Weekly Post 5/4/17

May the Fourth Be With You!!!  (And Altho With You)

This week on team Spencer was very short.

Zoey taught us how to draw pirates on Monday. We had a chance to draw a pirate and make little changes to personalize them. It was a fun time. On Wednesday we saw the last production of Spencer's Forum theater elective. We also learned about some cool Library information from an Ann Arbor Public Library librarian. Spenser also taught us this week how to make origami hearts. Just in time for Mother's Day. Everyone was successful in creating their hearts.

On Friday we had a surprise field trip for Spencer's Celebration Day. Although her birthday is in June when we don't have school, she likes to celebrate with the class. Everyone in our class gets their very own celebration day whether their birthday is during school or not. But, nobody knew a field trip was coming!

The Forum Theatre Elective had it's last performance on Wednesday.  It was super cool to dissect possible reasons why people may display unexpected behavior.  

 

 

In math we finished up our math board games. Next week we will learn how to play all of them.

Just a neat picture of 3 Team Spencerites

Weekly Post 4/28/17

This week 

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n Team Spencer we have been doing a lot. On Monday

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 we had a visitor from the University Musical Society that did a post-show workshop with us on how music can communicate the idea of who a person is. We were able to describe a person just based on what the music that was written about them sounded like. It was very fascinating.

Noelle taught us this week about the Muir Woods National Park and about all of the flora and fauna found within the park. We went on a pinecone scavenger hunt to get questions to answer about Muir Woods. Sean also taught us about graphic novels this week

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 and helped us build our own graphic novels. Our se

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ond round teaching is off to a great start.

After spending months playing the online game Building Detroit, we had the chance to go to the Detroit Historical Museum and see how Detroit was actually built. It was a great experience.

 

In math we are continuing to work on our math board games. There are games that highlight time, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction, and measurement. They look like they will be very fun games to play.

Weekly Post 4/21/17

This week in Team Spencer, after taking a break from our Hero's Journey stories, 

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e began the revising process.  We will look at ways to make our stories better, correct grammar and improve punctuation.  We are letting our colleagues have a look at our stories and make suggestions.

We are also continuing to work on our 

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esson 

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lans.  We have been 

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aving meetings where we review our last lesson, reflect on the feedback we received, and brainstorm

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ways to make our next lesson even better.

In 

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ath 

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e have been exercising our problem solving skills with math challenges and logic puzzles.  We are applying mathematical thinking to problems that don't involve numbers.  We will then create our own math challenges and math mysteries.

The Forum Theatre elective will have performances on Wednesday, April 26th in Spencer's room (

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-2 invited), and Wednesday, May 5th in the Atrium (3-8 invited).  Both performances will be at 2:30 pm.  Adult audience members are encouraged to come and participate in this interactive theater piece.

Weekly Post 4/14/17

This week on Team Spencer we had a lot of fun. We finished up our applications for class jobs and went through an important interview process. Each student got interviewed for the job that they wish to have and had to discuss why they wanted it and what they wanted their salary to look like. Everyone either got a new job or was able to keep their old job and negotiate their salary to be paid in class dollars.

On Wednesday we went to see the University Musical Society's guest performers A Far Cry with A Roomful of Teeth. In this performance we heard music from a small chamber orchestra and classical music done by an acapella group. We use the music to create pictures, stories and abstract drawings of the sounds that we heard. We then used those stories and ideas to make longer stories during a writing session.  Before break we did a workshop with UMS on how music tells stories.

We have started doing research for our second round of teaching. This time we have a very clear rubric of what kind of things we want to see in each lesson. We want to make sure that the lesson makes sense, we can hear what is being said, the information is accurate and thorough, and there is an engaging activity or aspect to the lesson.

In math we are beginning our math storytelling portion. We are watching videos of math mysteries, and reading stories about math mysteries. We will then write our own math mysteries using the concepts of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, weight, and measuring.

Weekly Post 3/17/17

This week on Team Spencer, we finished our read aloud Hugo and are now watching the movie. We are also studying Georges Méliès and all of his movies and the magic that he made. Since Spencer is going to Paris in a few weeks, we are making a list of places that she should visit that correspond to the things that we are studying in Hugo. We hope to get pictures and videos from the automaton Museum and the train station that Hugo supposedly worked at.

In science we have been studying about the different types of lightbulbs. We have looked at incandescent light, fluorescent lights, and LED lights. We are noting the differences in the way they work and how efficient they are in using the energy that is given.

Last week we finished our first news report and we have started on our second news broadcast. As soon as the video is edited we will release the first broadcast of our news stories.

In math we are in the middle of our baking math and this week we have chocolate chip cookies. We use the same recipe as we used last year, but last year we had twice as many students, so we made A LOT of cookies. We continue to work on our multiplication tables memorize all of them as best we can.

Weekly Post 3/11/17

Hi Team, this week on team Spencer we have been having a lot of fun. After last week's rousing success in math class with making cupcakes, this week we made fudge pie. But, it wasn't quite that simple. The first recipe we were given was f​or six times as many people as we needed. We had to divide all the ingredients in our ingredient list by 6 in order to get the correct recipe.

This week we also recorded our very first team Spencer News network broadcast. Spencer's brother Jamal is going to help us edit it and put it together so that it looks like a professional news broadcast. All the students work so hard on their stories. It will be very informative. Look for it sometime next week.

As we have been talking about real estate in our business dealings, many students are purchasing their desks so they don't have to pay rent. We thought it would be good to play a little Monopoly. It has been an interesting fascinating Journey in buying, selling, trading, and dealing with money.

Weekly Post 3/5/17

This week was busy on Team Spencer.  We have updated our tax system to reflect differing economic status within our class.  Mason has come up with a system where we pay based on how much we have.  The ownership of the utilities, paper, pencils, scissors and other supplies, has changed from Spencer to Mason and Josiah.  The class taxes now go to them, so that they may provide these resources to the class.  Friday we had another art sale; this one to benefit UNICEF.  The students wanted to donate to a cause that helps children.  We have also elected a new President.  Ben is the new President of The United Kids of Team Spencer.  Congratulations!!

We have almost finished up our first draft of our Hero's Journey stories and some of us are beginning the revising stage and making sure our work is perfect.  

In Math, our baking project is in full swing.  On Tuesday, we calculated what ingredients we need and how much of each ingredient we will need for the all of the recipes.  It was a lot of adding.  On Thursday we went to the grocery store and had to decide how much to buy.  On Friday we followed the recipe and made cupcakes. Yum!!