Pre-k Interviews Game Designer
Pre-kindergarten is deep into a study of games this month. First, the students explored four kinds of games: board games, card games, building games, and matching games. Then, they each chose their favorite category and began designing their own game within that category. Last Friday, we were able to interview Tyler Schwartz, the creative director at Story Time Learning. We have been learning how to play chess using the award-winning Story Time Chess, and it was so special for us to meet the professional designer behind that game! Students had many questions for Tyler about how he creates games, and they thoroughly enjoyed his stories and advice. We are so excited to share our finished games with the BDS community at an upcoming sharing assembly. Stay tuned!
– Kim Edwards and Nicole Siverls, pre-kindergarten teachers
Second Grade Experiments with Water Filtration Process
Over the past few weeks in science with associate teacher Mr. Hacker, second graders have been exploring and researching the difference between dirty and clean water, and the systems and processes that distinguish the two. In conjunction with this exploration, second graders worked in pairs to design water filters using recycled plastic bottles, coffee filters, rocks, and sand. This past week, our scientists built and tested their water filters with a cup of dirty water. We made observations about how the color of the water changed as it went through the filter, how fast the water filtered, and how much clean water their filter collected.
We got the chance to reflect on our work this week, and students shared observations, surprises, and questions they still had after testing their water filters. In addition, students gave ideas for modifying the experiment, like adding microscopes or working with a local water treatment scientist to test if their filtered water was safe to drink.
In all, students used their creativity, hard work, and collaboration skills to create, test, and reflect on a wide range of water filters.
– The Second Grade Team
Sixth Graders Study Concept of Race and Racism
This week in social studies, sixth graders worked through the second part of a lesson on the concept of race. The goal of the lesson is for students to analyze the socially constructed meaning of race and examine how it has been used to justify exclusion, inequality, and violence throughout history. In the first part of this lesson, students discussed Kwame Anthony Appiah’s take on the evolutionary origins of “We and They” thinking and a short video titled “Race: The Power of an Illusion (The Difference Between Us)” from Facing History and Ourselves. We followed this by reflecting on George Fredrickson’s definition of race to define it more clearly for our understanding. In the final phase of the lesson, students will analyze a primary source titled Growing Up With Racism by Lisa Delpit. A goal here is to examine how racism has influenced the ways that people think and act toward Delpit and how racism has affected how she thinks about herself. By the end of the lesson, students should be able to take away the fact that the concept of race was invented by society to fulfill its need to justify disparities in power and status among different groups. The lack of scientific evidence about race undermines the very concept of the superiority of some “races” and the inferiority of other “races.”
– Khang Phan, sixth grade social studies teacher
Kindergarten Learn About New Community Helpers: Sanitation Workers
If you talk to a kindergartener this week, be prepared for some trash talk … discussions about garbage collectors, that is! Kindergartners began a study of another essential community helper: garbage collectors, also known as sanitation workers. This week we learned that garbage trucks can be all different colors–even rainbow! After looking at photos of garbage trucks, kindergartners and their cross-graded buddies in seventh grade designed their own garbage trucks. They used their knowledge of 2D shapes to create a truck that would be able to safely carry trash to a landfill. Then, they used markers to decorate their truck. So don’t “waste” the opportunity to ask a kindergartener about their very own garbage truck!
– Missy Hartvigsen, kindergarten teacher
