Class #37--5th Grade P.E.

Monday, February 7, 2011, 1:00 P.M. 5th Grade Physical Education Class. Class #37 on my “50 Classes or Bust!” voyage. Time for "Pirate Ball" in 5th grade PE! It is a Monday, and the students are full of energy. They come into the gym and complete their “dynamic warm-ups” without prompting. Mrs. Lears, our athletic director and PE teacher extraordinaire, divides the eager participants into red, yellow, green, and blue teams and sends the teams to their quadrants. In each of the four quadrants is a group of balls—red, yellow, green, and blue. The goal is to “raid” the opposing territories—without being caught, of course—and secure your team’s balls. So, the blue team tries to collect all the blue balls, the green team all the blue balls, and so on. There is a great deal of action, strategy, and passion involved! Please enjoy some photos below.

Class #36--5th Grade Science

Wednesday, February 2, 2011, 12:15 P.M. 5th Grade Science Class. Class #36 on my “50 Classes or Bust!” journey. The students have hustled in from their “lunch recess” and settle into their seats in Mrs. Ossmus’s colorful, lovingly-decorated classroom. After showing students some old-fashioned paper fasteners, Mrs. Ossmus informs the class that the paper clip was invented in 1899. Did you know the world’s heaviest paper clip is 4,000 pounds? The record-setting paper clip is obviously very large, and it is made of solid metal. Metal has multiple properties: conducts heat and electricity, shiny, hard, malleable, and ductile. Ductility, as I learned today, is the ability to be pulled into thin wires without breaking. By 12:27, the students are making predictions about a “hardness vs. malleability” experiment they are about to conduct in class. How many times can the students bend a copper wire and a paper clip before the objects snap? Which is more malleable? Each student tests the two items. I can see their inquisitive expressions as I hear them counting the number of bends. I help out with bending a student’s paper clip, and the small clip is tougher than you might think! It turns out that the copper wire takes many more bends before it breaks, on average, than the paper clip. Therefore, we can state that the copper wire is more malleable than the clip. The class discusses which metals might be better for various tasks and structures, including an invention the students might make. I greatly appreciate both Mrs. Ossmus’s and the class’s enthusiasm today. In the pictures below, you will see a student bending a copper wire, another student holding a broken paper clip, and Mrs. Ossmus demonstrating the proper bending technique!

Class #35--10th Age Spanish

Monday, January 31, 2011, 1:45 P.M. 10th Age Spanish Class. Class #35 on my “50 Classes or Bust!” trek. Senora Duncan wastes no time in getting the girls started this afternoon. After exchanging greetings with Sra. Duncan, the girls review their homework with their table mates. Sra. quickly transitions into a flash card activity; she shows the class a card with a picture (restaurant, road, theater, hospital, etc.) on it, and then the class says the word in Spanish. Sra. Duncan ensures that the girls use the correct gender and pronunciation when identifying the word. The girls take turns reading “sentences” on the board that have been created from putting several flashcards together, e.g. picture of a boy…directional arrow…park becomes, “El va al parque.” After the first round, Sra. adds time of day (morning, afternoon, etc.) and calendar cards to increase the difficulty of the sentences. As quickly as class starts, it ends, with Sra. calling the students to line up by their birth month. I am impressed with the students’ knowledge, and their enthusiasm is infectious!

Class #34--8th Grade History

Monday, January 31, 2011, 10:00 A.M. 8th Grade History Class. Class #34 on my “50 Classes or Bust!” journey. I have been looking forward to this class all weekend, as I knew that Mr. Shawen would begin the period with a discussion of the unfolding civil unrest in Egypt. In fact, that is just what happens, and I am learning a great deal as I type this blog post. The class discusses alliances, geography, peace treaties, and the intricacies and “stickiness” of the US position, i.e. how we are trying to balancing democracy and stability in the Middle East. Mr. Shawen expertly guides the students through the complexities of the issues; he is in his thirtieth year teaching at Calvert and is the only faculty member to have won both of our teaching honors: the Apgar Award and the Deborah Dorsey Albert Award. At approximately 10:15, the class transitions to a discussion of pre-World War I Europe. The students compare and contrast the political map of 1914 to the map of today. Mr. Shawen walks the class through the Franco-Russian alliance and the resulting German Schlieffen Plan, which aimed to conquer France in six weeks so that Germany could turn its full attention to Russia. The students also discuss warfare tactics and how guns evolved over the course of several wars over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The conversation is fast-paced and stimulating. I wish I could continue attending in subsequent days!

Middle School Fine Arts Night

On Thursday, January 20, we held our inaugural Middle School Fine Arts Night, under the direction of art teacher extraordinaire Larisa Kamp. It was a huge success! An enthusiastic audience of students, family members, friends, and faculty was treated to folktale readings, five songs from the 7th grade band, three scenes from the 7th grade play Don't Count Your Chickens Before They Cry Wolf, and a scene from the 5th grade play The Oddity. Enjoy some pictures below!

Class #33--10th Age Math

Monday, January 24, 2011, 11:35 A.M. 10th Age Math Class. Class #33 on my “50 Classes or Bust!” expedition. On a frigid day, I am here in a nice toasty Lower School classroom with Mrs. Holt, our Lower School math specialist, and her thirteen eager 10th Age students. After quick homework check, Mrs. Holt announces that it is time for a new activity. Mrs. Holt wants her students to think about math all the time, including when they are getting out supplies. “If your birthday is a prime number, come get a marker and a whiteboard,” she announces, followed by, “If your birthday is a composite number small than 20, come get your supplies,” and so on. The topic of the day is “Russian Peasant Multiplication.” Mrs. Holt shows a video which explains the method: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrUCL7tGKaI

Essentially, one factor is doubled while the other is doubled, “even” rows are crossed out, and then you are left with a “friendlier” addition problem. It is a very interesting method, indeed! The students use remaining class time in pairs to experiment with different combinations and to figure out why this method works mathematically. The students are simultaneously working on their computation while stretching their critical thinking skills! In the final two minutes of class, Mrs. Holt calls up groups of three students for a challenge question. She flips a card, which has a number of dots on it, and then she asks a question to each group of three. The student who first answers correctly wins the round. The questions are challenging--square this number and subtract 5, what is second multiple of this number, square this number and add 9, find two-thirds of this number and multiply by 11—and the students are fast! I am impressed by their speed AND accuracy.

Class #32--8th Grade English

Wednesday, January 19, 10:00 A.M. 8th Grade English Class. Class #32 on my “50 Classes or Bust!” journey. I have a real treat today. I have the opportunity to observe 8th grade students giving oral proposals about their prospective Castalia Projects. The Castalia Project is our 8th grade “capstone project,” which, as Ms. Summers describes, is designed to allow 8th graders to use skills developed over the course of Middle School to research a topic of their choice. The project includes a formal five to seven page research paper as well as a Creative Final Product (CFP) that uses the research a student has done to build a creative interpretation of his or her topic. These may include, but are not limited to: visual art of any medium, primary source interviews, documentaries, design relevant to subject at hand, model or other 3-dimensional representations, or other digital representations or interpretations of topic At the end of the year, students will present their projects before the Calvert community. Two students, a boy and a girl, whose projects show particular distinction, will be selected to present their projects at Graduation in June. As the students take turns presenting this morning, classmates ask clarifying questions, and Ms. Summers helps the students start to narrow their proposed topics. For example, one student wants to research piracy, but after a rich discussion, he realizes that “piracy” is too big a topic to cover in depth in five to seven pages. However, he will be able to write thoroughly about pirate tactics or Somali piracy within the parameters of the project. Over the course of just one period this morning, I hear proposals about BMX bike racing, the Seven Natural Wonders of the World, Cleopatra, the Academy Awards, yoga, history of the Boy Scouts, history of piracy, Alzheimer’s, the Sundance Film Festival, magazine publishing, and piracy. I cannot wait to see how the projects turn out!

Extras? No, Our Curriculum

In schools, one often hears of the "extracurriculars," which implies that certain activities, such as drama and athletics, are added on to the curriculum and take on less importance than other strands of the program. Some schools use the phrase "co-curricular" as a descriptor, which I have never quite understood. Athletics and the arts are key components of the Calvert experience, and thus I hesitate to call them anything but "our curriculum." This subject is on my mind because of the very impressive displays of ability and teamwork on the basketball court I witnessed over the last two days from our girls' and boys' teams AND the same very impressive displays of ability and teamwork I saw in the 7th grade play, Don't Count Your Chickens Until They Cry Wolf, last weekend. The play was so funny that I literally cried with laughter! The facial expressions and animation of the actors was just priceless. I strongly encourage my readers to come see a winter athletic contest, our first-ever Middle School Fine Arts Night on January 20, and/or the 5th grade play on the evening of January 24. If you attend, remember that you are seeing "our curriculum," not "extras"!