watched videos of several different versions. What were the evils in Pandora's Box? Greed, jealousy, anger, sadness, sickness, poverty, and death, just to name a few. As I researched appropriate videos for kids (because, believe me, Pandora's Box brings up a lot of less than kid friendly material), I also ran across some positively sanitary Pandora stories. In one cleaned up version the box was filled with Frowny faces and a Smiley face. Really? Not for these students. They have loved talking about the evils released into the world. We've had terrific discussions about what each one of these "evils" looks like. What is jealousy? What is sadness? Is there a difference between sadness (in some versions) and despair (in other versions)? In some Pandora stories, these evils take on some pretty monstrous forms. Some versions of the myth started with the story of Prometheus. Zeus sent the box to Pandora to punish Prometheus for stealing fire for humans. He also punished Prometheus by chaining him to a rock and having a bird of prey devour his liver over and over and over each day. Now that's dark.

These students have totally embraced this story. They were super excited to watch a Lego stop-animation version of it on Monday. So excited, that they were inspired to make their own Lego/Play-Do stop-animation film.

Here they are, building sets and characters:

Epimethius and Pandora's House

The Box

"Disease"

 

"Death"

Writing our own version of Pandora's Box on the board

 And here is the finished product, written and directed by Annabella, Bo, Gabriel, Max, Tani and Zoe!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-QcK8XUYdo

We hope to add dialogue this week!

In other not-so-dark-and-scary news...

We finished this much loved book:

and started this one:

A couple of students wrote in their journals about what it would be like to have their own pet dragon:

Some continued to type their animal reports (hooray! Those who have not finished are all in the final draft stage!):

We all rocked on our spelling this week:

We explored a tricky mystery box:

Bo shakes...

Tani shakes...

Max shakes...

Annabella records the guesses.

A little hangman to find the answer!

DARTH VADER!(pumpkin push-ins)

Our first Cooking Club was a huge success thanks to Zoe and Gabriel. BIG thanks to Ms. Pamela for driving!
First, our smoothie orders were taken by the chefs.We had to choose between several delicious fruits and vanilla or chocolate soy milk. It was so much fun to build our own healthy drinks!

The chefs at work making custom smoothies.

Here's to ya!

Mmmmm...yummy!

The lovely Roxy and Erin worked alongside our chefs.

"Here ya go, Annabella!"

Thumbs WAY up!

Smoothies weren't the only treat this week. We had one of our old friends from last year come to visit on Wednesday. Welcome back, Jakob. It was great having you visit!

Even when you leave Hirsch, it is always in your heart!

Behold! My old math book from 1980-ish!

 Through this math book,  I explored the hows and whys of computation.




Well, actually, just the hows. I had no idea why the heck I was doing this work. It had no bearing on reality, just pages in a book with a picture of a horse on the front. Perhaps the horse had an idea as to the meaning of this math, but he wasn't telling.

Here's how "Math Time" worked:
The teacher would give us a lesson, we would work in the book, and the teacher would tell us if we were right or wrong. If we were right, well cool, I got a little extra free time to bury my nose in a book or gossip with a friend. If I was wrong, I'd correct the problems. No one ever asked me to explain why I answered a question a certain way or what I had learned. I learned to "do" math, but I was never asked to think mathematically. By Junior High, I could add, subtract, multiply and divide like a champ, but could not apply these skills to more complicated math concepts. Because I had no idea why I needed to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. I was all math facts, no math thinking.

"Teacher! I got them all right!"

"Um, why am I doing this?"

"On to the next page! And the next..."

 I am on a mission to make sure my students are truly thinking about math. I want them to really get it and if they don't get it, I want them to be able to tell me what is confusing. I want to hear from them what stands out about a certain math activity, I want to know how they process information, how they use information. I want them examine, express, and self monitor their math understanding.

  Last week I showed you a glimpse of our Estimation Station. This week we continued this activity by counting the pasta in the small jar. I used this time to introduce the class to our Math Journals.

 By reading their journals, you can evaluate their progress and recognize their strengths and needs.

This student shares that she got a little stuck because we were doing a smaller jar than we did last week.

Here is an estimate: 52 noodles

Compared with the actual number: 150 noodles

And while they are thinking, they are also having FUN.

Here are some more FUN math activities from this week:

1. This video on place value
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZLbnFE_Yf4

which led to this game:

2. Place Value Snowball fight!!!

Here, Annabella and Max are throwing "snowballs", or rather wadded up sheets of paper with single digits on them. When they have filled the baskets, they choose 3 (for working on place value to 100s) or 4 (for working on place value to 1,000s).
Then, they arrange their digits to show and record in their Math Journals:

The largest number they can make.
The smallest number they can make.
The sum of all of the digits.
The value of each digit.
The number written in expanded form.
A number sentence using greater than/less than to compare 2 numbers.
The number written in word form.
One question to ask a classmate about your number.

Recording in the Math Journals:

3. Some of us stepped into rounding this week...or should I say leapt into rounding. Here is Annabella demonstrating her new knowledge, with a little help from this rhyme:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iMbseU2LaQ&list=PLCq-7llIV3OkYp-vGlhsXx313Ica6cq_c&index=1

Watch this agile "dragon" pounce on those 10s!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoqXNpUErWs

In non-math related news, we packed this week full of writing. Here's Bo and Zoe finishing up their outlines for their animal report. What thorough researchers they are!

Zoe records some new facts about Zebras.

Need Platypus facts? Nobody knows more than Bo!

In Greek Myths we compared the Greek creation myth with several Native American tales of creation:

Then we wrote our own amazing creation myth. See if you can figure out which part your child wrote! (Gabriel from Heidi's class joins us every afternoon for myths, so you'll see his name on this, too!)

Our Class Creation Myth

By:

Annabella Hunermund

Max Ng

Bo Fink

Tani Fischer

Zoe McLeod

Gabriel Stettner-Auerbach

A long time ago, B.J. Upton, a Braves baseball player, hit a home run. The baseball created Space. He made all of the stars and planets out of baseball field grass.

A European Dragon was hunting and he came to the grassy field. He pulled up some grass, got some tree bark and got some leaves from Mars. He burned it all up with his fire and it turned into a little ball. When he threw it to the stars, it turned into the Earth.

An outdoor cat made a container from his whiskers and captured some air from space. He spread the air on Earth and it made the skies.

When the cat burned some things (with a little help from the Dragon), he made another container from his whiskers and captured some smoke from the fire. He turned the smoke into clouds. Then, he got some water and put it in the clouds. Three days later, it rained. That’s how the sky was invented!

The Platypus made the creeks with magical powers from his webbed feet. Then, he created the rivers by using his webbed feet to dig a very long, straight line. Then he put in the curves and got some water from the creek. He put lots of the water into the river, and that’s how the river was created!

A house cat used his claws to dig a circle. Then he dug the inside. He spread his blue gray fur into the circle and it turned the fur into the water in the lakes!

A Golden Retriever dug a gigantic hole and used her magic powers to get water. She went to her kitchen and got a container of salt and came back outside. She put the salt in the water and mixed it up with a spoon. Then she used her magic power to turn the sea blue. That’s how the oceans were created!

The Dragon was in the Arctic and had the idea to build mountains everywhere. He started pushing the ice together and it created big mountains. He went all around the world doing that.

Out of the mist, a woman appeared. B.J. Upton married her and they had lots of baby people.

THE END

The biggest buzz this week was around SCIENCE. Rocks, rocks, and more rocks were on the minds of these kids. Several of them even took it upon themselves to make a Rock Lab in the classroom! 

Yes, our class truly ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Of Power Suits and Purposeful Teaching

I started my teaching career a bazillion years ago in A________ Public Schools. I remember my first new teacher training: Hundreds of young, bright eyed teachers packed into a dimly lit warehouse somewhere in southeast Atlanta. We sipped tepid coffee as we listened to a woman in a yellow, heavily shoulder-padded suit  (aka: the late '80s "Working Girl" Power Suit) espouse the importance of daily lesson plans. "The most important part of your plan," she said, "is to show the Georgia Performance Standard that matches each activity. Only one standard per activity, please. Too many standards make it unclear to your principal what you are working on." In front of me sat a notebook the size of 5 telephone books, crammed full of these standards. Page after page after page. I felt panicked and confused. How would I ever figure out which standard went with which lesson? I mean, if I was teaching place value to 3rd graders, would that fall under

State Standard M2D1: Students will solve problems 

or

State Standard M2P3: Students will communicate mathematically?



There were also "highly suggested" activities for planning the actual lessons.  For example, when working on Place Value, we could choose from:

a workbook page with fill in the blank (aka "cloze" in teacherese) activities
a workbook page with multiple choice activities
a workbook page with true or false questions



Once I hit the classroom, I found several things to be true about lesson plans:

1. It was darn near impossible to match one activity with only one "standard". Don't get me wrong, matching standards with activities is a good thing. As a teacher, I always have goals in mind when working with children.  Personal goals, developmental goal, and yes, even state standards. But one activity usually meets a multitude of Performance Standards. Additionally, one activity might target different goals for different students.
2. While there is nothing wrong with a workbook page here and there, one size does not fit all. And, frankly, workbooks are pretty darn boring to me. No matter if it's filling in blanks or coloring in bubbles, I just wasn't that thrilled about using them.
3. Who the heck has time to write lesson plans that include every standard known to man??? I didn't get into this teaching gig to spend my days poring over a lesson planner. I wanted to actually spend time with my students. I wanted to plan fun, engaging activities that targeted the needs of each child. What I did not want to do was to spend my valuable planning time writing sorting through the Performance Standard manual searching. After a month or so, I knew what my kids knew, I knew what my kids didn't know, and I knew what I wanted to teach them.

 I won't bore you with the number of times I was called into the Principal's office (she also had a closet full of Power Suits...where do they buy those??).

 "Ms. Lockwood, there are 3 standards for this one lesson. One standard per lesson, please."
"Ms. Lockwood, writing the math problem in sand was not one of your choices for this standard."

and later:

"Ms. Lockwood, why have you not turned in lesson plans for the past two weeks?"


So began my downward spiral. First, I was written up for a "violation". Eventually, I was put on a "Professional Development Plan" for non-compliant teachers.  Ha! What a rebel I was!
The funny thing was, no one ever actually came to my room to observe whether or not I was teaching. But, boy howdy, were they serious about getting those lesson plans in to the front office on time.


So just imagine what A_________ Public Schools would think of one of our math lessons for this week.

Estimation Station

Noodles. One big jar, one small jar. The children made their initial guesses on Monday as to how many noodles were in each jar. We compared jars, explained our guesses. On Thursday, we reviewed the guesses. After hearing our friends' ideas, some of us adjusted our original guesses. Then we counted, starting with the large jar.

"How should we count?" I asked.
We had several suggestions: one at a time, 5 at a time, 10 at a time.
"How should we do this?"
Another student suggestion, "Give us each 10 noodles."
"Hmmm...if you each got 10 noodles, then how many noodles are in the jar?"
"50!"
"Do you think there are more than 50 or less than 50?"
"More! Way more!"
"Let's give everyone 10 more! Then everyone will have..."
"100!"
"Who wants to count out the first 10 noodles?"

and so on.

As we counted, the noodles, we adjusted our guesses again...and again. The student were so excited and involved, and we s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d the lesson out for so long that we didn't even get to the small jar this week.

So,as a nod to my former employer, I will share a few of the Georgia Performance Standards targets we were hitting during this time:


Building new mathematical knowledge through problem solving.
Solving problems that arise in mathematics and in other contexts.
Applying and adapting a variety of appropriate strategies to solve problems.
Monitoring and reflecting on the process of mathematical problem solving.
Organizing and consolidating their mathematical thinking through communication.
Creating and use representations to organize, record, and communicate mathematical ideas.
Representing numbers using a variety of models.
Understanding the relative magnitudes of numbers using 10 as a unit and 100 as a unit.
Using mental math strategies such as benchmark numbers to solve problems.
Estimating to determine if solutions are reasonable...............................................................

Wait, WAIT! Where are you going? I wasn't done yet! There are hundreds more standards happening in this lesson!

Fine, I won't continue. What I will tell you, though, is that there was a purpose to this activity. Actually, more than one. Waaaay more. And the purpose for one child was not the same for every other child. Want to know what we were looking for with your child? I'd be happy to answer that. Want to know what you can do at home to continue to build these skills? I can help you with that, too. Want to hear more about my vast knowledge of State Performance Standards? Well, we can go there, too...


 But for now, however, I will show you some other awesome activities that we did this week.

Writing in our journals:

Practicing spelling words:

and making self portraits:

We also got to hang out with these guys:

Cyclops

Eros

Uranus and Gaia

 To help you understand what we've been reading, here's a video about the creation of the world, Greek Myth style:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHNae-ym9Z4



We introduced the students to the different types of rocks, thanks to Bill Nye:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGfco7kNzJA


One of the coolest moments this week was when the students actually tied together the forming of the Earth, according to the Greeks, and the forming of rocks, according to, well, Bill Nye (wait, he didn't discover this?)


We spent some more time with this little fella during read aloud

Stuart Little

as we learned some cool nautical vocabulary terms (rigging, mast) and cheered him to a toy boat racing victory.


But the best thing about this week? NO YELLOW POWER SUITS WERE INVOLVED (though I really think Leslie would look good in one).


Have a great LONG weekend!