Geo Art: Please Try At Home!

By: Jill W.

This month, my awesome Geometric Art class started in After School. The kids LOVED our first activity, and asked me to share it with you! Follow these instructions:

1. You could have students draw a set of triangles, circles and squares, but I found it easier to have cardboard templates to trace. This keeps students from trying to draw the perfect shapes themselves, which can sometimes slow things down. Ask them to trace several shapes on their paper, some preferably overlapping. Important note: they need to leave some white space, they should not fill in the entire paper.
2. After the pencil shapes are drawn, they are to be colored in with a NON-permanent, waterbase marker. This is the time to use those cheap, fat store markers as you actually will be wanting the colors to bleed.
3. Pass out small cups of water and show the students how to drop several puddles on their artwork with a brush or dropper. If they pick up the paper and roll the water around a bit, it should start to make lots of colored streaks and blobs. Repeat this until almost all of the artwork is filled with wiggly colored lines. Let dry overnight.
4. Now comes the fun part, taking a thin black Sharpie and tracing all the organic shapes that were made from the running water. The students need to work slowly to trace all the wonderful edges they see, both inside and outside the colored shapes. The more time they put into the tracing, and the more detail they see, the better their artwork will look.

My kids got very creative with Sharpie colors, and their art work turned out great. Check out the pictures below!

by Diogene

by Joeli

Culture CaraVan

By: Francesca

My classroom teacher giddily told me about the upcoming Culture CaraVan in-house field trip during the first few weeks of school. Based on how excited she was, I figured it was going to be pretty awesome, and my assumption was right. Culture CaraVan is a portable field trip that comes to you in, not-so-surprisingly, a van, but this is not just a bucket of arrow heads and a headdress. Brown University sent actual New England Native American artifacts, including: an actual deer leg, to show how the sinew was used as twine, the fur of entire rabbits, coyotes, and foxes, tools, ears of corn, bowls, jewelry, and definitely so much more, all presented by an historian from Brown University. The students, which included all 52 fourth graders at the International Charter School, were able to make wampum necklaces, grind corn into corn meal, participate in a drum circle while wearing actual native american garments and learn a typical "social dance." The students were also given a 2 hour presentation on New England Native Americans where they were asked questions and consistently interacting with the historian.

The whole experience was impressive; it was incredible for me to be a part of something that these students would probably remember forever, when so many things from our childhoods are easily forgotten.

ELA Learning Stations

By: Erica

This year I have been working with a first-time teacher who has been very adept at adapting her classroom set-up to work with her students. We are working in an English Language Arts class. At the beginning of the year, our students did not seem engaged during class. Their minds would wander (as middle school minds are wont to do) and become unfocused. She then began mixing up the class set-up and the response was fantastic.

One way that the class has changed is the use of learning stations. Four or five stations are set up throughout the class, which is broken up into smaller groups. One station may focus on reading a story as a group while another listens to a reading of the story. Another station answers response questions, and another station completes a writing activity. The students rotate through the stations over the course of one or more classroom sessions.

The class has responded really well to the small group setting, and appear to benefit from having different activities as opposed to one classroom activity. The response has been good enough that the teacher has made learning stations a regular thing. If I ever experience the same when teaching a classroom, I would strongly consider dividing the class up into learning stations to see if the class dynamic changed for the better.

December!

By: Kimberly

It the most wounderful time of the year! This month has been amazing I have been teaching my after school how to dance Salsa, create amazing stories, and learn about the Forest. There faces are priceless and they are so much fun to work with!

We Are Family!

By: Nellie

This past month has furthered my thinking of Highlander being such a close knit family, especially the middle school. The middle school teachers decided that it would be nice to have a potluck on the day before we left for Thanksgiving vacation. We had music, great food, and enjoyed each other's company. The students were engaged and everyone had a blast! We started everything off with a few toasts from the students that were very heartfelt. Some students mentioned each teacher and what they were thankful for. A student mentioned me in her toast saying that I am always there to help during the day and in after school. She went on to say how nice and caring I am, and that I will do anything that it takes to help the students. I felt much appreciated and it showed me that my service to Highlander has really made an impact and matters to the students.

Create-A-Creature: Part 1

By: Deyan

Initially, the goal of Highlander's Create-A-Creature activity was to create a field guide of believable fantasy creatures. However, the 5th-8th graders enrolled in the activity had something a little more exciting in mind when they walked in the door: clay dioramas! Here at Highlander, we take student choice very seriously, so without hesitation, Mr. D reworked the program to include lots of clay. After all, what better way is there to learn about habitats and morphology than to build them in 3D?

After a few weeks of brainstorming critter ideas and building their background knowledge with fun games like these, the Creature Creation Crew is finally ready to get their hands on some clay and add an extra dimension to their ideas! Check out a couple of their awesome ideas:

 

Stay tuned for Part 2 of the Creature Creation Saga, where you can see these ideas and more in full 3D glory!

Stories From 2nd Quarter

By: Yairy

In the month of October there was a time when the class was doing group work. I noticed a student who isolated herself from her group. I went up to her and I asked her why she was not working with her group. She just did not feel like working in a group. I had informed her about the benefits of working in a team. Then she moved over to her group. She also voluntarily took on the role of a scribe for her group.

In science class I helped students make detailed observations. Students had to use thier senses to describe the substances. They were instructed to mix substances and record thier observations for each mixture. There was another day students were given the opportunity to make corections to their lab assignment. One student reached out for help, which I was glad to help, on his work. We looked over the teacher's corrections together and determined what needed improvement. His grade was a 15/20. Most of the work he needed to do was in grammar and writing complete sentences. He was instructed to add his ideas and elaborate on his ideas and corrrections were made as well. His teacher looked over his corrections and she scored him a 18 out of 20. As a result of his hard work and my help, his score improved.

1st Annual 6th Grade Pizza Social!

By: Brandford

Days before Halloween rolled around on the calendar, I overheard 5 sixth graders discussing plans for a six grade party. To my surprise the students was planning a party that they didn't have permission for. So, I decided to talk with the Administration and see if their plans would be able to come true. Unfortunately, a party wasn't something that faculty deemed as appropriate for six graders. So we came to agreement to have a pizza social. Relaying this information to the 5 six graders made them quite excited and pleased. The following day at recess, the five students sat on a bench and planned the entire event. There plans included food, games, and entertainment that they felt would be appropriate for everyone. They provided me the information and I forwarded it to administration, who approved of everything. The following week, students made a flyer for the entire sixth grade, and once all the students received the notice, they were ecstatic for the pizza social. Hurricane Sandy postponed the initial pizza social, but the six graders were determined and decided to have it two days before Thanksgiving. During the event students played Dance Party 4 on the WII. They played need for speed, a car racing game on Playstation 3, chess, and speed stacking. Students won raffle prizes, and they all enjoyed the pizza. Before the raffle was conducted everyone spoke upon what they were thankful for. That was really a touching moment for me to hear how appreciated these students are of their life, family and school.

Segue Super 6

By: Angelica

Last week at Segue was the first Family/Teacher Conferences (FTC) of the 2012-2013 school year. This was three days of families coming into the school and discussing student success, progress, and concerns with the amazing staff at Segue. In preparation for the week, I had the privilege of creating a website and slideshow of all the awesome happenings in the sixth grade, better known as Super 6. Since the beginning of the school year, the sixth grade staff has been capturing great moments of students collaborating with each other and participating in exciting learning opportunities. Throughout the conferences, families were encouraged to come down to the sixth grade floor and check out the work their Segue scholars have been doing! It was quite the experience witnessing the smiles and laughs of parents and siblings as they watched the slideshow play. It is one thing to hear of great things happening with students, but to be able to see it is even better!

Media and You

By: Nellie

A highlight for me this month was being able to continue to establish more of a teacher role in the classroom. My teacher asked me if I would like to run a center or conduct a lesson for the 7th grade class. I was very excited and thought I would challenge myself and try to put together a lesson for the class. In language arts we have been learning how to make inferences so I needed to make sure that was included. We have been practicing looking at different magazines, and pieces of writing and making inferences. My lesson was about how the media affects teenagers. I put together a powerpoint that gave them background information on what the media is and how we interact with it. We also looked at different logos and what comes to their mind. One of the favorites from my lesson was showing a video about Barbie and how unrealistic her features are and how that impacts young teenage girls. We finished out the lesson with a game of Jeopardy that I made which discussed facts I went over in my powerpoint and some trivia about the media and teenagers that was very shocking!

Student Improvements

By: Kimberly

This month I have seen the students grow. They have all worked so hard to reach their potential. One student in particular during my after school program created a sentence with magnetic letters. Rah! Rah!

GeoParty!

By: Deyan

After a session of learning how the Earth works in GeoParty, a group of Highlander 2nd-4th graders ended their after school session with an epic game of Jeopardy. The week before the big game, the group got together to create a giant concept web of what they had learned about geology. Mr. D then used the group's input to create the Jeopardy questions they would be answering the next week. Check out some of the highlights of their fabulous concept web in this abridged version:

Their review session set the stage for an awesome battle of the brains the following week. Emily, Quinn, and Roseleny faced off against Marrell, Abdul, and Julius in a contest to prove that they know how fossils are created, what quartz is made of, and what Roman city was buried in volcanic ash almost 2,000 years ago. Both teams played well, with spot-on answers and fantastic teamwork, but in the end, Marrell, Abdul, and Julius emerged victorious! In honor of their fossil studies, everyone who played got to choose a prehistoric sea creature toy as a prize.

Nothing wrong with a butterfly in fall!

A Friday in the after school program at ICS means one thing...CRAFT TIME! All of our students look forward to Fridays and the projects that come with them. Then what could be better than a Friday afternoon during one of the best times of the year, fall? Fridays are full of fun crafts to do, and fall is: scented with rich spices, the sound of crunching leaves as you step, and with the vivivid colors all around. This particular Friday we (teachers and students) took time to actually notice and appreciate the wonderful happenings of nature while being creative and expressing ourselves. We made leaf animals! It was a simple project that everyone enjoyed doing and that allowed us to combined natural and man made resources in an artistic piece. The leaves ranged in size from small to large, they were of different shapes, and in a magnificent color spectrum: yellow, green, orange, red, brown, mixed colors, etc.

The project was open for students to do any animal they chose and for them to use the leaves and other supplies however they wished to do so. For those who needed a little extra help getting started, there were printouts of leaf animals for them to use. As you could imagine the array of of work created was very vast...even if there was the same animal no two projects were alike. Here you could truly say that these pieces were as unique as fingerprints! Not only that, but the different kinds of animals we had were incredible; we had mammals, insects, birds, and we even had fictitious ones. Hey, who said that butterflies aren't around during the fall? Here at ICS we had plenty to share.


- Dianny

School Meetings talk about Mission Statement

Every Friday the entire school meets in the community room for a quick presentation by one of the classes. This past Friday the fifth grade Spanish/English class reminded their younger peers of the school's mission statement: Respect, Responsibility and Dedication. It is common practice for each individual class to go over how they can follow to mission statement within the context of the school. Not too long ago, my second grade class listed behaviors that followed this mission as a quick reminder. When the class is getting out of hand, it's never a bad idea to have a group activity that reinforces correct behaviors.

The fifth grade presentation showed that this mission can and should go beyond the context of school. Community is a large part of the International Charter School mentality and it was a joy to see this reflected by the fifth graders, who did so without prompting. They advised their peers on how to follow this mission at home and in their neighborhoods, giving wonderful advice such as being helpful at home and not bothering the neighbors.

At the end of every presentation, in the spirit of community, the school song is sung, led by the presenters jamming on instruments. The song itself is about being dedicated in school. What a fun and educational presentation!

I don't have the exact lyrics of the school song yet so come back soon!!

-Itza