Police Presentation this Friday

This Friday, December 11th, an officer from the Detroit Police Department's Central Division will give a presentation on 'Good Touch, Bad Touch' to the Kindergarten and First Grade students. The presentation will give an overview of 'stranger danger,' and review what constitutes inappropriate touching. The presentation also includes the fact that incidences of inappropriate touching often involve persons that the child knows. The officer will speak to the children about how to react and who to tell if they have been inappropriately touched or were in a situation that they felt threatened.

Discovery Village Thanksgiving Feast

On Tuesday all of the Kindergarten and First Grade classes (the 'Discovery Village') gathered together for a potluck feast. Everyone enjoyed trying some homemade food brought in by our families. There were lots of good dishes like turkey, stuffing, mac and cheese, greens, salad, chicken, and spaghetti. My favorite dish was some Chinese fried dumplings that a family from Ms. Keane's class brought in. I thought it was really cool to see each family representing their own cultural traditions in our potluck.

Learning Plans, Rubrics, and Exhibitions ... Oh My!

By the time you're reading this you should already have your child's Exhibition rubric and a draft of their Learning Plan (for those students that have yet to select a topic for their next Interest Project, please see me ASAP). I'm busy working on students' Narrative report cards, and those will be sent home on Wednesday, December 2nd.

Remember, there is no school this Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday.

Our First Exhibition Week

Our first Exhibition week was a great success. All of our students did remarkably well considering this was, for many of them, their very first time speaking in front of friends, family, and guests.

We learned how to tie shoes, do hair, grow plants, and make crayons (see Sydney S.'s picture on the side). We also learned about dogs, cats, hornets (see Jaron's picture with nest), firefighters, and baseball. We were even treated to two songs.

Not only did all of our students do a fantastic job, but all of our families made sure to show up promptly and help us stick to our schedule. This can be a very long week for young students who have to remain focused and busy on a task while I conduct Learning Team Meetings in the back.

Good job!

Camp Chair Progress

A few weeks ago Ms. Rosman and I picked up all the lumber we'll need for our camp chair project. It was a longer ordeal at the Home Depot than we had anticipated, but we did get the wood cut down to manageable proportions for free.

Ms. Rosman's Fourth Grade students have been working on measuring and marking the cuts that will have to be made to the chairs. We visited Ms. Rosman's class today to see their progress and even lend a hand. Her students are busy applying their math skills to the project, and we got to see them model those skills in a real-world context.

Ailay enjoyed trying out a prototype of the camp chair (see the picture on left). All of our students have been assigned partners in Ms. Rosman's class to work with. When we visited their classroom, these Fourth Graders showed us how they were measuring and marking the wood. When it comes time to sand the chairs, paint our names on them, and seal them with Linseed Oil, our partners will help us do all of that. Our students seemed very pleased to work with the Fourth Graders, and the Fourth Graders were all very helpful.

If you have not yet submitted payment ($6.00) for your child's chair, you can do so with me at anytime. We will hopefully have them all finished sometime in early December.

Field Trip to Ann Arbor

It was a beautiful day for a field trip on Friday. We headed to Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan's Hill Auditorium for a performance by Keith Terry and the Slammin' All-Body Band. If you closed your eyes you wouldn't even realize that they were a non-traditional band that doesn't use any instruments other than their voices and bodies. They did original compositions as well as covering Miles Davis, Toots & the Maytals, and others (I think my favorite was their rendition of Pressure Drop). I've attached a link so you can check out some video of Keith Terry and the Slammin' All-Body Band covering Nat King Cole's Nature Boy. (Listen and watch closely and remember there are no instruments other than their bodies.)

Perhaps just as entertaining as the actual performance was taking a bus ride out of the city, past the airport, and into Ann Arbor. We saw planes landing and taking off, bridges, trucks, and big buildings. It was a gorgeous sunny fall day, and there was a pleasant bustle of University students on campus.

Once we were inside the auditorium we had to climb up to the very top to find our seats. I spoke to one of the volunteer ushers and found out that there were more than 4,000 school children from all over southeastern Michigan in attendance. All of the Kindergarten and First Grade classes from our campus were there, as were the Kindergarten and First Grade classes from the Ellen Thompson campus. The Sixth Graders from University Prep Academy's Middle School were there too. There was a sea of red, black, and white uniforms in our section.

Jambalaya and Jazz Night

At UPA we try to give our students enriching cultural experiences both inside and outside of the school environment. Over the past year we've brought in children's authors, local musicians, fire fighters, police officers, and others. We've also gone on a variety of field trips throughout the area. We plan to continue all of this programming, and one of the ways that we pay for it (or, in the case of field trips, offset the parental contribution) is through fundraising. Our big fall fundraiser this year was 'Jambalaya and Jazz Night.'

It was a festive night with families and staff gathering in the gymnasium to eat Jambalaya, sweet treats, and listen to the mellow jazz stylings of a high school trio. The highlight of the evening for most was the basket raffle. Our class' contribution, 'Cooking with Children,' was a highly sought-after prize. We were able to include a children's cook book, oven mitt, adult and child-size aprons, colorful mixing bowls and measuring cups, wooden mixing spoons, cupcake tins, decorations, cake mixes, and more (see picture above).

Two students from our class won baskets of their own -- congratulations Marvin and Jaron!