“The key to being a comic book artist…

is to be fearless.”  Quite a profound statement, I thought, especially coming from a high school student.  Yesterday, as part of the events leading up to the BAM Summer Book Jam, our class was visited by Adele Moss and Leslie Bloomfield, Berkeley High students, and writers, illustrators, and publishers of their own comic book.  They explained to the students how, starting in 6th Grade, they began to create and self-publish their own comics and how they were able to get their comic called Hector the Collector carried at Berkeley’s own Comic Relief comic book store.  The two young authors/ artists then led the students through a brief activity about unleashing the creative process to create their own super heroes and super villains.

You can check out their website here for biographies and more information about their work.

Coming back to the initial quote for a moment, I think it is an important statement about taking risks, especially in our creative endeavors.  As children grow up, risk-taking in the arts and writing is far too often squelched by fears of peer rejection.  It would serve us well as adults to model the daring creativity that we so often encourage our children to apply to their writing, art, acting and dancing.  So here is my challenge for everyone reading my blog (potentially a couple hundred a day now, although I’m not sure who they all are).  On one of those warm, lazy summer afternoons or evenings in the coming months, instead of clicking that remote over and over, instead of putting headphones on, and instead of hiding out in a movie theater, take a moment to be fearless and create something together with your child.  Over the summer I’m going to do my best to update the blog every once in a while with crafty and imaginative activity ideas.  I’m hoping to hear back from some of you through comments or email, to let me know what you are doing.  Maybe you could even send me a picture, scan or video, that I could help you share.  Just a thought, but one that I hope works out.

Homework:

1. Language Arts:  Finish final draft of first persuasive essay.
2. Reading: Read for 20 minutes and turn in pink reading log.

Field Trip Reminder

I apologize for not updating the blog much over the past couple weeks.  I have been swamped with end of the year preparations, assessments, and meetings, and I just haven’t had the time.  I wanted to post this weekend as a reminder about our bike field trip tomorrow through Cycles of Change.

On Monday, Cycles of Change with be visiting our school to lead a fun day of bicycle safety education for our class.  They will provide a bicycle for every child to ride to help all students get some experience.  We will be involved in the program for the entire day and will be taking a short ride to have a picnic lunch.  Here are a few things to remember:

• All students will need to ride geared bikes with handbrakes that have passed a safety inspection.   If your child decides to bring a bike, but it does not meet the requirements, they will be provided with another one for the day.
• Please bring a bag lunch for our picnic.
• Wear close-toed shoes and comfortable clothing.

If you have any questions, just send me an email.  Thanks!

Mr. Weis

Polyhedra and Politically Poignant Pictures

In looking at the calendar today I was amazed by the fact that this is the very last week of the year that is a compeltely ordinary Monday through Friday week.  We have Monday off for the next two weeks and are then down to the final two weeks in which will have field trips and promotion activities.  Wow, we really have to make each second count!

For vocabulary this week, our roots all have to do with the elements.  They are terra, aer, astr/aster, and hydra/hydro.  Students are invited to try to find the meanings of the roots tonight by deducing a meaning from the words in the word list.  If they are having difficulty, they can check this website from Michigan State University which has a pretty good list of Latin and Greek Roots, their meanings, and some sample words with the roots. There is an option for a printer friendly version that students could print out and put in their binder, or students could go to this website and get an even more concise list that could easily keep as a reference page.

In Mathematics, we mixed in a little bit of art in the form of both drawing and sculpture.  First we did some step by step drawings of geometric solids in 3d.  While we drew, we focused on using foreshortening techniques to make the drawn objects look 3d.  After that, students were given one of 5 different patterns for a 3-dimensional geometric solid.  Upon completing their objects, we learned about the vocabulary terms prism, pyramid, and polyhedron.  You can learn about those terms as well as many others at a Maths Dictionary. (For those unfamiliar with the term Maths with an S, most English-speaking countries outside of North America use the word to refer to Mathematics.)  This is possibly my favourite (get it?) dictionary that I have found this year.  It has an easy to use interface, lots of pictures and graphical examples, nd plenty of little interactive activities.  I highly encourage you to use it for not only students in my class, but for other kids as well.

In Social Studies today we looked at some political cartoons from the time period right before the civil war.  We identified symbols and connected the images with historical people, events, and opinions of the time.  I will go into more detail and provide some links tomorrow, but for today, students are encouraged to explore the archives at the Library of Congress website.  Follow this link and take a gander.  This is a great resource for projects for students of all ages, so I encourage you to bookmark it.  Sometimes it can take a bit of searching to find exactly what you are looking for, but persistence can really pay off.

Homework:

1. Social Studies: Join or Die worksheet.  Also, please sketch or brainstorm an idea for your own historically accurate political cartoon from the time period of the Revolutionary War on the back.
2. Mathematics: Page 245 First try to guess if the shapes will make rectangular prisms, then try cutting them out second.
3. Other: Finish Vocabulary Sort
4. Reading: Read for 20 minutes and fill out pink reading log.

Mr. Weis

Nine Men, Morris, and Monday

Welcome to a new 5 day week.  We’ve only got a few of these left, so I’m trying to squeeze in as much as possible.  Hopefully we will end the year in a strong sprint and not run out of steam when June comes around.  Today we began our puberty education classes, and I’m happy to report that the students were mature, inquisitive, positive, and respectful.  We will have 3 more classes: one on Tuesday, one on Thursday, and one of Friday.  If you have any specific questions about the content of the program you may ask your children directly about what they learned, you may ask me any specific questions about what material is covered, or you may check in with Ms. Collins to see the materials and outline of the program.

We are going to be combining subjects together for the rest of the year to try to get through them a little quicker.  One way we will do this is by integrating social studies, and specifically our work with the Revolutionary War, along with writing and reading.  I’ve got some books, plays, and writing activities that will all fit together.  Today we began researching the causes of the Revolutionary War, and we organized the information we found into a cause and effect chart.  We identified key words to let us know a cause and effect is being discussed such as because, as a result, and subsequently.  For homework tonight, students will read a short article about what colonial life was like for children and then make a chart of similarities and differences between their lives and colonial kids’ lives.  

In the article, there is a short description of a commonly played came from colonial times called Nine Man Morris.  The directions didn’t come out well on the copy, so here are a couple links to play the game online.

Here is a 2-player version:

And here is a 1-player version with a computer opponent:

Both versions are complete with instructions.  Enjoy!

In Mathematics, we continued our work with area and volume.  Students did some work finding the volume of different kinds of geometric solids, and then created posters with area formulas and examples of area for triangles, rectangles, and parallelograms. 

In vocabulary we began work with the roots leg, mod, biblio,  and jud.  The focus words of the week are prejudice, bibliography, legislate, allegiance, moderate, legally, delegate, and judgment.  I encourage students to look the words up on the online etymology dictionary to get a better idea of the roots.  

Homework:

1. Mathematics: Page 215 – Calculating the volume of 3-dimensional prisms.
2. Social Studies: Colonial Kids – Read article and complete chart.
3. Other: Vocabulary Packet – Begin work on packet.
4. Reading: read for 20 minutes and fill out pink reading log.

Mr. Weis

 

Anger, frustration, sadness, disappointment

My emotions are swirling about right now, so much so that I don’t know what to think.  This afternoon my personal laptop was stolen from the classroom.  It is a silver 15 inch MacBookPro and was taken without a case or power supply.   There are currently 2 possibilities.

1. While the students were in Science down the hall, I left the room for 5 minutes to make some copies and then walk down the hall to pick them up.  During these 5 minutes I left my doors unlocked and it is possible that someone wandering the upstairs hall could have stepped in and stolen it then.
2. During the last hour and fifteen minutes of the day, the students were in my class finishing up math and then watching a video for Social Studies and taking notes.  The laptop could also have been taken by one of the students during these activities or during clean-up.

It saddens me greatly that someone would take my computer from me, and that it most likely is someone from the BAM community, possibly one of my own students.  I have given my life to this job this year, poured myself entirely into it, and worked countless late nights and weekends.  All of the work I have done is only on the computer, as I unfortunately do not have a recent backup.  I cannot begin to express the frustration that I feel about this. Not only is it a sizable monetary investment, but I also have all my work from graduate school, years of things I developed while student teaching, all the work I have done this year, my own personal creative and fiction writing and poetry, pictures of my family and friends, videos, and recordings of songs.  I’ve also lost a piece of trust I had with my students and the BAM community.

I have called all the families in my class, and a phone blast went out to all the families in the school, but if anyone hears or sees anything, please let me know.  Someone has to have seen something, or if it was a student, I’m sure someone will hear something.  You can email me at adamweis @ gmail.com (just delete the spaces around the @ when you copy the email into your email program.)

If someone did make a mistake and took the laptop, I am a forgiving person.  Please just turn it back into the office and say you found it, no questions asked.  I just desperately want it back so I can get my files back.  I am also filing a police report and meeting with police, so if the perpetrator is not one to be swayed by guilt, but instead fear, please also know that if I do not get it given back to me, I will be bringing in the force of the law.

There’s not much more to say now, except that I’m feeling pretty down.  I’ll keep doing my best to keep giving my all every day to all the kids.  It’s really all I can do.

Adam

It’s a beautiful day outside…

why not go buy some plants?

Or, why not start getting a garden bed ready for this?

Mark your calendars. (Thanks Frieda for the flier!)

(Musically) A yellow glider is going under the sea,

from Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, Jew Jersey.

Take a look at the above picture and think about what yellow underwater vessle it might remind you of.

Anybody thinking of another bright yellow underwater vehicle?

Perhaps this one?

As I was reading this article Sunday evening, I could not help but think about the Beatles song Yellow Submarine.  Also, as I was reading the article I could not help but think of several fifth grade science standards that fit right along with it including Chemical Science standards about solutions and salt and Earth Science standards about water and weather.  (I know it may seem rather odd that I cannot help but think of standards as I go about my daily business, but such is the life of a teacher.)

So, when I went to plan the Current Events activity for today, I thought, why not combine the catchy musicality of the Beatles with the multiple scientific principles of the article?  And thus was born the new hit song in room 202, A Yellow Glider is Going Under the Sea. (Sung to the tune of A Yellow Submarine) As we read the article we focused on several specific terms and concepts including salinity, temperature, and ocean currents. The kids did a great job helping complete a fill in the blank version of the song.

In Vocabulary news, our words of the week are all based on roots that refer to parts of the body.  Our roots are cap – head, dent/dont-teeth, corp – body, and ped/pod – feet.  Tomorrow we will go over our eight focus words of the week and students will begin work on their weekly packets.

In Mathematics we did some Test Prep review, focusing on the first set of Number Sense Standards.  To get a quick look at the entire scope of 5th Grade Math Standards as well as the frequency each type of question has shown up on the STAR test, take a look at this PDF.  I think it is a handy way to look at all the standards on one page.  You will see that the questions are pretty spread over all the standards, but in looking at the standards, you should also see that we have done a pretty good job of working our way through all the content. Students began work correcting their own tests and identifying specific areas of content that they need to review.  We will continue this review throughout the week, and by the end hopefully the students will get some quality review and also be more aware of their own strengths and stretches.

We also did a little more work with the Language Arts tests.  We continued to work through some stories and questions, categorizing the types of questions and reviewing strategies to solve each one.  One area that I have noticed a lot of questions on, especially in terms of vocabulary, is in choosing what a word means based on its root.  Although we have been working with roots all year, here are a couple sites with some games that will offer some review and probably also some work with roots we have not yet gone over.

It’s Greek to Me: Choose your country and event (archery or discus) to play and match greek roots and word meanings in 2 different difficulties.

Root Jeopardy: Play a Quiz game where you guess words based on roots and definitions.

Book Buddy: Create words from prefixes and roots and figure out which sentences they will work with.

Bingo Lingo: This is  PDF document which includes instructions, board game cards, and playing pieces.  If I can find some time, we might play this in class, but feel free to play it with your family.

Homework:

1. Language Arts: Final Draft of Spring Break Poem
2. Mathematics: Test Prep packet 2 – Problems 20-42
3. Other: Finish Vocabulary Sort
4. Reading: Read for 20 minutes and fill out pink log.

Mr. Weis

A sublime setting for studying science and sublimation

We had a wonderful day today on our field trip to the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Among other things, the students investigated properties of matter and phase shifts by performing experiments with dry ice.  If you’d like to know what sublimation is, scroll down and follow the link, or better yet, ask your child.  Students also explored the conductivity of different materials using a voltmeter and tested to see how quickly heat transferred through different types of metal.  The students were very engaged in the experiments and lecture parts of the day and asked a lot of good questions as we went through the program. We also took a tour of The Advanced Light Source and learned some different ways that X-rays are used to study proteins and chemical compositions of different objects. You can check out the ALS website here.

Here are a few questions that you could ask your children to learn more about what they did today. I’ve also included links to answers and some supplemental information.  Enjoy

1. What is sublimation? Answer
2. What is Dry Ice? Answer
3. What solid materials and liquids conduct electricity? Find the answer in the workbook notes.
4. What temperature Celsius does water boil and freeze? Answer. Some extra info on the history of Celsius.
5. What happens to the air in a baloon when it is submersed in Liquid Nitrogen? Video answer
6. What is Absolute Zero, and how come we don’t really know it exists for sure? (Instead of just a simple answer, here is a link to a website on the PBS site that supports a Nova episode on Absolute Zero.  I’m going to look into getting a copy of the video for the class, but in the mean time, there are some great information and activities on the site.)

On an entirely different subject, I will unforuntately only be at school briefly tomorrow.  I will be attending the Lay-off hearings with many other Berkeley teachers who received pink slips that have not yet been rescinded.  I will be at school to help with the music for the performance rehearsal in the morning, but will then be leaving.  I wish I didn’t have to miss school for this, but I have been strongly advised to be present at the hearings, and I want to do whatever I possibly can in order to keep my position at BAM.

Homework:

1. Other: Work on Vocabulary Packet (Due Friday)
2. Reading: Read for 20 minutes and fill out pink reading log.

Mr. Weis

Bon Poisson D’avril!

Happy April Fools Day, or as it is known in France and several other French speaking countries, April Fish Day!  (People there surreptitiously put paper fish on the back’s of others as a joke.)

We had a very busy day today that included watching a performance of Ohlone folk tales by the third grade, fitness testing, Cesar Chavez presentations, and Mathematics review work and presentations.  We also did a little reading today about the history of April Fool’s day.  Here is a link to a website with a very thorough explanation about the possible origins of April Fools.  The most widely accepted theory on the origin of the holiday takes into account that, in Europe, New Year’s used to fall on the Vernal Equinox near the end of March.  When the Gregorian calendar was instituted in the late 1500s, New Year’s Day changed to occur when many of us celebrate it today on January 1st.  In subsequent years, people who continued to celebrate in near the Vernal Equinox became known as fools.  However, there has been limited evidence to support this theory, so in all the resources I checked, it was still only listed as the most probable.

Thanks to those who came out to Math Family Games Night and the PTA meeting.  I prepared packets with game directions and game cards for seven different games and made some extra copies that I will send home with students who did not attend.

In the spirit of April Fools’ Day, I’d like to share several videos of hoaxes (a vocabulary word of the day) that I find pretty amusing.  The first is from an actual BBC broadcast about the Swiss Spaghetti Harvest from 1957.  Show it to your kids and see if they know where Spaghetti really comes from.

Here is another clip from the BBC about some rather amusing penguins.

I’m hoping that this link stays up, but here is my favorite hoax that I saw this year.  It comes to you from Qualcomm.

First, watch the video:

Then, check out the website here. As much as I don’t really advocate playing into April Fool’s Day while at school, I really appreciate the humor and creativity in the above clips and links.

In other classroom news, the students finished up preparations for their math concept presentations and we began filming them.  I’ll be putting up links to the videos soon, and we will be using them not only to study, but also as evidence for students to critique their own mathematical explanations and oral presentation skills.

In Science the students worked on correcting missed problems from the Body Systems test they took in the beginning of the week.

Homework:

1. Language Arts:  Work on projects if they are not completed (Cesar Chavez, Lit. Circles)
2. Mathematics: Study Links: pages 191, 193 – Review and study for the test on Friday.
3. Other: Continue work on Play plot graphic organizer and Weekly Vocab packet.
4. Reading: Read for 20 minutes and fill out pink reading log.

Note:  If your child is going to be absent on Friday, please make sure they have all work completed and turned in on Thursday.

Mr. Weis

Safe Routes through a Wednesday Schedule

As per my usual Wednesday spiel, the day was packed!  In addition to our regular short day schedule, we also had an assembly about safe routes to school.  The students watched a puppet show emphasizing safe practices for walking or biking to school.  The program was put on by an organization known as TransForm.  You can check out their website here.  I didn’t find a whole lot of resources available to download, but there is a brochure that covers pedestrian safety.  Later in the year we will be having a bicycle safety day put on by the amazing folks at Cycles of Change.  Being new to Berkeley I haven’t gotten involved with them, but as a cyclist I have heard some really positive things through the grapevine about some of the services and programs they offer.  You can check out their website here.

On a complete tangent, whenever I am talking about working to make cycling more accessible, safe, and fun, I always think of the following video. Every Sunday the city of Bogota in Columbia closes over 70 miles of streets to traffic and makes them open to pedestrians, cyclists, rollerbladers and more.  It’s all part of a livable streets movement, and the event known as Ciclovia has now spread to other cities around the globe. This video always puts a big smile on my face and makes me wonder if something like it could ever happen here, even with the stranglehold car culture often has on transportation public policies.  Anyways, follow the link and enjoy. Maybe some day we can all spend Sunday riding, exercising, dancing, and smiling with our neighbors.

In Mathematics today the students did some work both independently and in groups to solve some percent word problems.  Emphasis was placed on reasoning through a solution with a real world context wherein students were given a percent of a total and the corresponding quantity.  For example, the problems read something like this, “50% of the jelly beans are cherry.  If there are 20 cherry jelly beans, how many jelly beans are there in total?”  Students applied their knowledge of finding percents of a total and represented their thinking as they came to a solution.  They then met in small groups to discuss their reasoning and collaboratively arrived at a solution they could all agree on.  Tonight for homework students will be looking for a real world application of percent and filling out some information about it.  They are encouraged, if possible, to bring in evidence of what they find.  For example, if they find a win percentage of a sports team in the paper, they can bring in the page they found it on, or if they find the percentage of daily recommended protein in a snack, they can bring in the package.  Tomorrow we will work to make greater sense of the way percents are calculated and used.

In vocabulary news, today Chloe and Danya created a crossword puzzle for the malapropism challenge words.  I’m posting the link so students can print it out at home.  The malapropism word pairs for the challenge vocabulary are:  pineapple/ pinnacle, dissolve/ resolve, illiterate/ obliterate, affluence/ influence, and malevolence/ benevolence. Thanks!  You can check out the crossword here.

Homework:

1. Language Arts: Lit Circle Job Sheets and project work.
2. Mathematics:  Working with percents.
3. Other: Continue to work on weekly vocabulary packet, finish Baba Yaga play components page.
4. Reading: Read for 20 minutes and fill out pink reading log.

Mr. Weis