Every Wednesday morning at 8:30, our two classrooms gather in Diane and Jeri’s room for a sing.  I play guitar and Mark plays his upright bass. (We always encourage students to join us with instruments they play, but we haven’t had any takers yet.) This activity started several years ago at Diane’s suggestion. It’s been a popular weekly event and multi-faceted learning experience for many reasons, some of which I’m going to explain here.

The songs we sing span an enormous range — they include rock music from my pre-teen years (“Love Potion Number Nine”), songs too silly to be explained (“The Horses Run Around”), songs that tell a story (“The Cremation of Sam McGee”), songs that challenge our vocabulary (“The Similes”), and songs that speak to more serious topics (“Passing Through”). We do seasonal songs. We do a lot of American folk music. We do songs that connect with a time and place that we are learning about in one of our classrooms — such as westward expansion, immigration, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights movement. For both of these years, we have been gifted with children who are wonderfully tuneful and enthusiastic singers, and the harmonies that emerge from the rounds we sing are sweet and true.

While we sing, we also stop to talk about the songs themselves, the art of songwriting, and the history that gives some of the songs a context. We explore the idioms and metaphors that are part of the lyrics. We laugh a lot. Although it’s usually the teachers who choose the songs that are going to be introduced, we count on the students to make requests to do again some of the songs that are already in their increasingly-filled binders. They ask for all of the kinds we’ve done: serious, long, silly, and sad.

Community singing — with a strong component of folk music — seems to be a well-entrenched part of Progressive education. (It would be nice to add folk songs from other lands. Maybe next year.) It’s a part of our weekly routine that we almost never omit — even when our schedules are stretched to the breaking point at certain times of the year. We have invited Wendy and Sara’s group to join us next Wednesday so they can get a preview of the musical gatherings that will be part of their experience when they move to our building in September.

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Every year — usually in April or May — we spend some time on many different aspects of growing up and moving on to middle school. We call this topic “Changes and Choices.” It has evolved into a 2-year plan, with one year focusing more on puberty and all of the physical and emotional changes that go with it, while the other year focuses more on body systems in general as well as education that pertains to peer pressure, personal safety, and choices that involve drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and other risky behaviors. There is considerable overlap between the two themes, but the emphasis is different. This is the year in which we are exploring the second set of topics. However, we have also put out for general reading our collection of books about puberty, sex, and growing up. We’ve observed that there is a lot of eager reading going on, especially by some of our 5th graders.

This is the year in which we are exploring the second set of topics, under the heading of “Getting to Know Me.” However, we have also put out for general perusal our collection of books about puberty, sex, and growing up. We’ve observed that there is a lot of eager reading going on, especially by some of our 5th graders.

We make a lot of use of the KidsHealth website, going to parts of the teen section as well as the ones for younger people. Recently, we’ve explored portions of the extensive sections on drugs and on alcohol, and we’ve talked a bit about tobacco and e-cigarettes. We’ve also done some of the instructional quizzes on body systems and will be doing more. There was (and still is) a lot that is unfamiliar to our group. What does the liver do? Where is your spleen? What part of the brain controls breathing? How does the endocrine system respond to a frightening situation? These topics are all explicitly connected with each other. For example, as we talk about what excessive alcohol consumption does to the body, we can review the things we have learned about the nervous system.

One important component of this study is helping students understand that they need to take care of their peers as well as themselves, that there may be times in which they need to bring a problem to a trusted adult. We’ve discussed some hypothetical situations, observing that sometimes making the right decision can jeopardize a friendship. We’ve talked about times when communicating with a parent may be the right choice, even if the parent is going to be unhappy about the problem.

We strongly encourage parents to continue these conversations with their children and look at some of the resources on the KidsHealth website. (And yes, there is a section for parents, too.)

Social Studies . . .

We’ve completed our work that focused upon what went on in parts of Western Europe during the medieval period. One of our major learning activities involved doing individual research posters on 17 different aspects of life, including food, clothing, life in a castle, sports and entertainment, and many others. We could see how much our students have learned about doing focused research, taking good notes (starting with a graphical organizer that is linked to their Google drives), and creating a visually-effective poster layout. Presentations to the class took place over several days and then our posters were placed on several of our walls for closer inspection.

Our trip to the Philadelphia Museum of Art focused primarily on armor, although we also spent some time in the medieval chapel to see and learn about stained glass and heraldry. Students enjoyed having a chance to see and handle the items when our guide brought out the storage cart, most of which was a very authentic reproduction rather than the real thing. When we moved on to the large hall with armor and weapons from many parts of Europe, students had time to do some sketching and ask a lot of wonderful questions.

 

We’ve now started our last unit: the ancient West African kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai. We’ve read a couple of Ashanti tales featuring Anansi the Spider, one of many tricksters in world cultures. We were pleased that our students were able to name several others that they knew from previous years or their own reading experience and talk about things they had in common. These three cultures traded goods and ideas with the expanding Muslim empire as it moved across northern Africa and into Spain. Next week, we’ll be taking an imaginary time travel journey to Ghana, looking in print and online resources to find out what we should expect to see and what we would need to know and do in order to blend in as much as possible. Students have begun to fill in a timeline to see the periods in which these three kingdoms existed and how they were related in time to some other things we have studied, such as the lifetime of Genghis Khan and the 1066 Norman invasion of England. We’ve played a few rounds of mancala (which is and has been singularly popular in most African countries and is played just about worldwide today) and will be working on discovering and sharing strategies in the coming weeks.

 

Our little chicks . . . 

aren’t quite so little anymore! They’re getting their adult feathers and look a little ragged at the moment. We moved them outside at the start of last week because they had outgrown their tub in the classroom, but the cool temperatures meant that we needed to give them their heat lamps, too. They can fly to their perches and are soon going to start eating some of our lunch scraps as well as their special chick pellets.

Our Math Groups . . . 

Sometimes do very different things and sometimes work on similar ideas. All of our groups have recently spent some time with data and graphing. Although the data has varied along with the activities, our core goals are much alike: interpreting and creating visual representations of numbers, looking for relationships, and adding vocabulary (such as mean/median/mode). We use real-world information as much as possible — surveys within and beyond the group, statistics about world populations, and the like. And even at this level, we do a lot with things we can touch and manipulate.

 

Vocabulary development is an important part of our program . . . 

As the sixth graders began working on their graduation speeches this week (May 2 – 6), the fifths continued with our study of words that are connected with Greek and Latin roots and affixes. We have a game structure that is used for many different topics called “I have . . . Who has . . .” which we are using to review all of the words we’ve encountered in that workbook this year. Small groups of fifth graders are spending a couple of days creating game cards and then playing their games. A game card contains a vocabulary word and a question that leads to another card. So the game starts like this:

• I have the first card. Who has the word that means below the ground?
•  I have subterranean. Who has the word that means to work together?
•  I have cooperate. Who has the word that means unimportant?

And the game continues until the circle is completed with the card contains the final answer and then asks Who has the first card?

Creating the game from their vocabulary lessons not only helps the students review the words and word parts but also requires a good bit of planning and communication to get the card deck to work out correctly. They’ve done an excellent job, and we’ll all enjoy playing the games in the coming weeks.

Getting to Know Me . . . 

This iteration of our “Changes and Choices” program is focusing primarily on understanding more about ourselves both physically and emotionally, the choices we make that affect our safety and our general happiness, and what constitutes a healthy relationship. Although we have put out for general reading our collection of books that focus on puberty and will certainly be talking about it in the midst of this larger conversation, it’s not the central theme for this year. Diane and I are working out an alternating-year plan that will oscillate between these two overlapping areas of emphasis.

We’ve started looking at some of the quizzes and lessons that are part of the KidsHealth website, which we recommend highly for family exploration. We also handed out and discussed a very helpful, simple poster that Jeri found and shared:

We hope that you’ll start and continue conversations at home around the “changes and choices” that your child is encountering. In addition to the KidsHealth website, we also strongly recommend that parents make use of the CommonSenseMedia website, which contains a lot of information and advice for parents and children alike.