What Do Oceanography and Empathy Have In Common?

Our K-8 assemblies really have been phenominal this year, and today's edition continued with that excellence. What made it so special was both the quality of the student sharing -- powerful and important subjects of both environmental and social justice were discussed -- as well as the deeply respectful listening that the audience showed throughout the event!

After a welcome from Mitch, Strawberry Creek (4th/5th grade) presented a two-part showcase of learning. The first segment drew on their recent unit on oceanography and marine biology to explain what happens when garbage winds up in the ocean (i.e. the Pacific Trash Patch) through a skit, direct conversation, and a movie the students made (I'll try to update this post with the video!).

The second portion of their presentation was a panel discussion on the perjorative use of the phrase "That's so gay." Students shared the history of the word gay, how it came be used as a slur, and the importance of THINKing before speaking.

Student Life Coordinator Kate Klaire then made an announcement about the upcoming No Name Calling Week curriculum block, which began today in K-5 and will continue for the next four weeks.

The Middle School continued the assembly with a wonderful presentation on the service learning projects they implemented the day before Winter Break. Below are just a few of the pictures from the slideshow, with the text of their presentations embedded along the way.

The day before Winter Break was the first of four Advisory Service Days in the 7th and 8th grade.  There are four very different organizations that we are partnering with this year and every advisory will have the opportunity to volunteer at each of them.  The idea is that we get a chance to try out different kinds of service, and experience helping all different kinds of people in different ways, so that we can figure out for ourselves how we might like to serve in the future.   It was a great way to spend the day before the holidays.

Norman’s advisory went to the mouth of School House Creek where it empties into the Bay along the Bay Trail.  The Middle School has officially adopted this part of the shoreline.   Our intention in going was to clean up the beach and record data about what we collected.  We picked up trash and sorted it depending on what it was.  The reason they record the data is to try and get an idea of where the trash is coming from so they can maybe do something about it.  For example Shorebird Nature Center helped to get plastic bags banned in Berkeley by using this kind of data.  We found 556 pieces of plastic plus tons more identifiable items.  We liked seeing all of the different things that washed up on shore because so much more than you think ends up in the Bay.   It made us all think about how if we keep on using so much plastic, how much there will be in the environment when we have children.

Craig’s advisory went to TBS’s Early Childhood Center.  We went to help the teachers make the kids feel happy, so the kids will know what it feels like to spend time with older kids and so that we get experience spending time with younger kids.  We traced continents for their map work, painted with them, read to them, did magic tricks for them and helped them build with blocks.  We liked how well behaved the kids were and noticed what great imaginations they have.  It was fun to play in that way again.   For some of us it was cool to see our old ECC teachers.

Kim’s advisory went to St. Paul’s Towers in Oakland, near Lake Merritt.  It is a senior facility that has different levels of care for elderly people.  Before we went we talked to a geriatrician and she told us about different things they do there, the levels of care, and some of the challenges we might face in talking to them.   We went to bond with the elders and help to make their holidays happy.  We brought instruments and prepared some songs to sing.  They have always wanted us to sing for them and it was cool that they sang along. We also decorated cookies with them which we liked because it was an easy way to bond with them.  Some of them have dementia or can’t hear very well so sometimes its hard to talk to them.  It wasn’t an easy experience, but it was valuable to connect with a different generation.  We got to learn about what their lives were like.  It is good to have another perspective on things that is not your own.

 

Tanya’s advisory went to Glide Memorial Church to serve lunch.  Glide’s goal is to alleviate suffering and break the cycle of poverty for people.   One of the ways they do that is through their meals program.   We took BART there and spent the day serving  600 people hot lunch.  The majority of the people that came through were elderly.  Some of them didn’t look homeless but down on their luck and in need of a good meal.  We always have our meals and our wonderful lunch program and so many take that granted.   Downtown San Francisco is right next to the Tenderloin and the fact that Glide is able to be right on that border and reach so many people is amazing.

The assembly ended with Owen (our K-8 music teacher) leading the school in The Empathy Song, by local hero Brett Dennan.

Story plays and kelp forests!

Today brought a pair of year-end Celebrations of Learning in the Elementary Division. Tomorrow will be the 1/2 classrooms' year-end presentations; Monday brought Temescal Creek's (3rd grade) publishing party, which I unfortunately saw only briefly and in passing.

In Cerrito and Strawberry (4th/5th grades), the classrooms held a combined showcase of their work and learning during the current Oceans Unit. One portion of Strawberry Creek was transformed into a kelp forest, while Cerrito Creek centered around a tidepool. Both classrooms featured student-written animal reports, with additional activities including a "seagull dissection" emphasizing the impact of the pacific trash patch, live krill for inspection, paper plate models depicting the relative amount of water, land, etc covering the earth's surface, and ocean-related poetry.

In Sweet Briar Creek (Kindergarten), students finished their literature unit on Fairy Tales by putting on a Story Play titled "Good vs. Evil", which they had collectively written. At the conclusion of the play, they answered questions from audience members that ranged from "How did you resolve disagreements about what ideas to include?" and "What parts of this play remind you of other fairy tales?" to "What flavor cake did they eat at the end?"

Plankton Party!

 

Jonathon Stillman is a marine scientist and parent of two students at TBS. We are so fortunate to have him and graduate student assistant Adam Paganini as guests to teach our students about microscopic marine life, and the incredible importance these creatures hold for the sustainability of our planet. 

Students from kindergarten through the 7th grade observed and identified many different microscopic plankton, and marveled at the variety and adaptations of these amazing creatures.

Thanks to Kate Klaire, TBS Student Life Coordinator, for putting this together, and for these pictures and text.

Today's K-8 Assembly: drama, leadership, science, poetry, and music!

Today's K-8 assembly was incredibly fun! After Mitch welcomed the students, the program began with a skit presented by the 7th grade students focusing on the ideas of inclusion/exclusion, cooperation, and comfort talking about these difficult topics. Check out the script written by Norman Johnson, TBS's very own Middle School Drama Teacher!

This was followed by a pitch from last year's Student Council members about the exciting experience of being on the council, and setting the stage for the selection/election process that will take place in classrooms during the next two weeks.

At each assembly, one or more classrooms presents a Showcase of Learning, in which they talk about recent classroom experiences and academic ideas they have been learning and thinking. Today's SoL featured students from Wildcat Creek (6th grade), sharing information from their Science curriculum about the composition of the Earth, and also reading original poems they've written in the style of Billy Collins' work "On Turning 10".  

The last piece of the assembly was a body-percussion experience led by Owen Roberts, TBS K-8 Music Teacher. He taught first a simple two-beat clap rhythm; then a second, four-beat snapping rhythm; and then a third, eight-beat body drumming rhythm. He split the room into groups and layered all three rhythms together, and then introduced a call-and-response element using just the chorus of "Hello Bonjour" by local artist Michael Franti and Spearhead.

Upper Elementary digs into math and science

One facet of our program is grade level math in the mixed-grade levels; all of the fourth graders gather in Strawberry Creek, while all of the fifth graders meet in Cerrito Creek, for an hour each day. In 4th grade math, students began with a Number Talk, in which they were challenged to come up with as many different mathematical ways to represent the number 36 as they could. As you can see, there was no shortage of ideas!

Fifth grade students were given a slant on the traditional Number Talk, and asked to create the highest number they could using the digits 0-9 with certain constraints (the number can't be even, can't be divisible by 7, etc).

Fifth graders were also asked to explore the relationship between different strands of mathematical thinking including numbers, patterns, and geometry through a coloring activity. This also led to a conversation about efficiency and effectiveness -- what approach to coloring the squares would allow for the fewest number of times a student would need to put down one pencil and pick up another?

In third grade, students returned to the creating-a-compass activity from the first day in more depth; they were asked to make predictions, record their observations through words and drawings, and compare the results of the same experiment conducted multiple times.