OLDER CLASS

We had two projects from last week that we are continuing to work on, they are a country project and the writing of an essay. In the country project the students needed to research the history of the country, make a copy of the flag, find the currency, look up the natural resources and crops, look up the national anthem and write it down as well as listen to it, make a hand drawn map, and finally add their own idea. This project seems to have hit the spot with students for they are putting a lot of effort into their research and producing very nice displays. The topic of the essay assignment was to compare two people. As always in this class, even though the main topic was writing about real or fictional people, one group of two students tried to extend the assignment and asked if they could compare a chair and a sofa. This assignment is going very well. Because students have really gotten involved in these two assignments, I’ve extended the time but both should be completed by Friday.

Last week when we were watching the BBC production of Richard the Third, I decided that we should be taking notes on each scene. When I gave out the schedules to each student, I included handouts that listed the acts and scenes and gave space to write underneath. We have been doing this sometimes before and sometimes after watching the video and it has been very helpful. At these note taking sessions, discussions always come up as well as questions. By Friday we will have watched two hours and 50 minutes of this video with only one hour remaining to watch next week. The class’ understanding of this complex history is utterly amazing. I am getting so excited about seeing this play on Broadway with the group.

This week our schedule included math work, music, phys. ed, reading partners with the younger class, and a new Scope Magazine with articles and a mini play on slavery.

Our new book in the class is The Shakespeare Stealer. It is a story of a young boy and his life during Shakespearean times. Of course Susan and Sara suggested this book and it seems to be a hit. We are now more than halfway through it in less than a week. We also received a present from Rosalie which is entitled William Shakespeare’s Star Wars. It is a book in Shakespearean language which retells the Star Wars story. C3PO’s first lines are –
Now is the summer of our happiness
Made winter by this sudden, fierce attack!
Our ship is under siege, I know not how.
O hast thou heard? The main reactor fails!
We shall surely be destroyed by this.
I’ll warrant madness lies.herein!
R2D2 – responds beep beep beep beep beep!
This book sounds like a winner to me.

I’m afraid that’s all I can write this week. I have been working diligently on my conference reports since the end of December and I am just about “written out”. However, writing conference reports is a very positive and affirming process for me so it is certainly worth the time. I also like the fact that we do these in February so that we can use them for a guide for the rest of the year.

YOUNGER CLASS

This week, we welcomed M back. The class missed him, and is happy to have him back with us.

The children edited their snow writings from last week, and are in the process of creating final copies to display along with their watercolors. The editing process involved reviewing spelling, capitalization, and basic punctuation. By reviewing these in their own writing, they will begin to internalize some of these rules for future writings.

The children are fully engaged in our backyard bird project. Research about different birds is well underway, with lots of excitement about the interesting facts that are being discovered. The children were so excited to finally see a few birds at the feeder at school. So, we have decided to count what we can at school, in addition to counting birds at my house each week. I purchased a feeder to put out at school to replace the one the squirrel gnawed. We summarized the data we collected at my house last week. I posted the information to the Cornell website, but unfortunately I had to do this at home this time because the website wasn’t working when I tried to do this with the kids at school. Hopefully next week the kids can record their own data. On Friday, we will be going to my house for our second bird count.

I began self-evaluation (interviews) with the children this week. These will be shared with you at conferences in February. This process gives insight into how the children are perceiving things in their world at school, which may differ from what I am seeing.

We spent quite a bit of time on math this week. Data collection and statistics is part of our bird project. We also worked on math activity cards (addition, addition with regrouping, counting by 10, place value). I have also begun to discuss money with the pair of children that are responsible for pizza orders each week. This is something you can do with your children at home. Show different coins in piles to show how many are needed to equal a dollar. Money is an abstract concept, and many will not understand it at this age, but because we are using it for pizza orders, I thought I would at least introduce it.

Yesterday we celebrated A’s 6th birthday, and on Friday we will celebrate Z’s 8th birthday. Our class celebration is lots of fun, and really makes the birthday person feel special. Happy Birthday, A and Z!!

MUSIC WITH HELEN

This week in music I showed the middle and older class the first part of a video by Howard Goodall called the History of Music. We went a good pace from 32,000 BC through the introduction of musical theater in Greece. After the video we discussed that evolution and next week we will finish part one (of six) of that movie. I don’t plan on watching all six but we may see part of other videos as time goes by. The purpose of this is to lay the foundation for a study of musical theater and how it can be used as a study of history in our country.

For the musicians, we continued our work on beginning and ensemble recorder. We are learning two pieces from the 1500’s.
In the younger class it was songs from Frozen that the kids wanted to sing. We spent most of our time singing and then we sang “There’s a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea” in an attempt to get them to get them to sing and recall names and the order of the items they added to the song. Next week we will begin learning to read rhythm in music notation.

OLDER CLASS

I do think that learning the times tables helps make all math so much easier and that was my main goal for my times table test last week. Today when we had our second check-up or test, we found that there were three people who needed extra help in this area and when I asked for three volunteers to be mentors I was happy when I actually got seven people who wanted to take on that responsibility. Together we are going to work on the goal of having everybody learn their times tables by the end of the year.
Shakespeare continues to be a big focus in the class with the class just finishing viewing the Boisterous Bard in its entirety. The class was also incredibly excited at the opportunity of going to a Broadway show and seeing a Shakespearean play live. The play we will be seeing in January is from the Globe and is presented in traditional Globe style. We will be spending much of January going over lesson plans that had been provided by the Globe Theatre and reading parts of the play. This of course will involve a lot of history of England at that time as well as general information about the people, customs, and living conditions. More details about this trip will be revealed once I know how many people will be joining us. I do know however, because were getting back late, I am going to offer a sleepover at school for that night. When I go into the city on Thursday I will try to get tickets for the parents that are on the waiting list to go with us. We will also be viewing a HBO animated version of Richard the III and a film version. Today Susan gave out shortened scripts to the class of the play Romeo and Juliet. These scripts use Shakespeare’s actual words. We will be taking parts and reading through these script and we will see where this takes us. It seems to me that there is no limit to the learning opportunities in relationship to Shakespeare and his plays because my students’ interest continues to grow with each new exposure.
Another ongoing project that we have been working on is communications. All students are working on specific communication topics that they are doing independently. Each person has one or two areas to research and to do four specific things with as part of this project. During the month of December, we will have each person present their work which will include a poster, a report, drawings, and an interactive student activity which they have planned for the other members of the class. This work has brought history and science into our class work.
This week has been filled with enthusiasm and excitement that the class is generating in all areas. We finished our third reading book which everybody really enjoyed and have started our fourth book which is Who Moved My Cheese. Nicky also read the first chapter of The Hitchhiker’s Guide hoping that we will choose to read that book next. This week we also did amazing facts and extensions, and we read with the younger class with each student getting a new reading partner.
Our first New York trip was on Tuesday. Thank you to my five chaperones Sara, Ani, Marty, Kim, and Tom. I think this first trip was a great success despite the weather. This group were very responsible about being in the city, taking care of each other, and enjoying every moment of our time together. The Canstruction Exhibit was amazing, and we also got to see all the work being done in the World Trade Center area. I told the class as we look at the New World Trade Center building that architects were deciding that day at 11 o’clock if it was the tallest building in the US. (The World Trade Center Building, with its disputed top, was given the title of the tallest building replacing the Chicago Willis Building that reigned for 40 years in that position.) On our way to the Mathematics Museum each of the kids got on a City Bike at a docking station. Our tour of the museum started with an hour-long discussion and a participation session relating to of all things, knots. Today I’m going to have people in the class write up something about the trip and share that writing with the class.
Finally, I booked tickets for us to see a matinee performance of As You Like It at the Two River Theater in February.

MIDDLE CLASS

We have been working on learning the parts of speech by doing a series of writing activities. We are reading the “Words are CATegorical” series, the two most recent being Hairy, Scary, Ordinary-What Is an Adjective? and Quirky, Jerky, Extra Perky-More About Adjectives. Then each child wrote down a noun and three adjectives on a blank piece of paper. They gave the paper to a classmate who then had to illustrate the text. We also did a writing on a Hershey Kiss. Each child was given a kiss and instructed to write a description of finding the object with the idea that they had never seen or tasted it before. The stories that resulted were fabulous. The children are proofreading and typing them, adding more descriptive language if necessary. They all read them out at a Writer’s Workshop.
Meeta has jumped right back in after her trip to India and started with her second Panchatantra group. She returned on Wed. last week and the children were so excited to have her back that she had an endless parade of students who greeted her with big smiles and hugs. She shared photos of Diwali celebrations in her home city of New Delhi. The children were very interested and ask lots of questions about life in India. We also looked at the map to see where Meeta’s family lives.
The children were also happy to have Helen back on Tuesday and did a music sharing session, recorder practice and prep for a holiday performance at the nursing home. The children enjoyed sharing their musical accomplishments and it gave them an opportunity to appreciate and support one another.
Despite the cold, we were able to go out on Monday to begin planting daffodils in our beautiful new beds which were completed over the weekend. Thanks again to Timmy for a gift that will provide us with a place to do our gardening for a long time to come. Our gardening focus has been on plant propagation and how plants survive the winter. We are learning about how bulbs store food and adapt to the cold in preparation for a rebirth in the spring. We will be doing winter sowing again this year. This has been so successful that we would like to expand it so please start saving you gallon milk/water containers for use as mini greenhouses.
Please make sure your child has a hat and gloves on days where the temperature is below freezing. They all love to be outside. My rule is that they must have their head and hands covered to go out when the weather is this cold.

YOUNGER CLASS

I hope everyone enjoyed their long weekend. The kids were all rested and ready to get to work on Monday. We have been hard at work finishing the Midsummer Night’s Dream puppets. They are just beautiful. If you have time, stop in and see the finished puppets. They are all lined up on top of the block shelf. In order to get ready for our show, we have been building the stage for our puppet show, working on the narration with Susan, and designing and painting the backdrops. Next week we will start the rehearsals for our puppet show, which will be performed the week of Thanksgiving.
In addition, we started a group geometric shape project. The kids cut out shapes from construction paper, and in small groups will create geometric shape creatures. These creatures will be the basis for a creative writing story that they will write together with their group.
Our nature show and tells have been so interesting. They have led to half hour discussions of the particular object or picture. It has been an excellent opportunity to share knowledge and ask lots of questions to find out more.
We also had music with Helen, and phys ed with Chris.

I look forward to seeing parents at the parent support group meeting this evening.

The four-day weekend was really enjoyable. I went into New York and celebrated Jay’s birthday with him and, as I think many of you know, we saw three Shakespeare’s in a row. We saw Twelfth Night and Richard the III performed by an all-male Shakespeare group who perform at the Globe Theater in London and are here for three months performing at the beautifully ornate Belasco Theatre. We also saw a performance of MacBeth at Lincoln Centre, another wonderful experience, incredibly visual, full of energy and with three tall male witches who were exceedingly scary! I also saw another theatrical performance on Sunday, something completely different, called Voices of Our Mothers, in which five women play Old Testament Biblical women telling their stories. Also over the weekend I had an hour of therapeutic restorative yoga with Adam (a teacher from the yoga studio where Jay takes classes) and an adjustment from Karen Erickson, a former New School student who is now a very successful New York chiropractor. Karen celebrated 25 years in her practice with a party a couple of weeks ago that Jay and I attended, and she is always willing to give me a gift of her services whenever I am able to go to her office. She is a dear friend and a New School graduate of whom I am very proud (also her mom was one of the founding parents of TNS.)
Of course once we’re back at school it seems like we’ve never been away. Jay’s class was absolutely thrilled that he had managed to go and get 30 tickets for Richard the III in January and I am sure they will love the performance. The group provides a large amount of educational material we printed out from the website and will use it as preparation for the theater visit.
The first New School Shakespearean performance will be the Little Class puppet play of Midsummer Night’s Dream which we will perform for the other classes hopefully before Thanksgiving and videotape to show the parents at a later date. I have been working with the little classers in small groups to write the narration for the play which older classers will read. With Jay’s class we finished watching a video of The Boisterous Bard and saw the second DVD of bloopers, outtakes and Susan sightings which everyone found hilarious. This video was made in 2004 by Nick C. a new school student who went on to study filmmaking at NYU. The video has given current students an idea of the play we put together the last time we studied Shakespeare in depth. Today and tomorrow we are reading an abridged version of Romeo and Juliet. The class had expressed an interest in reading the original Shakespeare play and not a paraphrased version.
As I said last week, it’s great having Meeta back, and she has certainly jumped back into work with great enthusiasm. I have been trying to catch the odd moment here and there to talk to her about her family and her trip home for her father’s birthday. She said he was very touched by the celebration and all the family members that had come to enjoy it with him.
In the middle class I continued my Shakespeare work with a new book on Shakespeare’s life and also finishing my reading of Hamlet from the Shakespeare Can Be Fun series. We are going to do some acting out of scenes from Midsummer Night’s Dream and Hamlet in small groups next week. This class has also started watching the Boisterous Bard video and I have shown one or two excerpts concerned with Midsummer Night’s Dream to the younger class too.
We have another maintenance workshop this weekend which hopefully will be well attended since there is a lot to be done. Now that our backyard is beginning to look so good with the new blacktop, Timmy’s pavers and Kathey’s plantings, we want to work on the other areas needing repair to bring everything to par. There are many jobs inside and out and the weather is supposed to be a little warmer so come and have fun doing stuff for the school. The kids love it when they can see what their parents did at a workshop.

OLDER CLASS

As I said last week Susan gave my class a 10 minute version of the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream that she wanted them to present to the younger class. All she thought they would do would be read the script but what happened Thursday afternoon was magical. The entire class got so excited about this project that they started looking for costumes in the closet and talking about their roles. We moved the couches and created a circular stage area, Younger classers came up to join us, and the show began. Everyone in my class had a wonderful time being the characters, and the end product was exhilarating. Shakespeare is turning out to be quite an adventure for them and a lot of fun. Kathey and middle-class heard about our production and asked us to perform it for them the next day which we did. Kathey took pictures during the performance and the looks on the older and younger class students faces were full of wonder and avid concentration. On Monday we had another great session covering the play with the 40 quotes that I looked up over the weekend. E had also on her own made a sheet with 12 quotes. The class took turns reading the quotes from the papers and even fought over who could say some of them – students wanting to say quotes that were said by their character in the mini play.

If that wasn’t enough excitement and believe me it was excitement, we also started talking about the creation of the haunted house. Because of Sandy it turns out that only two of my students have ever worked on a haunted house before, so everybody was a bit nervous but so excited. We talked about the many things they could do and set-aside most of Tuesday to work on it. Sara was such a great help and the class worked tirelessly until the things they imagined became a reality. E and C stepped up on their own to check to see what everyone was doing and to put a plan in play for how all of the pieces would fit together in the haunted house tour. The room was transformed, and ready for us to start giving tours today, Thursday. Creating the haunted house is an amazing process from beginning to end.

Our third group reading book, Hoot is also turning out to be success. We are now a little over a third of the way through the book and reading sessions are going well. The schedule included math workbooks, phys ed, creating paper bag donkey heads (from A.M.S.N.D.), and communications work. H completed decimal book number three. V & I completed geometry one, and A completed the entire algebra series this week. On Friday we will be having a timed times table test and asking for mentors to help people who still need to learn these tables – knowing the times tables will makes their lives so much easier when it comes to math work. Also by Friday morning everyone should have completed their letter report which involved writing a report on a topic of their choice from an assigned letter of the encyclopedia. This report was supposed to be one typed or written page long. Talking about writing, if you still have writing that were given out at parent conferences, please send them back to be put into the writing drawers.

In November, we will be going to New York by taking train from Middletown Station. We arrive in New York and will take the subway down to lower Manhattan. Our first stop is to see the new Canstruction exhibit in the Wintergarden. We will pass the new World Trade Center on our short walk from Chambers St. Station. We will have lunch in the Wintergarden and then take the subway back up to 23rd St. We have another short walk from 23rd to 26th street to the National Mathematics Museum. Dinner is four blocks away at a Thai restaurant and after dinner we have our longest walk, which really is not that long, up to Penn Station on 34th St. We will have Krispy Kreme donuts while waiting for the train home. Parents will pick up at Middletown Station.

MIDDLE CLASS

The excitement surrounding Halloween and the anticipation of the Older Class haunted house has been the focus of the week. Discussions about costume details, trying to guess the theme for the haunted house, and social events like parties have put everyone in a festive mood. Several of the Middle Classers volunteered to sing with the Young Classers at the nursing home on Tuesday and enjoyed the opportunity to sing old favorites and help Susan and Robin.

Our other excitement of the week was returning on Monday to find our beautiful new walkway and flower beds. My class especially is looking forward to planting in the spring. Thanks you so much to T and his crew for a job well done.

Our Prism City is taking shape and can be seen on the loft in the library. The children have begun doing their own extensions by combining other shapes to build a variety of commercial buildings for city. The theme of geometric shapes was carried over into art pieces following a lesson by Mo on color theory and made by Middle Classers on Friday. The children worked in pairs to create a collage of opposite colors using squares, circles, and triangles which are hanging in the classroom.

Thank you to I for reading his essay to my class. They were very impressed with his writing and commented that they thought the contest judges must have also been impressed with his vocabulary. We plan to have other students read their essays including N who also wrote an excellent one. We followed his reading with a discussion on essays. My class has decided that they would like to find out about essay contests that might be coming up.

Thank you to all the Older Classers and Jay for putting on a performance of A Mid Summer’s Night Dream for us on Friday. My class was completely enthralled by the performance and the characters created by each individual actor. Great Job!

Shakespeare continues with Susan reading the children’s version of Hamlet and the books being made available to Middle Classers to read on their own.

Please check to make sure your child has a cold weather change of clothes in their locker and check lost and found and the yard for clothes that are shed in this changeable weather. We have several sweatshirts and jackets left outside every day.

YOUNGER CLASS

Thank you all for your caring thoughts. It was a difficult week last week. I am so thankful to Kim for taking my class while I was with my family. Thank you to Susan for helping Kim as well. I wouldn’t have been able to be there to help my Mom without all of the help in the classroom. Thank you to all the Little Classers who made me such wonderful cards and pictures. The kids are so amazingly caring. I came in at the end of the day on Tuesday to meet with parents for conferences. I was greeted with lots of hugs as the kids all came running to meet me. My Mom came in for part of the day on Friday so that she didn’t have to be alone all day. She loved seeing all of the kids, and got huge hugs when she left after lunch. It really made her feel so good.

Last Friday we went on our pumpkin picking trip. The kids had great fun with a hay ride, corn maze, huge stack of hay bales to climb, and a crawl through hay tunnel. We then walked through the pumpkin patch and the kids each picked their pumpkin (it had to be no bigger than their head!).

Frank (Rebekah’s husband) brought our class a huge pumpkin last week. Thanks so much Frank!! Susan and Kim had the children measure and weigh that pumpkin, and guess if it would sink or float. This week Susan found a big bin and we tested to see if this huge pumpkin would float or sink. To the amazement of most of the kids, the pumpkin did in fact float! (And in the process of doing this experiment, Kim got sprayed with water… sorry Kim!) We then talked a bit about why a pumpkin would float when it was so heavy.

This week we focused our writing and math on the little pumpkins that the kids selected last Friday on our trip. Each child measured height and circumference of their pumpkin, weighed their pumpkin, and tested to see if would float or sink. They also wrote describing words about their pumpkin and drew a picture of it. We then decoupaged jack-o-lantern faces onto the pumpkins. They came out really cute.

On Tuesday, my class did an amazing job of singing their holiday songs at the nursing home (or singing for the “old people” as some of my class told me). All of their costumes were wonderful, and the residents at the nursing home were so happy to see them all and listen to the songs. After singing numerous songs, including three rounds, the children went around and said happy Halloween to all. The smiles from both the residents and the kids were just priceless. I was so proud of them, and I really think they understood that they did this to make other people happy. Thanks to Kathey for allowing me to borrow some Middle Classers to fill out our sound. They did a great job of helping on Tuesday.

Today is Halloween. As is the TNS tradition, the Older Class created a haunted house for the rest of the school. The kids had a choice of different levels of scariness, from not scary at all with the lights on to lights off and the works. The children went up in groups of 3 along with a grown up. You’ll have to ask your child what level they chose and what they thought of the work the Older Classers did.

Hope everyone has a happy Halloween, with lots of treats and not too many tricks!

What a wonderful surprise all the parents and students had this past Monday morning as they came into school and saw the gorgeous new walkway and flower beds. Everyone is thrilled with this amazing gift and excited about the plans to continue around the back of the school and to replace the deck outside Kathey’s room. A big thank you for your generosity!
It has been really great having Jill and Robin back this week and they have both been working really hard. I know from experience that getting back into the swing of things after an absence from TNS is like jumping into a fast moving river. It will also be really good to see Meeta back next week. The three weeks have gone by very fast and yet it seems ages since we saw her. As I said before it’s been really great having Mo in Kathey’s class on Thursdays and Fridays and the art work she has done with the middle class is really quite spectacular. Kathryn’s Prism City, a unique, creative city evolved from her math work with them on circles, cones, etc. is also taking on quite a life of its own and I can’t wait to see the finished product.
Last week on Thursday and Friday the older class did a wonderful impromptu play reading of a 10 minute version of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream for the younger and middle classes. I had asked them to just do a straightforward play reading for the younger class as a prelude to the younger classers writing a narration for their puppet play. They only had the scripts Thursday morning but by the end of the day they had improvised costumes and actions and put on quite an extraordinary show, which we then asked them to encore for the middle class on Friday morning. Happily Since Robin was back Friday she was able to see the play as was her mom who was visiting for the morning. At the Thursday performance a few of the older class had taken two parts and I was really pleased to see that they happily shared them giving parts to L and J who had been away. This week they have all been busy doing the haunted house for the Younger and middle classes as their Halloween day treat. They showed it to groups this morning and it was a terrific hit. They had 4 levels of scariness, 2 with the lights on and 2 with the lights off—each getting more intense than the one before. E was the guide and visitors were treated to a tour of an insane asylum that was supposedly closed years ago but still held many long forgotten and very weird inmates. Screams and cries of delight were the “music” of the morning and Jay and his class deserve a lot of credit for their hard work and another successful Halloween adventure.
On Tuesday the younger class, dressed in their Halloween costumes, went to the nursing home to sing, Helen, Robin and I accompanied them and it was really one of the best performances that we have done there. The children all looked wonderful in their costumes and were a big hit with the residents and I was very proud of the way they behaved and how each one went round and shook hands with our audience afterwards and wished them Happy Halloween. We were also very grateful to add seven students from Kathey’s class at the last minute to help us with the singing. We encouraged the residents to participate with us in singing the songs and they did so very enthusiastically and said afterwards how much they enjoyed it. We told them that we will go back at the holidays and perform for them again.
Despite the Halloween goings-on I have still managed to do some of my Shakespeare work. The younger class has started work on the narration for their puppet play; with the middle class I have started a simplified version of Hamlet (their choice) We have also talked more about the characters in the Midsummer Night’s Dream play and watched part of the video we made the last time I did Shakespeare called The Boisterous Bard.
We are all looking forward to a long weekend next week and I know that several families will be going away. With the holidays coming up soon we would appreciate people telling us well in advance if they are taking time out of school for trips. Much of our work is done in groups and this is affected if one or more of a group is missing. Knowing in advance helps us with our planning and avoids the frustration of groups having to work with someone missing or wait for them to come back.
Happy Halloween!