Morphic Thinking: We have really gotten into the groove with our morning warm-ups. I am loving the creative answers to our Spontaneous Problems. I think our favorite so far is “Your feet have become triangles...what now?!?!” I am also impressed with the deep thinking and elaboration I am seeing with the boundary breaker prompts. It is certainly a nice time for the group to enjoy sharing and hearing the ideas of their peers.
Exploration: Our work thus far has lead us through the exploration of our own past, the exploration of South Carolina's past (that we will engage with more at our upcoming field study), and now to the exploration of the ancient past- all through the lens of archaeology. We kicked-off our study of ancient civilizations by looking at cultural universals in our game, Shipwrecked. Students had to decide on the most important things for survival in a new society, and saw how nine basic elements become evident in every culture. They saw the progress from meeting the basic need of food, water, and shelter, to creating laws, division of labor, and even recreation. We also read the book Westlandia, by Paul Fleischman, which is the story of a boy named Wesley and his summer project of creating his own civilization. We were able to observe the nine cultural universals in his society as well: geography, family, economics, communication, government, recreation, beliefs, education, and resources (food. clothing, shelter).
Springing from the cultural universals, students were able to act as time travelers stopping off at Ancient Egypt for a view of the pyramids, and then on to Ancient China to see the making of the terracotta warriors. Our next stop was Ancient Greece to walk through the columns of the Parthenon, and finally to Rome for a contest of gladiators in the Colosseum. Students rotated through our civilization stations to get a glimpse of each culture. They collected facts and stamped their passports as they selected the civilization that they would like to dig deeper into for their upcoming research project. As a class we looked at the where and when of each civilization and added their period in history to our timeline.
M^3 (Mentoring Mathematical Minds) Unraveling the Mystery of the Moli Stone: In math, students got their feet wet with their first problem solving prompt. They were asked to consider the change in a Maneki Neko bank and explore the different combinations they could use to total 47 cents, using only dimes and pennies. Ask your student about the rule they discovered. Next, students competed to build the largest two digit number in our game Card Capers. Students had a tens space and ones space to fill as well as a discard space. When a 0-9 card was turned, they placed the digits one at a time in the space of their choice. without being able to switch and not knowing what the next flip would reveal. We talked about strategies and the place value of digits affecting their magnitude. Students were tasked with finding out how many two digit numbers could be created, considering there was only one of each number and zero could not be used in the tens place without resulting in a single digit number. There was lots of great idea sharing and discussion! We are continuing to work on expressing our thinking and problem solving in writing that is clear and uses mathematical language.
Critical and Creative Thinking: This month students practiced reasoning strategies by using clues to complete matrix logic puzzles. They used the given information to make one and two step deductions in order to find or eliminate matches between the puzzle categories. These were a good test of growth mindset and a class favorite! Students have also gotten started on their "Where I'm From" poems. These pieces will share their personal family histories. Students are modeling their writing off the poem of the same name by George Ella Lyon.
