Week 11

Monday

Hi everyone, this is Sarah, the girl who is doing the NaNo WriMo contest. (National Novel Writing Month.) This week we started our Monday morning with life of Fred. Our teacher, after that, gave us a lecture about subtracting, adding and basic multiplication of fractions. After Fred we rolled the dice again in Life Skills Math. My scenario was that my boss had to cut some stuff out of the department and my department was chosen even though we worked hard. I can either take a two week, unpaid vacation and write about what I did on my vacation or I could look for another job. (I haven't decided yet what I will choose). After Life Skills, we had Ethics. In Ethics we learned about loyalty and what you have to do to be loyal. After Ethics we had Logic and in Logic we discussed "And" and "Or" sentences. We also learned about double negative sentences. In Latin we did some dialogue sentences and we did some vocab flash cards.

Tuesday

On Tuesday we started with History and learned about the Sumerian civilization and how they invented the wheel, the modern day clock, cuneiform writing, and reed houses. Our teacher also showed us the basic outline of a Sumerian city. Next we had Geography and we made cuneiform tablets with notes in them for the future us. In Science we went hunting for leaves, and we also identified the different types of the leaves. We also identified the different parts of the leaf. Last but not least we had Life of Fred.

Wednesday

On Wednesday we started off with spelling. This week was different than any other spelling test. Instead of getting pelted with balls we had a hangman version of spelling. If we spelled a word right or got a word derivation right we got to erase one body part from another classmate. If they erased one of your body parts you would have to go without that body part. For example if one of the students erased my eye, I would have to close that eye for the rest of the game. Next we had reading comprehension and we read about the Greek god Apollo and Daphne and how he fell in love with Daphne when Cupid hit him with an arrow of love but he hit Daphne with an arrow of lead making her have a hatred for all men. We also read about the labyrinth and the Minotaur. Next we had writing. Sophie is working on her novel, Able is working on his comic book, and I am writing the blog. Last we had grammar and we learned about Pronouns acting as adjectives and about possessive nouns acting as adjectives. Tomorrow is co-op (Yeah!). At co-op Sophie and Able have Odyssey of the Mind in the morning and I have a writer's guild class. In the afternoon Sophie and I have photography and we are also on a planning committee for co-op events. Able is doing Lego Robotics and a Manga art class. Friday is internship day. I work at a barn learning natural horsemanship, Sophie goes to a daycare, and Able works at a Veterinary hospital. Hope everyone who has read this blog knows how to spell. If you don't, learn quickly or tennis balls will be in your future.

 

Blog made by Sarah Cyr. (Student)

Week 10 photos

Here are the photos that Jen mentioned in her blog.  Sorry for the delay - it seems the "teacher" isn't quite up to snuff on all this technology stuff.  Something we are working on. 

Week Ten

Before going into detail on what we covered this week, I would like to congratulate two of our students, Sarah and Sophie. Sarah is a participant in the National Young Writers program, and her most recent project is to be completed by the end of this month. Only 10 days into the month, she has completed her writing goal, has 11 chapters under her belt, and has the remaining 20 days to finish the first draft of her novel. Good job, Sarah. I know how hard you've been working!

Sophie has been a part of the Children's Theater Youth Voices troupe, and after several weeks of long rehearsals this show will open to the public tonight. This particular show will run throughout the weekend. Good job, Sophie. We're very proud!

So, what could we have completed this week between frantic typing and car rides to Portland?

• In Life Skills math, our students figured how to handle their second scenarios. The kids have been lucky so far in rolling positive scenarios. I think the most difficult has been when one student had to "train for a marathon". He had one week to train and then run a mile under a certain amount of time (in real life) in order to collect a monetary reward. All money is deposited into their accounts for discretionary spending or investments. He has been considering the stock market...
• In addition to our Life of Fred math, we've been drilling multi-digit multiplication and long division. I have noticed some improvement over the last few weeks.
• We sorted our Latin vocabulary into noun/verb/adjective/other lists. Then, we figured which of our verbs fell into 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th conjugations. For fun, we read from our Minimus text, learning about the history of Hadrian's wall.
• Our Logic class focused on continued work with the symbols of "If-Then", "If-And", and "If-Or" statements. Students are also learning the importance of sorting fully formed arguments into premises and conclusion.
• In Ethics, we had a very interesting discussion about politeness. We began with the somewhat quainter rules of politeness (see Emily Post) and moved on to the vaguer world of internet etiquette. We also examined some of the lessons taught American business men when traveling for work to Japan.
• Science class introduced students to the anatomy of trees. This week served as the first half of the introduction, and students learned to identify and labeled bark, phloem, cambium, xylem, and heartwood on their wood slices. We also spent some time doing our own "forest forensics". Students would consider the shape of a tree in addition to its ring history to hypothesize fire damage, drought, disease and other infestations, overpopulation, and wind damage.
• Students have been studying Mesopotamian and Sumerian irrigation practices. This week, each student was presented with a clay model that included a town, rivers, and streams. The students had to plant their "crops" and contain their "livestock" in an appropriate space relative to the houses and to the water source. They then had to construct an irrigation system (using only wood, clay, rock, and/or string) that was manually powered. This irrigation system had to handle excess water from the wet season; have storage facilities for the dry season; and it had to provide access for the inhabitants of the town. One other thing, the irrigation system had to prevent flooding of the houses. We'll try to get some pictures up to show you how they did. Be sure to look carefully for a shadoof and a working bridge made of twigs!
• Besides continued review in Grammar, we began the first step in diagramming sentences! You wouldn't believe how excited the kids are about this. I told them that it was quickly becoming a lost art, and somehow it's managed to nudge its way into their imaginations as something akin to hand balancing, flea circuses, and dime museums. =
• In Word Derivation and Spelling, we had a quiz and students received their new words and derivations.
• In Reading Comprehension, we continued our study of the Greek gods focusing on the epic of Perseus.
• Writing was really more of the same: two are working on novels; one continues (slowly) on his graphic novel.

In addition to co-op (we're loving our new classes!) and internship day (no Veteran's Day vacation here), we've had a busy week. So, that's it until next Friday; I need to practice my splits for next Grammar class...

Week Nine

It's hard to believe that we are 50 days into our school year. The students and I feel that the weeks are flying by. Of course, the kids think this is great. I, however, panic. I worry about how much more material we have to cover; how many more projects we should complete; how many more field trips need to be scheduled. My academic brain realizes that we're doing fine. My compulsion-riddled mind still worries...

This was our big review week at Pownal Independent. None of our students have had prior experience with mid-terms and finals. I used this week, the mid-semester point, to explain how those exams will be taken and what those exams will look like. It was my hope that this week of mid-semester review and note taking will help to provide the framework for economical study habits. I am hopeful.

Here's what we did:

• In Independent Math, in addition to our Life of Fred work, we drilled fractions, multi-digit multiplication, and long division for time. You might be thinking that students at this level shouldn't be needing the multiplication and division drills, however my real intention was, and continues to be, to un-learn the "lattice" methods [a.k.a Vedic] that they've practiced, and reteach using the "old school" method. Why, you might ask? While the Vedic method might help a student see what one is being asked to do when first learning multiplication, this "lattice" method is simply more time consuming and prone to errors.
• We continued drilling our symbolized logic. We have been analyzing "if, then" arguments, using the classic premise/premise/conclusion form.
• We reviewed all of our Latin vocabulary using a call-and-response method along with game playing.
• We examined how early civilized man moved from the Stone Age to the Chalcolithic (stone and copper) Age and eventually into the Bronze Age. We attempted to find the melting point of copper using blow tubes on hot coals. Though we didn't actually melt our copper, we did heat it to malleability. Each student was able to forge a blade, and we'll be attaching our blades to handles to produce tools and weapons. After hypothesizing how the copper and tin needed for bronze might have been accidentally combined so long ago, we tried really hard to recreate the experience. We learned that we need a better forge in order to make this happen successfully. Perhaps making a better forge is in our future...
• In Science, we are studying flowering plants and fruits. We dissected two different kinds of flowers: lilies and alstromeria. We identified the male reproductive organs: the stamen which is comprised of the anther and the filament. We also identified the female reproductive organs: the carpel which is comprised of the stigma, style, and ovary. We reviewed the steps from pollination to fruit and seed production, and we entered all of this information into our lab books. Apples and grapes were dissected to identify the aged sepals and anthers, and the ovary. We then used this information to help identify these same parts of the Dragonfruit. Lastly, we slit the anther to release young pollen to view under the microscope.
• New spelling words and a whole new batch of Latin derivatives were delivered for next week's quiz.
• We heavily reviewed our Grammar as we will be starting sentence diagramming next week. In order to begin the basics of diagramming, students need to be very comfortable identifying subjects, finite verbs, modal verbs, prepositions and phrases, predicate nouns and adjectives, direct objects, indirect objects, pure adjectives, and adverbs.
• In Reading Comp., we began our unit on Greek mythology, comparing Greek archetypes with those found in our Old Testament studies.
• In Writing, two of our students continue work on their novels, one of which is to be submitted to the National Young Writers Alliance in December. Our third student has begun a graphic novelette.
• Our second semester at the co-op began, and our students are taking courses in digital photography, Odyssey of the Mind, performance direction, 2-D art class, Lego Robotics, NXT, and Power of the Wind. We also have a student teaching her own Writer's Guild!

Lastly, as a follow-up to those of you who had expressed concern about our "abbreviated classroom hours", I did a little research as your questions piqued my curiosity. The standard unit used in most high schools, colleges, and universities is the Carnegie Credit (CC). CCs are rarely used at the middle school level, however, in a typical high school year, students are expected to complete 5 CCs per year for a total of 20 CCs to graduate. Normally, the Carnegie computation takes into account work done outside of class, too. That being said, I was curious how Pownal Independent would measure up IF it needed to report its CCs. I totaled our pure class time for an amount of 4.27 CCs per year. Any homework or research time is not calculated in that total. Neither have I calculated co-op nor internship time. So, by my estimation, we are well within the typical 5 CCs required of high school students. Just some info for those of you who asked...

Week Eight

On Monday of this week, we had two periods of math back-to-back. I know that sounds like torture to have 2 hours of math but it was awesome! The first was our Life of Fred math. That one is just math made into a story with problems to do. But the second period was Life Skills Math, and that was AWESOME!!!! First we talked about the differences between capitalism, socialism, and communism. I think I’d like to live on a kibbutz some day! Then, we got to pick our first scenarios! Our scenarios go like this: every week each of us rolls three dice. Depending on the odd and even combination, we get a problem that we have to solve. For example, I got even-even-odd, and that is a positive windfall scenario. My specific “problem” was that the IRS owed me money for overpaying my taxes. If I can figure out how much they owe me (12% of my annual salary), I get that money in my checking account to spend! Not all of the scenarios are positive. Half of the time you’ll get a negative scenario. For example, your aunt is sick and you need to fly to California to visit her. Then you have to find a real live ticket on the internet and fake purchase it. You have to take the total out of your account. We also had logic which was hard but it was kind of cool. We are learning about logic symbols, especially “if-then” statements and how you can take an argument and break it down into symbols to see if it’s true or false. Here was one we did, and in it D= “dinosaurs exist”, I= “invisible horses are polka-dotted, and E= “elephants have wings”. The argument was “Either dinosaurs don’t exist, or elephants don’t have wings. But if elephants don’t have wings, then invisible horses are not polka-dotted. However, invisible horses are polka-dotted. Therefore, dinosaurs don’t exist.” Don’t worry, the first time I heard it I was lost at “But if…” It is very confusing to know if this is a true statement. So, you write it in these crazy symbol things and it would be

• Dà~E and Eà~D and ~Eà~I . Therefore, Ià~D. And eventually you figure out that it is true in this case. Anyway, if your brain isn’t fried yet then I’ll go on to Tuesday…

Tuesday was wicked fun! We played this game in History where the three of us were the leaders of early cities. I was the city of Amut; Able was Meso; Sarah was Potum.

Each city had strengths and weaknesses. The object of the game was to keep your city going and your citizens happy. On your turn you could trade, battle or alliance. I had a lot of weapons, so I had a lot of strength. But I didn’t have much for crops or salt. I needed to be nice to trade for those things or my citizens would have a civil war. Plus, you wanted to conquer the other cities sometimes if you needed stuff that they wouldn’t trade you. If you wanted to go to war, you had to roll the dice to see what the outcome would be. If you were stronger, you lost fewer people and got more stuff. Able and Sarah made an alliance near the end of the game. They became a city-state called Meso-Potum. Finally they conquered me, and the new city-state became Meso-Potum-Amut, otherwise known as Mesopotamia. Later that day, in Science we did two lab experiments. We were studying how flowering plants take water and sunlight, make food, and give off oxygen. The formula we were proving was: light + water + CO2 = sugar + oxygen.

Wednesday wasn’t at all like Tuesday. First we had a long Spelling and Word Derivation exam. Then in Reading Comp. we read about the death of King Saul, the reign of King David, Solomon’s 40 year reign, and the building of the first temple. We had writing before lunch, and I worked on this blog. After a filling lunch at Edna and Lucy’s, we headed back. The last period of the day was grammar. We’re still reviewing Predicate Nouns and Adjectives, Direct Objects and Indirect Objects, but we also started on the difference between adverbs and adjectives. This is our instructor’s biggest pet peeve.

Of course on Thursday we had Co-op. This week was the Halloween party so it was crazy. I was upstairs the whole time doing a Haunted House, but I heard it was hectic downstairs. Anyway, the Haunted House was really fun; plus, we had fake blood and everything! We decided to run the fog machine so it would be foggy before we started. But no, that didn’t work. Yep, you guessed it. “Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!” The fog apparently was too thick or something and it triggered the fire alarm. It was still really fun and next week we start our second semester of classes. I’m taking Odyssey of the Mind for two periods, Digital Camera, and a period for organizing the holiday performances in December.

Today I went to my internship which I love! The babies are sooooo adorable! They know me now and they cry when I leave. I got a packet of information about early childhood development, and I am going to go to a few night classes at the University with some of the other people that I work with. That was it for this week!

Written by Sophie

[Pownal Independent School can not be held responsible for any brain damage caused by any confusing symbol content]

Week Seven

I hate to disappoint, but I have decided to give the kids a break and write this week's blog. I can assure you that it won't be nearly as political nor accusative as those of the past few weeks. Evidently, China really hits a nerve... Sinophobia is SO last century, guys.

Moving on. We decided to reward our students this week with a morning out to see Around the World in 80 Days at The Public Theater in Lewiston. The show ends this weekend, but if you have any opportunity to go, we highly recommend it. It's hysterical. Not once during the two hour performance did the energy on stage wane. I believe that the kids did pick up a bit of geography while there (along with some heavy-handed cultural stereotypes).

In addition to our field trip, we did cover a bit of ground in some of our subjects. The students are continuing work on fractions, but, we did introduce some of the more interesting aspects of math in an attempt to answer that age old question "when are we ever going to use this?" Our early morning Monday lecture introduced infinite series, fractals, binary trees, and the undeniable beauty of two color graphs of even degree. Oh, and more importantly, we learned how to "doodle" examples of each. I don't believe I've ever seen fiercer notebook margins.

Other topics covered this week:

• In Life Skills Math, students compared the cost of public transportation in their chosen city/town with the cost of owning a car.
• In Ethics, we studied the value and social significance of perseverance.
• We continued our study of the invalidity of "proof" by lack of counter-example in Logic.
• We worked on vocabulary, word derivations, and the introduction of future tense suffixes in Latin.
• We practiced for our cumulative spelling exam.
• We continued diagramming the predicate noun, predicate adjective, direct object and indirect object in Grammar.
• We read about the early battles between the Philistines and the armies of King Saul which led rise to the reign of King David.
• Work continues on independent novels and writing prompts. One of our students has begun the arduous work required of members of the National Young Writers Program.

Last, but by far not least, I would like to publicly thank both Karen and Carmen of the Pownal Veterinary Hospital. Not only have they provided the Pownal Independent School with material for our microscopes, but they have also been hosting one of our internships. Our nine year old student has been attending at the hospital on Fridays for the past seven weeks, and the opportunities provided him have far outdone any of my expectations. He has viewed a host of examinations and medical procedures. In fact, two weeks ago he participated in an ovariohysterectomy. Not only did he watch the entire procedure (from intubation to recovery), but Karen and Carmen took time to explain which organs were being removed and why. He reported out that he also saw the bladder and the small intestine and that the whole process was "Awesome. Gross at first, but then it was just neat." I can't thank them enough for providing such a great learning environment.

Week Six

I love homeschool! It's not boring because we do a lot of trips and projects. Even History is interesting. It's really just a long story. Reading Comprehension is fun, too, because we always stop at a cliff hanger which makes me feel like I can't wait for next week. I also like that I don't have homework. Well, sometimes we have to finish the stuff we didn't finish in the day.

This past week we made clay houses in History. They were models of the houses in the first cities. My house was from Catalhoyuk in Turkey. Catalhoyuk is important because it was one of the first cities ever to have a population over 10,000. Sarah and Sophie made round houses from an early city on the Yellow River in China. Sarah had a problem making the roof of her house because she made her house extra large. She couldn't make the roof work, and she couldn't make it strong enough to stand up. That's exactly what happened in China! A square house is easier to make larger and stronger. That's why early humans stopped making round houses and moved to square or rectangle

houses. I made a square house. Catalhoyuk houses had their doors in the roof so it was safer [harder for invaders to get into the houses]. Also, you had more room to build houses because you didn't need to worry about walkways. You could just build right up next to the other house. And, you had a second floor which was the roof, and you didn't have to use any wood or mud to make it! You just walked and cooked and slept on the roof if you wanted to.

This week we also made four different food webs in Science. And for Life Skills Math, we actually went to the grocery store to add up our weekly grocery bills that we had made. My grocery bill is $201.59 a week. I'm expensive.

I want someone in China to read this blog, so please email it to your friends in China if you have any. I love China. The people are so cool. The Chinese will rule the world because they are the hardest workers [Note: the opinions of the blogger are his and have not, in any way, been inculcated, indoctrinated, nor instilled by the instructors of Pownal Independent School.] Anyways, China is awesome! Don't forget I said that when you rule the world. Please leave all of your comments below. I will be blogging here again in four weeks. Just to clarify, the comments don't need to be nice.

I can't wait for homeschool next week.

By: Able H. K. (nine year old student)