Visit from a Storyteller!

We were incredibly fortunate to have the one and only Anne Thomas come in and visit our classroom! Her visit is an annual tradition as part of the introduction to our storytelling unit and it is a day we look forward to all year.

My co-teacher Gabby and I first saw Anne perform at a Story District show in DC, and were immediately impressed. Later that week, we emailed her, casually mentioned we were her biggest fans, and asked her to come visit our class. And so the tradition was born!

Our storytelling unit is an integrated Reading and Writing unit that takes place every spring in our 5th grade class. Students read, write, listen to, and watch amazing stories. Before Anne’s visit, we had read some great stories with the kids (including Mr. Tiger Goes Wild, by Peter Brown) and talked about what components are key to having a great story.

Our "A Good Story Must Have" checklist: an invaluable tool for readers, writers, and performers!

Students brainstorm in pairs and come up with a long list of important attributes of a good story. Then, we introduce our ‘A Good Story Must Have’ checklist. This is a key tool we use as readers and writers throughout the unit. We start finding these elements in our independent reading books. Next, we tell the students that we have a special guest coming in..

And the guest is Anne! She talks to them about storytelling as an art, how we are all storytellers (you’ve never told anyone the story of how your day went?) and then performs a story in the room with us! The story Anne performs is about going to see the mountain gorillas in Rwanda, but it is also about the danger of imposing limits on yourself.

After Anne performs, students have an opportunity to ask questions (which often has to be limited or they would go on forever) and then we go through our checklist to see if Anne’s story has all of the elements a good story must have. (It does!)

Next, Anne asks students to think of a time when they imposed a limit on themselves. It can be as small as telling yourself you don’t like a vegetable without trying it. Students brainstorm individually and then work in pairs or small groups to tell their stories. Anne works with students too, helping them pull a story out of their memories or experiences.

Finally, we ask for volunteers - does anyone want to get up and try to tell their story to the class? Amazingly, some students always do! This year, we had three students who stood up and told their stories (coached by Anne) with bravery and honesty. They talked about doubting themselves as athletes, writers, and more. They were vulnerable, honest, and brave. Their classmates were impressed and inspired and ready to find their own voices as storytellers.

We cannot wait to see what our students come up with next and we are so grateful that Anne came in and shared her craft with us. Stay tuned to check out some other pieces from our storytelling unit, leave a comment and ask us questions, or check out this piece on how it comes together and why we do it.

 

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Our SOME portrait project: how and why we do service learning

Service Learning

In 5th grade we do a service learning experience that aims to honor what is developmentally appropriate for 5th graders and prioritize maintaining the utmost dignity of the others.

Service Learning is such a complicated realm, as we work to ensure that we don't "otherize" or create complicated (and potentially problematic) narratives about what 'help' is and who helps whom.

Our SOME (So Others Might Eat) project is one of our favorite service learning experiences, because we think it does work towards our ideals of what service learning should look like: meaningful to all, authentic, and a learning experience!

The Process!

Our project starts when 5th grade goes to study portraiture at the National Portrait Gallery- learning about how portraits are about more than just a face, but the stories behind those faces. Those stories are the key aspects that get incorporated into the art you see!

We then prepare questions, how to ask politely about other people's lives, how to work through nerves and awkwardness, speak loudly and enunciate etc.. and we also learn about SOME and they work they have done and are doing in DC.

Then 5th grade goes to SOME's Kuehner House (which provides affordable housing, activities, and other support to seniors in the community). During our visit, each student gets partnered up with a participant and interviews them. We spend about an hour together, sharing stories, taking notes, and taking pictures of one another.

5th then goes back to Sheridan and begins to work on creating portraits that capture aspects of their new friends’ personality and stories. These portraits take us a long time because we work really hard to make them as special as we can!

Excitedly (and with a different type of nerves this time!) we head back to SOME to revisit the senior participants and deliver our artwork to them. This project brings joy, dignity, and stories to both parties, and thus it is a service learning experience we continue every year. Take a look at some of the portraits our students have done -- we are biased, but we think they should be in the National Portrait Gallery, too!

This year, we were thanked with a performance by two of the seniors: beautiful singing accompanied by keyboard playing.

We'd love to hear what service learning experiences work for you all in your schools and programs. What does it look like? How do you think about it?

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Presenting at the Private Schools for Public Purpose Conference

We had the pleasure of visiting GDS High School and attending the Private Schools for Public Purpose (PSPP) conference! We presented some experiential learning activities we do in our 5th grade classroom (two of our favorites, our drawing activity and pom pom simulation, and some new ones like our factory simulation in our Econ 101 unit!), along with how we talk about race and socio-economic status in our classroom. We were privileged to spend our workshop time with thoughtful, justice-oriented educators.

Unlike some other presentations we have done, this space was small and intimate, and we loved getting to hear from everyone and have a dynamic discussion. We heard all about affinity groups, equity work, and innovative programming at other schools.

Our trusty bin of workshop supplies: pom poms, crayons, handouts, and more!

This workshop with awesome, critical thinking educators has left us thinking about:

• How we can avoid students trying to have the “right” answer during our discussion our activity, but not transferring that to their actions outside of the classroom?

• Why do adults consistently ask if we are afraid the white kids will “feel bad”?

  • How do we continue to address the root of this question verbally and through the work we do with students, families, and fellow educators?

• What pushback do we expect from adults?

• The importance of sitting in the discomfort of honest investigation/realization- for example, one question brought up to us by a couple educators in the room was: What do we do with students repeatedly saying they feel "lucky" after an experiential activity or being "grateful" for their circumstances. What does that mean? How do we continue to push them to go beyond the idea of feeling lucky and think more about implications and the structures in place?

• The importance of teaching that race is a construct - in student’s words it means everything and nothing - it’s confusing! Ignoring it won’t make it go away!

Overall thoughts and feelings: It is empowering and rejuvenating to connect with fellow educators at conferences and discuss the complexities of social justice education. While our students were upset (and indignant!) that we would both be gone for the day, they were excited to hear we would be putting adults through some simulations and wanted to know if they get “just as mad” and "how would grown ups act doing the work we do?!" We assured them that adults have even stronger reactions and that adults also have to step up and do this work. They wholeheartedly agreed.

Sending gratitude to everyone we met at PSPP-- Onwards!

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The Message We Send When We Try Not to Talk About Race

We submitted a piece about an experience from our classroom to Embrace Race, a multiracial community of people supporting each other to help nurture kids who are thoughtful and informed about race. It was published recently!  Please read The Message We Send When We Try Not to Talk About Race and let us know what you think.

Pom Pom Simulation

Our pom pom simulation is a personal favorite. It simulates privilege, the cyclical effects of poverty, oppression, and more. Students always make new connections and take their reflections to a level we never could have anticipated. This year was no exception!

There are 3 rounds to the pom pom simulation. Round One consists of collecting pom poms. You have one minute to get as many pom poms as you can. Pom poms, of course, simulate wealth (and power). There is a catch. Students receive slips of paper with “assignments” on them. These instructions make it harder for some people to gather pom poms than others. Some examples:

You can use both of your hands, but you may not move your feet at all.

You may not bend your knees.

You must wear an oven mitt on your non-dominant hand and use that hand to pick up pom poms.

You may only use your two pointer fingers behind your back.

Only two people are allowed to use their hands and move around as they normally would.  We also caution all students that if you touch or bump another body, you lose pom poms. This is a safety requirement more than anything else, but does make it harder for the students who are already limited by their instructions!

Once pom pom collection is over, we put students into three groups based on the number of pom poms they collected.  This year, we had:

Students were very engaged, animatedly talking about how the collection process was “not fair” and how they deserved another chance.  So we told them, ok, here you go - Round Two.

Round Two consists of making “baskets” of crumpled up balls of paper. Each group had different color paper. I told the 3rd group - little wealth and power - that they had an advantage due to their large number of members, as every time one member of the group made a “basket,” every member of the group would earn another pom pom. There were cheers when this was announced, but the celebration was short lived as we soon showed each group where they had to stand to shoot.

Group 1 was right up front, Group 2 was behind them (still too far away to easily make a basket, especially with a ball made of paper), and Group 3 was in the back of the room. Naturally, Group 1 made lots of baskets, while Group 2 and 3 only made one each. During this round, we witnessed some very creative teamwork and division of labor as well as enterprising blocking tactics and questions about whether you were allowed to take paper balls out of the baskets. After Round 2, we heard more frustration about how “unfair” the whole situation was and many requests for a new “fair” round.

So we moved on to Round 3. In Round 3, each group gets to decide what they think is a “fair” system to distribute ALL of the pom poms. We give them five minutes to discuss with their group and come up with a system they support. Each group must choose a spokesperson to present their plan to the class. They have one minute each to make a pitch for their group's plan. What students don’t know until voting happens is that voting is weighted as shown below.

Group 1 members: 5 votes each

Group 2 members: 2 votes each

Group 3 members: ½ vote each

When students saw the unequal voting power, Group 3 was livid. They had planned on winning the vote by virtue of their large number of people. Group 1 was pleased as they planned on retaining their “wealth and power” and now had the votes to do so.

Here are the plans they proposed:

Group 1: Play steal the bacon to earn pom poms. 2 people would go out from each team. Keep doing that until pompoms are gone. There are restrictions- the same as the first ones from the beginning (the slips of paper we handed out).

Group 2: Our plan is everyone gets the same amount of pompoms and if it is an odd number, we cut it up into thirds. We don't want to keep repeating what we did before. We want every group to have the same.

Group 3: Everyone would start off with 5 pompoms to meet needs and then you could work your way up by doing different challenges. No restrictions.

We voted, and Group 1’s proposal got the most votes (once we calculated in the weighting). The other students were FRUSTRATED. Group 1 was pleased - they had started out trying to think of a “fair” system, but soon realized “it doesn’t say it has to be fair.” They also were influenced by two members who repeatedly said “Stay wealthy! We should keep our power!”

At this point, we stopped the simulation and had a debrief. First we asked students to share their reactions and feelings (one sentence per person). Here are some samples:

Student from Group 3:

“When I first saw the amounts each group got, it made me feel like the people in the 3rd group were being treated like they aren't humans… ½ a vote. ½ human! Half not real. Not seen. When the people with more wealth get so many more votes, it feels like just because they have more they also should get more of everything always. We are the people working the hardest but we can’t get the things they have that we want and need.”  (lots of me too’s)

Student from Group 1:

“I do agree with [student’s name] that it wasn’t fair. But our group was trying to make it so that we would still be at the top of the ladder, so it wouldn’t be as fair  - you had to be strategic and life isn’t always fair.”

Once everyone shared, we reminded the students that this was a simulation that lasted less than two hours and therefore is NOT THE SAME as actually experiencing poverty, oppression, lack of privilege, discrimination, etc. This was just an activity about pom poms. We DO NOT suddenly understand how others who are actually in these situations feel, just have a tiny experience we can think about and hopefully learn from. Then we asked them to make connections to real life, both in discussion and then later as a homework reflection.

Here are some of their thoughts:

"I used to think that if you work hard you can get wealth but now I think there is more to it. I think this because If you are born without wealth you will have a disadvantage and you will be stuck behind someone who started with a lot of resources and wealth."

"I used to think that in life everything started out fairly and equally and you get to be a higher class based on what job you have and your choices. But now I know that some people are born with an advantage such as rich parents who can afford to send you to a good college which could result into a better life."

We will be presenting this simulation (among other activities) on Friday, March 10th at the Private Schools for Public Purpose conference and look forward to trying it out with other educators. We’d love to hear your reactions and questions!

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75th Anniversary of Executive Order 9066 (Japanese Incarceration) Resources

Sunday, February 19th is the 75th anniversary of the day President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 (in 1945) which led to the removal and internment of approximately 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry. Many of them were US citizens. Many of them lost property or were forced to sell at a loss when they were removed and relocated. I personally find “relocation” and “internment” misleading as people were incarcerated and given no choice about their removal from their homes.

Image credit: http://hdjapaneseinternment.weebly.com/uploads/6/8/7/3/6873644/9418554_orig.jpg

While this shameful occurrence in American history is and always will be relevant, it feels especially relevant today with the recent Muslim ban, fears of a Muslim registry, and frequent executive orders. You know your students and school best, so I compiled some resources to potentially use in the classroom. This list is by no means exhaustive, so please comment if you have other resources you’d recommend.

In our class, we will start with a sign in on our front board with images and the writing prompts “I think..” and “I wonder..” We will respond to students’ questions and clarify misconceptions.

Image credit: http://katieyamasaki.com/work/fish-for-jimmy/

Later, we will do a read aloud of A Fish For Jimmy by Katie Yamasaki. It has gorgeous illustrations and is a tale of an older sibling taking care of a younger sibling, so many of our students find the main character relatable.

We will also look as some images from this photo essay: Photo essay with some background information from the Atlantic

We will watch the video below by Frank Chi. This video is poignant and clearly makes the parallel to today without directly saying anything political. It’s worth watching yourself and sharing with others even if you don’t share it with your students.

Muslim Kids Read Heartbreaking Letters From WWII To Show How History Is Repeating Itself

Other resources:

Eight Essential Japanese American History Books for Young Readers

Life in a WWII Japanese American Internment Camp (educator resources from the Smithsonian Museum of American History)

Oral histories from of Japanese Americans from Telling Their Stories (Elders interviewed by students - this is a great resource for Social Studies teachers in general!)

Information about the Supreme Court case, Korematsu v. U.S., which legalized Japanese-American internment.

Zinn Education project related lesson and materials archive

We'd love to hear if you use any of these or have resources you'd recommend of your own!

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Factory Simulation

“I don't understand why other companies treat their factory workers inhumanely if you can still be successful if you treat people like people.” 

Economics 101 is in full swing in 5th grade!

We tried out a BRAND new simulation today and were reminded how difficult it is to check all of the details for experiential learning activities. Whew!

That being said-- we are pleased with what our students experienced and how they are now thinking about different types of work, wages, and the many levels and layers of circumstances that can alter people's financial stability.

SET UP:

This one is complicated to set up. We have three groups, and each group had different tasks and varying working environments:

Office workers (5 students)

• Task: read news articles and created a presentation
• Could takes breaks whenever, used computers, talked with one another, had company snacks (pretzels).  

A group of unionized factory workers (11 kids, based off of Alta Gracia and employees we interviewed there this past summer-- check them out!!!)

• Task: creating beaded bracelets according to strict requirements
• Had organized break times and healthcare (we created a water issue that affected the entire city they all worked in), but still needed to meet deadlines etc.

A group of factory workers (10 kids, based off of Levis and Timberland factories we learned about this summer).

• Task: “food production” (food was drawn on paper)
• Had to stand the entire time, no healthcare, no breaks, no clean water

We also ended up having a 4th group (slightly unplanned..) who ended up being unemployed (they went on strike and their classmates did not follow them so they got fired!). They were hired for temporary employment by the office workers and did small jobs around the classroom. This proved to be an interesting dynamic that added to the simulation.

EXPERIENCE:
Students work hard following the directions on their assignment sheets. Every once in awhile teachers would come over and say it was 'pay day' (we had 3 of these) and give each member of the group the points they earned for their work. For the most part, the students worked really hard at their jobs and had interesting conversations about quality of their work environment and how to best navigate it. The majority decided to 'put their heads down' and work harder.

TWISTS:
Teachers also came around when it wasn't 'pay day' time and provided circumstance cards that students needed to calculate into their paychecks. The circumstance cards ranged from "Your child had a fever, you bought medicine -2 points" to things like "You have had a death in the family and you need to cover the funeral costs". There were multiple health related cards that could add up (hand pain from repetitive motions, back pain, breathing issues from dust in the factory) all of which we learned different individuals suffered from especially in the Timberland and Levis factory locations. These cards began to frustrate students and heightened the stress in the room. Of course there were some cards (especially for the office team) for getting +4 for a promotion or a boss noticing their hard work.

Another twist we saw was that some of the Office workers went to 'donate' points to the factory workers. They donated 1 point to each person. (They were making 100 points per paycheck while the non-unionized factory workers were making 10 points per paycheck). It was interesting to see the different responses to these donations and how some of the donations didn't help people's overall situations.
 

THEIR REFLECTIONS:
Our students were STRESSED!!! They talked a lot about how they were worried about making deadlines, how hard they were working, and how scary it was to receive a card and know you were barely keeping any money. A couple of them talked about how they felt they weren't paid for the level of work they were doing and felt like no one noticed how HARD they were working. The bracelet group made extra bracelets in hopes of a raise and they didn't receive one.

OUR OBSERVATIONS:
We found it fascinating to see the conversations about strikes and organizing.

We found it really interesting to see how the 'financial' hits felt -- from the higher Office group one student talked about how she took a big hit one week taking care of a family member and then she felt bad that she didn't want to be part of the office people who donated money to the factory workers who didn’t have clean water. And then she realized exactly how little her peers in the factories were making and felt like she should donate.

Overall we noticed that emotions ran high, we appreciated their thoughts on continuous stress and will continue that conversation as we take on other's perspectives -- constant stress is a very challenging struggle and we are glad they have the teensy-tiniest insight into what that might be like for someone.

We are thinking about the twist with unemployed workers and temporary workers (they would work for even 1 point) and how that added to the overall experience of learning about labor (even though we didn’t plan it). Next, we are going to work with the Math teacher to create a budgeting simulation!

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Interview for Educators Lead!

Nina was featured on a podcast as an edu-leader! You can listen to her interview with Educators Lead here.

It's also available through:

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/educators-lead-jay-willis/id1068590753

Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=79340&refid=stpr

Google Play: http://www.educatorslead.com/googleplay

Please listen and comment below with your thoughts and responses - we'd love to hear what you think!

Ideas and Resources to Address the Muslim and Refugee Ban in the Classroom

Coming off a weekend of protesting, I find myself thinking hard about what to say to my students tomorrow when they ask me about the news. We saw some of our students at the rally at the White House today. They will want to share observations from their experience tomorrow. Students will also have questions about checks and balances since we recently concluded a unit on US Government. They will have overheard conversations between adults and understood only snippets of what was going on in the media. Where do we start?

Our planned read aloud for tomorrow!

Start with a read aloud. Ask students what connections they can make to the story. Can they make text to self connections? Model by thinking of a time you yourself were homesick or scared or missed someone. What about text to world connections? How does the story connect to events happening in the world today?

The Journey by Francesca Sanna is about a family who must leave their home and country to escape war and hopefully find safety. After you read it, talk about what the word “refugee” means. This is the book we will read aloud tomorrow. You can find more ideas for relevant picture books here. Naturally, there are many more out there- please comment below with your suggestions!

Discussion Ideas

Talk about the news. I like to start with an image (works well with my concrete 5th graders) for sign in and a table for responses with two columns: "I think" and "I wonder." You can do this on a large whiteboard or piece of chart paper, or individually (or in small groups) with handouts. It helps less confident students feel ready to share their thoughts and provides you with a way to find out what misconceptions versus accurate information students have and understand. The "I wonder" column also gives you a better sense of where to go to answer all of their questions and prompts them to ASK questions, which is always an excellent place to begin.

You can find images of the protests at airports here. You could also talk about the executive order and find the affected countries (and cities protesting) on a map. Here is an article describing the current situation in the seven affected countries (with a map highlighting their locations).

Here is a New York Times article with stories of some of the humans banned from the U.S. The article also includes a short video of protests at JFK airport. My students usually like to hear stories of individual people or families as it aids their comprehension by making the situation less abstract.

Other Useful Resources

UNHCR Teaching Resources and Toolkit for Teaching About Refugees

Brainpop video about religion (requires a Brainpop login; Brainpop also has informational videos about the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and Citizenship).

A People’s History of Muslims in the United States (from Zinn Ed Project)

The First Amendment and Freedom of Religion lesson from Teaching Tolerance

8 educational resources to better understand the refugee crisis from Amnesty International

Naturally, there are SO many directions you could go and topics to cover. These are only some suggestions for ways to get started. You know your students (and school, and families, and administration) best. If you do try out one of these ideas or have other suggestions, please comment below! We’d love to hear how tomorrow goes in your classroom.

 

 

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Sinking Ship Simulation: Who do we VALUE?

"Well in the real world not everyone can get everything and this kind of showed me that not all our decision making processes are fair."

Notes on our whiteboard from the students' brainstorming and decision making process.

How it Works:

Yesterday in Social Studies, we did our Sinking Ship simulation (idea credit: we first read about this here). We had the students in half groups (when half the class is with us and half the class is with a different teacher) so we only had 13 students at a time. For each group, we started by handing out “assignments” on folded slips of paper.

The different roles were:

migrant worker

senator

someone who is currently unemployed

child

firefighter

teacher

nurse

doctor

babysitter

college student

taxi driver

lawyer

scientist

We then asked our students to get in a circle and told them that they were on a sinking ship, and there were only FIVE spots in the lifeboat. They had to work together to decide as a group which five people should go in the lifeboat.

Students immediately started making arguments for why they should be on the lifeboat. The senator claimed that he should get on the boat because he is important. Another student countered, “Not on the lifeboat!” One of our favorite funny moments occurred when someone agreed with the “senator” that he should be on the boat and another student said quietly to himself, “It depends if he is a Democrat or a Republican.”

Why We Love this Simulation:

We love this simulation for so many reasons--

• It is fascinating to watch the students work it out amongst themselves!

• It’s also interesting to hear the arguments the students come up, and note which students give up immediately when they read their assignment and decide that their job isn’t “good” enough.

• It is also very telling (and part of our debrief) to note when students laugh. Some laugh out loud when they read their role to their classmates and others start play acting their preconceived idea of that role. For example, the student who received “you are currently unemployed” said, “I just graduated from college. I don’t have a job and I live in my mother’s basement!” in a goofy voice as if he was acting out a role, and put labels on himself.

The Two Group's Decisions:

In the first group, the students worked collaboratively and ensured that everyone’s voice was heard (with some raised voices, but general agreement), while in the second group, one student took charge and made decisions for the group that were later challenged as “unfair.” The two groups also came to different conclusions about who should get a spot on the lifeboat. Their final choices for which "characters" should be on the lifeboat were:

Group One:

1. Doctor

2. Child

3. Nurse

4. Scientist

5. College student

Group Two:

1. Child

2. Person who is currently unemployed

3. Doctor

4. Senator

5. College student

Student Reflections:

"I thought it was unfair because it was based on stereotypes and generalization."

"One thing that did not go well was there was a lot of stereotypes of "taxi driver" and the "currently unemployed". This is bad because just because someone does not have a job does not mean they are not smart. Also people were saying things like how can a taxi driver help. This made us choose people whose jobs make more money, not on their basic humanity!"

"I can connect this to the real world with people who say people who have bad paying jobs aren’t smart. In this I felt stereotyped and I can connect that with the real world because people were using the same stereotypes."

Who would you choose to go on the lifeboat? Do you have other ideas for collaborative problem solving simulations? How else can we push our students to think critically about who is valued in our society and how different people or roles are valued?  We’d love to hear your ideas!

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Owning the Process: A Tool for all Writers

Hi everyone, Gabby here. I'm excited to share this idea with you today. It is one of my favorite ideas and tool we have used so far this year. You may have also noticed (we are 110% sure you have) that writing is a process and writing can be hard!

We all have our moments where we slump into the doldrums and lows where we just do not know how to get out. I noticed this with myself when working on storytelling pieces.. Each time I started to take on a story, I found myself landing in the same slumps and moaning at very similar times in the process. My friends would laugh on the phone, "Gabby, this always happens to you.. Right about now!"  What helped me was recognizing that the lows came specifically during the brainstorming process (and deciding which idea to use!) and just that knowledge that this was a part of my process, gave me some perspective to work through it. And thus, the writing process map was born!

The task: have students create wacky wonderful depictions of their own personal writing processes. Sure, many schools use Writer's Workshop (we do) and have a set few steps for how the writing process works, ie: brainstorming, drafting, or publishing etc. However, even within this structure we all (surprise!) take it on and experience it in our own unique way.

We asked our students to show through drawings, arrows (there ended up being SO many arrows), and captions how the writing process goes for them. We set them up with examples from different teachers and with a few questions to consider :

• What are times am I usually flowing and/ or excited during the Writing process? How do I show that?

• What are times when I am stuck and/or frustrated… ? Make sure to show that in all its glory!

• What works for me when I get stuck in this spot or that spot or another spot… make sure to include that!

From these questions our students created features like:

• "failure walls!" that popped up during brainstorming (or for one more reluctant writer, throughout his whole map!)

• or "alert!" signs telling them to take it slow when they had to take on editing their punctuation.

• We also saw pep talks written all over the maps like, "At this part for drafting, don't worry about your spelling!" and "You usually get mad here-- get water and keep going!".

• Some students even created a full table complete with multiple steps for how to work through their grumpy moments.

• Needless to say, every single map is different, even though on a larger level we go through a similar process as a class for Writing. We were blown away by their creativity and the fun they had thinking about themselves and naming what was hard for them.

Using Writing Process Maps:

At this point in the year, the writing process map continues to be one of our favorite tools. Some students bring it out with them when we work on any writing, some take it out only at the beginning of a new piece of writing to remind themselves of where they are headed personally in a tangible way. Other students, when they hit their grumpy frustrated points, get reminded by a teacher to go look at their process and see where they are in it. They often point to a spot in the map where they typically feel low and follow their map to move out of it. They gain some perspective and they keep trekking through to wonderful and challenging process of writing.

Try it out!

We would love to hear if anybody tries this with their students and if so, how it goes. Feel free to take a look at some of our students’ maps down below!

Sending you our best from D.C.

Steps a student wrote for themselves for how to move through their "failure wall" 

 

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Econ 101: Wealth Distribution Simulation

"I learned that the small population of the upper class have more money than the huge population of the middle class. I do not think it is fair because a small amount people get a huge advantage over the massive amount of people in the middle/lower class."  

That's right, today in class we talked about the very agreeable subject of…. Money! We started our Economics unit yesterday with a simulation. In our activity we had the students do IR (independent reading) in spaces that simulated how wealth is distributed in the US.

For example:

• 1 student has 11 chairs (wealthiest 1% has 42% of US wealth)

• 3 students have 9 chairs (next 9% has 36% of US wealth)

• 22 students have 6 chairs (bottom 90% has 22% of US wealth)

This part of the simulation was all fun and games for us. We squealed and giggled and playfully whined about our legs being squished trying to cram onto those 6 chairs. But then…

We brought out two large doughnuts, and we split the doughnuts along the same proportions. As you can imagine, this made the division of "wealth" much more real. The complaints about 'fairness' and frustrations began to fly. After the students representing the bottom 90% had a few minutes to squabble over how to split up the remaining part of a doughnut between all 22 of them, we called all of the students back together for discussion.

We started by asking: How are you feeling right now? Students went around and shared one word summing up their current emotional state. Many students said “unfair,” while the student who represented the top 1% said “deliciously luxurious.”  

Other questions we asked were:

What did you notice? How might you have felt or acted if you were in a different group? What are you thinking about money/wealth? What connections can you make to your life or to the world around you?

A very rich discussion ensued, including students reflecting about how they learned how to talk about money (or not talk about money, as the case may be). They described how it felt to learn about the reality of wealth distribution in our country, but simultaneously try to figure out how to feel sort of comfortable doing so and avoid being rude or making people feel bad.

Another image - the 2 parts really help students conceptualize the numbers!

Below are a few of our additional thoughts (from discussion time but also students’ homework reflections):

Here are some things that make us think about money:

• When a bill comes (like the water bill)

• When my mom goes to the bank

• Electronics

• Gifts

• When other people talk about it

• When people talk about their gifts

• Houses.. And other people’s houses

Here are some questions we have now that we have entered our initial study of economics:

• Around how many people are in the upper class?

• Besides housing, food, and care, what advantages does the upper class have?

• What if you make little money (so you are considered experiencing poverty), but your parents give you a lot of money. What “class” are you in then?

• What would it be like if, for a different country, people did the same thing and calculated the distribution of wealth. What would it be like?

• Out of all the people in the middle class in DC, how many people are in the upper middle class?

• Will there be a test?

• What class is my family in?

Let us know if you talk about money, wealth, or class in your classroom. How do you broach the topic? Do you discuss class issues? Study Economics? We'd love to hear!

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Book Review: One Word From Sophia

One Word From Sophia

By Jim Averbeck and Yasmeen Ismail

Summary: Sophia is a passionate young person who really wants her One True Desire for her birthday. She spends the book trying out different tactics (graphs, word choice, surveys etc.) to persuade her family members to get her, her wish. We love that she is multi-ethnic (!!!) and that this is represented in the different family members she goes to speak to throughout the book. Sophia is also hilarious and always makes us laugh (teachers and students). Be warned, there is a line about poop, this is pretty much a guaranteed giggle. We also love the sophisticated vocabulary that this book employs-- many of our students feel inspired to elevate their language after this read aloud!

Questions/conversations with students:

• We go over vocabulary in this text

• We go over her strategies, explicitly noting her thoughtful use of graphs, charts (whenever we can celebrate and point to a girl loving and using STEAM, we do)

• We talk about audience and crafting arguments for a specific audience

• This text can be used for a conversation about families, too, but we actually like that we don't need to with this one, and that her family isn't something we are 'confused' about

• We remind students that good manners can never hurt!

How we use it: We use this book as a second mini-lesson supporting the introduction of our Persuasive Essays unit. It works beautifully as a source for noting what is and is not successful in the craft of persuasion. It also gets our students excited to think about audience. We all come out of the lesson (and adventure for a One True Desire) feeling much more strategic in our quest to be persuasive!

Sophia trying to persuade her uncle with a "compelling pie chart!"

We hope you enjoy this book, if you haven't checked it out already--  it really is a fun one!

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New Year's Resolutions!

We started off the new year by having our students write their own New Year's Resolutions. We (teacher and students) love Kid President, and we (teachers) love his framing of thinking about what we can do for others in the new year. So we watched his AWESOME YEAR Challenge and brainstormed ideas for what we can do to make 2017 awesome for somebody else.

Students had their own templates which included a section for brainstorming ideas. Next, they chose ideas they wanted to elaborate on, and used these sentence starters: 

I resolve to…

I will do this by…

This is significant because… (So what?!)

We frequently include the "so what" section as it really pushes students to be reflective and think about a bigger picture instead of making a concrete or limited statement. We also ask our students to choose one resolution and think of two ways we (their teachers) can help them work on or achieve this resolution. This is a great way to make sure their resolutions are realistic and to remind them that support from others is an important tool.

Some of our favorite New Year's Resolutions from our students were:

"I resolve to think about others before I say something so no one gets hurt
I will do this by really thinking about the people it might effect before I say something. And if I think it won’t hurt anyone, think about if someone could interpret it wrong.
This is significant because impact > intent. And sometimes just thinking before you say could save you from really hurting someone. You don’t want to risk upsetting someone when you could have just thought before opening your mouth."

"Listen and pay more attention to what other people are saying." 

"Be open to new ideas.. teachers can help remind me that different is good and so is being open"

We were impressed with our students' depth of thought and desire to listen to and be aware of others.

What are your New Year's Resolutions? Do you have students write resolutions or do any kind of goal setting or reflection for the new year?

New Year, Next Steps

We hope you all have been finding moments of peace and moments of rest during the holidays. 

We are gearing up for tomorrow and this next chapter in the school year. We hope to bring calm and routines back into the lives of our spunky 10/11 year olds! 

For now we wanted to leave with you a few quotes that have been guiding our preparation into the new year. We hope they support you in your work and your self care! 

Sending you warmth,

Gabby + Nina 

Book Review: Crazy Hair by Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean

This is one of our favorite books! Ms. Arca reads this one, but we both relate.

Summary: This book is a rhyming text (we call it a poem) in which a little girl asks the main character why his hair is so "crazy". He responds with the most dazzling array of answers. There are beasts that live in his hair, and a circus, and hot air balloons.. The art is also phenomenal. Each stanza ends with "..inside my crazy hair" and even our 5th graders will fill in that section and join in the reading.

How we use it: We use this text in our poetry unit. We LOVE it. This is one of the last poems that we have our students write in the unit because it is more personal. The prompt for this poem is to take back ownership and claim an aspect of yourself that you sometimes feel insecure, judged, or uncomfortable about. I (Ms. Arca) then talk about how even though people ask about my hair, touch my hair without asking etc.. this poem embodies my claiming of this part of myself with PRIDE. Our students write poems about hairy arms, big feet, 'funny' ears, "being weird", 'tallness", freckles.. The list goes on. It is a hard and vulnerable poem-- but we love the social-emotional work that this lesson brings to the table and the poems are personal mantras of hard internal and academic work!

Questions / conversations with the students:

• There are always students who feel resistant to this poem, it makes them feel uncomfortable  ("I like everything about myself" or "I can't think of anything"). For these students we return back to a brainstorming list we've done in the past.

• "Crazy" is a complicated word, and we know that. One thing we talk about in this context is how since this is your poem of ownership-- you can call it whatever you'd like to. I make a point to share that I do NOT like it when other people tell me that my hair is "crazy". We talk about the difference between what you or an inner community can call itself, versus what doesn't feel okay for others to say about you. This conversation comes up again and again in our room in different veins.

• We make a point to celebrate what they share. It is brave to take something on that you don't always feel secure about and claim it with pride. We tell them how proud we are of them for doing this work and how as humans this is hard, but important work to do. We all have to be our own cheerleaders sometimes!

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Launching character analysis with a debate

We tried something new this week and launched our character analysis unit with a text based debate! I got this idea from attending a debate related workshop at the Capital Area Progressive Schools conference at Green Acres last month. Our students LOVE debating so we had to try it out.

The idea of a text based debate is that students agree or disagree with a claim about a character and find evidence from the text to back up their argument. We used the book Fox by Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks. The claim we used was: Magpie is a good friend. If you don't know the book, you should check it out!

image credit:  http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2651521-fox

We started by having students do a quick write in their writer's notebooks answering the question: what makes someone a good friend? Then, we read Fox aloud and has students turn and talk with a partner to answer the question: Is Magpie a good friend? Their homework that night was to re-read the text and find evidence that Magpie IS and IS NOT a good friend. We warned them that they had to find evidence for both sides as they could be assigned to debate PRO or CON.

Students came in the next day buzzing with excitement, evidence, and complex reasoning. We had them debate in teams of two and reminded them about debate norms and expectations first.  Kid President's How to Disagree video is a great resource for this!  We watched it before our Columbus Day debates so didn't re-watch it, but reminded students about it. They practiced language such as "I respectfully disagree" and "You made a good point, but .."

Debating commenced! PRO teams started with 3 minutes, then 3 minutes CON and then 2 minutes for rebuttals on both sides. We ended with 5 minutes discussion time in our debate groups where students had to discuss how the debate went and try to come to a claim they could all agree on and support with their combined evidence. This involves complex compromise, analysis, and understanding of characters as multi-faceted. Students came up with: Magpie is trying to be a good friend, she is a good friend but slips up, the best friends are ones who disagree and more! 

Our debate helped students think about Magpie as a real character and see different perspectives in the story (and the world). As part of their homework, they had to connect their reflections from the debate to their own life. They answered the prompt "I'm the kind of friend who.." and made thoughtful and honest connections to their own lives.

One of our students reflected, 

"After the debates today, I think Magpie is a good friend because even though she made the mistake of going with Fox and abandoning Dog, she realized her mistake and fixed it. [By going back to Dog.] Dog and Magpie also have similarities (Dog is blind in one eye, Magpie has an injured wing), and then they fix those losses. [Magpie is Dog’s eye, and Dog is Magpie’s injured wing.] Magpie is just a friend who made a mistake."

He also wrote 5 reasons to back up his argument instead of the required 3! This level of engagement and analysis is wonderful, especially at the beginning of a unit. It also applies so well to our social justice work as a reminder that stories (and people) are complex and our understandings and responses to them are unique and reflect our perspectives.

This activity also reminded students how to respectfully disagree and helped them realize that multiple viewpoints had validity because stories (and life) are nuanced with many perspectives and layers. In the words of Kid President, remember to "treat people like people, people!"

Please comment with questions or other ideas. We LOVE this new structure and want to keep trying it out!

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"Telling Truth" published on Bright via Medium!

We submitted a piece about our storytelling unit to Bright, Medium's platform for news about innovation in education and it was published today!  Please read Telling Truth: Why we teach storytelling to fifth graders and let us know what you think!

Why we need to talk about race

"It's personal."

"No one has ever talked about race in front of me so I think you don't talk about it. Ever."

"My parents have only talked about it once in front of me and they were REALLY uncomfortable, so I learned you shouldn't talk about race."

Earlier this school year, we asked our students what they know about talking about race. A few representative responses are quoted above. All of our students also agreed that race is confusing and they don't know much about it. We discussed how when something is confusing or we don't know much about it, the way to learn more about it IS to talk about it, even if it is uncomfortable.

So, this week was "race week" in our classroom. We started with a drawing activity, challenging students to realize stereotypes and expectations they've internalized without realizing, and continue on to learning about institutionalized racism and learning vocabulary and explaining concepts around race.

The drawing activity consists of us reading descriptions of various celebrities (we tried to pick people the kids would know) devoid of any descriptors related to race or gender, and asking students to draw the person they visualized. We give them ONLY crayons to draw with so they are forced to choose a skin color.

One of our student's drawings.

During the reveal process when we read the descriptions and showed them a photo of the celebrity in question, we asked them to raise their hands if they drew someone female/male or black/white/etc. Some students were very nervous even to raise their hands, and insisted they "didn't draw a race." There was a lot of discomfort, nervous laughter, and awkwardly looking away. Some students said they felt "weird" about their drawings. Others only admitted they visualized or drew someone having a particular race only after another student spoke up and said she was surprised that she automatically thought in stereotypical ways.

One student reflected,

"I thought I did not believe in stereotypes, but my drawings showed me I did."

We pushed them to then reflect on WHERE they were getting these messages and images from and reminded them of our Halloween investigation and all of the outside influences on our minds! One student wrote later,

"I used to think I wasn't racist, but now I'm thinking that it is weird that my mind was already being prejudiced beause I didn't think I was."

Next, we learned about racism by watching this video. We bleeped out a curse word and gave the students an outline of the main points to fill in, as well as stopping and discussing and watching the video twice (as they noted, she talks so fast!).  Students had a lot of questions about institutions and the idea of a social construct. We assured them that these are difficult concepts for adults and we would keep thinking and talking about them.  For homework that night, they read a Newsela article titled "For minority students, suspensions begin in the earliest grades" for a practical application of both institutional racism and intrinsic bias.

The finished charts from our "silent conversation." 

Later in the week, we had a class "silent conversation." If you haven't experienced the silent conversation set up before, you should try it and will love it! It is an amazing way to quietly and automatically build in reflection and responding to thoughts and questions of others.  We wrote stereotype, prejudice, race, culture, discrimination, identity, and bias down on sheets of chart paper. Then, we modeled how to have a silent conversation on the board and asked students what they noticed. They came up with: 

Be silent!

Write down your thoughts/reactions to the word on the paper.

Respond to other people's thoughts.

Show you agree with an exclamation point or you don't understand with a question mark. 

As you can see from the photo above, students had thoughtful and complex responses during our silent conversation. One student reflected afterward that writing instead of having to speak up really freed her to think of what she wanted to say as no one knew it was her writing and we were all just thinking of ideas separate from who wrote or said them.

Questions and thoughts students had after our silent conversation:

"I wonder why so many people think stereotypically. Even I think stereotypically without realizing it."
"I wonder how I can detect bias in myself and fix it? Also, I wonder if people naturally have prejudice or if it is something that is taught?"

In past years, we have had to explicitly connect this learning to present day issues, as our students used to think that racism was more of a problem in the past, like slavery or legally enforced segregation. They had learned a narrative that Dr. Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement "fixed" problems relating to racism. However, in the aftermath of the recent Presidential election and with frequent news of hateful harassment since Election Day (some in nearby areas), this year they easily made the connections on their own.

 

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Post-Election in 5th Grade

Yesterday was a difficult day, in every sense of the word.  I went into school feeling devastated and exhausted. Other teachers came into our classroom for hugs. Many of my coworkers were in tears, sharing stories of heartbreaking questions their children asked them that morning. Some were wondering what to do to make sure they or their family members would stay (and feel) safe.

Image credit: VOA news (http://www.voanews.com/a/minnesota-state-legislature-llhan-omar-somali-refugee/3589660.html) 

But our students were arriving, whether we were ready or not, so I set up our sign-in prompt for the day. It was the photograph above with the headline: "Ilhan Omar will be nation's first Somali-American legislator." Students wrote thoughts and questions related to the headline as they trickled into the classroom. Later, we watched this video during Morning Meeting. My students responded to the joy and exuberance in the celebrations and especially loved hearing from a fellow ten year old (Omar’s nephew). They were happy to know there was something to celebrate and were excited to hear that a person who is a woman, refugee, immigrant, and Muslim was elected to the Minnesota legislature. I reminded them that even though they are too young to vote, they are never too young to try and make an impact.

Later in the school day, we gave our students time to journal and (hopefully) start to process what was going through their minds. Some wrote poems while others wrote about how the events of the election unfolded for them. Donald Trump winning the presidency goes against everything we teach them. We try to show and tell them: Respect others. Language matters: choose your words carefully. Discrimination dehumanizes ALL of us. Treat people like people.  

After journaling, students had the option to read a (kid appropriate) news article about the election on Newsela, continue writing and processing, or read. Some chose to read the news article as all they understood that morning was that the adults in their lives were reacting dramatically to something that happened in the middle of the night. Access to information, honesty, and a calm atmosphere seemed to be what we all needed.

Later, students were given the opportunity to collaboratively create aluminum foil sculptures depicting what it means to care for others. It was a lovely reminder to us (adults) just how young our students are, and an important exercise in working together and caring for each other.

All day, we tried to remind them there is always something to celebrate. Be proud of who are you and what you stand for. Remember the fighters and survivors who came before us. Celebrate and support the people in your life. Whatever happens, you have a voice. Use it wisely.