Yellow Band: By Land, Weeks 8 & 9
Welcome back! It's only been 9 days since getting back from winter break, but it feels like we've already done so much interesting work. We've started our expression phase group projects, and started some Yellow Band specific exploration that connects to one of those big building projects.
As the whole school embarks on expression this time around, the focus is on the details. Throughout the rest of the school, kids are working on declarations, meeting with the admin team, and making plans for the rest of by land. Over in the Beehive, we reminded the Red and Yellow bands that we make declarations for each project that we work on together! On the first day of any project we make designs together and talk through a plan for how we'll accomplish our goals. And this time around, we explained, we'll also need to think about any special materials we might need and present our project idea to the administration as well. In other words, we had our work cut out for us! Nathan announced that he'd be working on a gondola, and I announced that I'd be working on a covered wagon, and we got to work.
Oh, and, the Yellow Band is going to hit the trail! Following our study of fractions, I asked the kiddos to make themselves some spinners--one with 50/50 chances, one with 25/25/25/25 chances, and one that's weighted to guarantee an outcome. Then, I told them that we'd soon be embarking on a cross-country adventure. And they'd get to choose which adventure they'd like to go on! Would they like to prospect for gold in California? Become a lumberjack in Oregon? Claim some cheap land and start a farm near Santa Fe? Or, would they like to escape to freedom in the north on the Underground Railroad? Each Yellow Bander made their choices, then tested out their weighted spinner, to see if it would work in their favor.
Sakira wanted to travel to New York on the Underground Railroad. So, she gave this choice about 1/2 the space on her weighted spinner.
Morning choices have been jam-packed with fun activities as well. I started to delve deeper into the book Bridges and Tunnels by Donna Latham. We checked this book out from the library at the very beginning of the arc, and I just took a closer look this week--bad choice! This book is amazing! Not only does it talk about the history of engineering, but it's packed with fun and simple experiments for us to do together. We read a bit, then chose an experiment to test what we think about the strength of different shapes.
Oh my goodness--and this is barely half of everything we did this week! There was work forming letters, reading our book club books, exercising across the our bodies' midline, and a trip to the community garden for Class Meeting. We've got so many good things going.