Yesterday we really kicked up our creative thinking skills a notch with a friendly problem-solving competition!

We divided into three teams by drawing numbers out of a paper bag. Students were asked to come up with names for their teams. Our teams were quite creative with names such as; Zen Yobi, Red Ice Pops, and the 27'ers!

Although they might have been unaware, our goals for the day were elaboration, idea defense and team work! 

Each team was given 1-2 problems to solve in a time frame of anywhere from two to ten minutes for each problem or problem set. Children could work individually, but after arriving at an answer, must consult with their teammates before submitting the team's final answer. It was necessary to work quietly as any blurting of answers could cost your team a point. The students worked beautifully at this, and nary an answer was revealed. 

After the three teams had submitted an answer privately to the moderator, each team in rotation had a chance to present their solution to the group. If correct, the team scored an additional point above and beyond the question's stated point value, if wrong, the team lost a point! We learned an incredibly important lesson. Quick judgement of a problem often led to incorrect answers and lost points. More thoughtful consideration of a problem led to more correct answers and more points! Understanding that more can lie beneath the surface than appears at first glance is crucial to unraveling many of life's answers, including thinking circle questions. :0)

Congratulations to the 27'ers for squeaking by with a one point win over Zen Yobi! We finished the day with a Sudoku Puzzle challenge. I provided each child with four puzzles, a few of them were able to complete the first one successfully, however, many students found them frustrating. If you would like to look over the puzzles this week with your student, I would encourage you to try to solve them together, as it may lead to a more relaxed view of the problem. This is an optional activity, but I'd like them to feel positive about the experience.

Next week we'll be discussing, discovering and expressing visually the beauty of Infinity.

We use curriculum from Art of Inquiry, LLC.

In class this week, students formed small groups and were given the challenge of: Designing and Building something "USEFUL".

Each group was provided the same set of supplies which consisted of a variety of miscellaneous everyday items (rubberbands, paperclips, drinking straws, plastic cups, popsicle sticks, cotton balls, pipe cleaners, etc).  

This activity is meant to encourage creative and divergent thinking and provide an opportunity for students to develop the important skills of teamwork and collaboration.  Group members worked together brainstorming possible invention ideas, given the supplies at hand, and were allowed to barter with other groups for additional items, if desired.

The students quickly arrived at their ideas and began sketching, then building (sometimes re-building!) their designs.  Discussions were lively and it was quite apparent that the creative juices were flowing!

At our next class meeting on 10/15, each group will develop a short marketing approach (infomercial, skit, etc.) and present their final product to the class.  Groups will field questions from their classmates and must successfully defend their creation as something "USEFUL".

Students were given four homework problems to work on over the break.  Once again, these types of problems require careful reading, time to think through, work, and sometimes re-work.  Students should continue to use diagrams to help arrive at possible solutions and be prepared to share their approaches and answers with the class. 

Students worked together this week in class to create their Shirley Temple Wong character collage. 
Using photos, drawings, and artwork they brought from home, students laid out an inspired representation of all that is Shirley...

...and took great pride in their work!

We then spent some time discussing Shirley’s progression throughout the story so far, as students shared their Event/Change log entries for each month.  We brainstormed about what advice we might give Shirley (or anyone!) on how to make friends in a new environment.  Students shared their thoughts on Mrs. Rappaport's speech about Jackie Robinson, baseball, and America, and the significant impact this had on Shirley’s view of herself and her future.  

I provided students with a brief history of the Pledge of Allegiance and students then translated Shirley’s humorous version (“I pledge a lesson to the frog…”) into the true words of the pledge and we discussed the meaning of each word.  Please take the time to review the pledge handout with your student at home.  I also gave them a handout of fun facts about the Brooklyn Dodgers.  They may be interested in reading this student resource guide on the life of Jackie Robinson and his accomplishments, provided by the Jackie Robinson Foundation.

Remember, there is no class next Monday, October 8th - Happy Columbus Day!  Students should finish reading the book for our next class on 10/15.  We will wrap up our discussion of “In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson” with a literary critique roundtable discussion and choose our next book selection!

On Monday we welcomed special guest, Janna Maron, to our class. Janna is the publisher of the quarterly literary arts journal, Under the Gum Tree, and has extensive experience in writing and editing. Janna spoke about a variety of topics and shared a web-site which may be helpful to our young writers: www.750words.com

After Janna's talk, we discussed the differences between news writing and feature writing. 

I want to take a moment to clarify what students should be doing each week. Each student has been assigned an area to cover for The Mosaic Monthly, but in addition, this is a writing class, therefore, students will be writing on a weekly basis above and beyond their responsibilities for the paper.

Last week the assignment was to write a news story -- students exchanged papers with a classmate and need to edit the story they received for content, grammar and punctuation. This week each student must write a feature article. Students were given a worksheet and a list of ideas to help them if they get stuck. We also read a feature story in class, so if they have trouble remembering the style of a feature article, refer them back to "Youth's Gone in Crack of a Bat." Final feature articles must be typed, and brought to class on October 15th. Don't forget to write a headline. We will share our feature stories and the group will select one article to appear in the first issue of our paper.

On that note, all articles and sections for our first issue should be completed by October 22nd so that they can be presented to the editors for final review. All articles and sections should be edited for publication by October 29th. Our first issue will be distributed no later than November 12th!

This week we had fun with hands-on geometry! Through the use of pentominoes we verbalized visual-spatial concepts, creative use of elements, and exploration of properties and consequential use of newly discovered properties.

Students were challenged to make rectangles out of pentominoes (five equal squares that share at least one side), create houses with "windows", solve puzzles from a worksheet, and finally, play a pentomino version of broken telephone.

We will not meet again until October 15th. Over the two week break, here are some things to keep your student thinking:

1. Each student received a set of paper pentominoes and a worksheet with six problems. No one was able to solve all six. Have them go back and try to complete as many as possible. 
2. Try "virtual" pentominoes, HERE.
3. View the video, Inspiration, inspired by Escher's tilings HERE. It is a beautiful expression of geometry through art and music. I dare you not to be moved! Ask your students if they recognize any of the shapes.

We finished our class with the "giant paper loop challenge."  I passed out templates so they could try it at home. Here are the step-by-step instructions.

Lastly, our students were anxious to show off some of their creations!

We use curriculum from Art of Inquiry, LLC.

Please be advised that we need to flex our creative muscles tomorrow and use the downstairs portion of the church for our classes.

The church is hosting an outreach program next week and needs access to the upstairs.

You may still enter the east side of the church -- instead of going up the stairs, please proceed straight through the door in front of you -- one of us will be there to tell your student(s) where to go.
Happy Monday!

This week I provided students with an overview of
the differences between convergent and divergent thinking.  We discussed the importance (and inter-related nature) of both types of thinking skills for the development of strong critical thinking ability and problem solving.  Students were then given several exercises to work on in small groups, aimed primarily at flexing their divergent thinking muscles. 

At first glance these seemed like simple, almost silly questions:  1) list all the possible uses you can think of for a screw driver; 2) the answer is 20, what is the question?  However, the purpose of these types of exercises is to get students to e-x-p-a-n-d their thinking, use their imagination, and tap into the more creative problem solving side of their mind.  Unlike convergent thinking, where we aim to zero in on one correct answer, divergent exercises such as these help us learn to generate many plausible solutions, and they push us to think more flexibly.

Our lead-in exercise this week challenged the students to use scissors to cut a hole in an ordinary piece of paper through which an elephant can pass.  Amazingly, what at first seemed impossible (or some sort of trick question!) ended up being solved, as the students talked it through, and asked questions, until obvious and simple statements such as “we need to make the paper really big” led to insights, which ultimately led to a successful procedure: “We can cut strips up and down inside the paper to make one huge hole!”.  While we did not have time for all the students to create the enormous paper hoops, I was genuinely impressed with their collective ability to think through such a difficult and unusual problem.  And as promised, the step-by-step instructions for cutting the paper are provided below.

We also spent some time going over the homework problems from last week.  These were very challenging, and I commend the students for the amount of time they devoted to working through them.  Not everyone arrived at a solution for each problem, but it was clear to me that everyone had taken time to really think through possible approaches and answers.  It is very valuable for the students to deeply engage in the thinking process, even if they do not obtain a solution to the problem.  It is also important for them to articulate what approaches/strategies they tried and what process led to a solution for each problem.  

Some important observations the students made on thinking processes this week include the following:  the
solution to problem 1 (bacteria) becomes simple and obvious once you realize it is a problem of doubling - the initial amount of bateria in the cup is irrelevant, although students felt at first that it must somehow be important to the solution; problem 2 sounds impossible and confounding, until we have the realization that we need as much time to pass as possible between the uttering of the sentence and Peter's next birthday - then we can easily solve it by visualizing a calendar; problem 3 requires the most divergent thinking, as we must conceive that circles could be drawn on both sides of the paper (and the class even came up with several other plausible answers!); problem 4 (the magic square) requires the process of elimination and several iterations to arrive at the solution.

I provided the students with three new problems to work on at home this week.  These are similar to last weeks problems - tricky but fun!  Read them over carefully and take your time thinking them through.  I look forward to hearing your solutions and thought processes on Monday!

In class this week students eagerly shared their thoughts on the first few chapters of the novel.  We enjoyed discussing all the humorous and challenging obstacles Shirley faced when she first came to America and began life at her new school.  We talked briefly about what it means to be an “ambassador” and in what ways Shirley is an ambassador for China.   All students had a chance to read aloud the answers to their homework journaling questions from last week, and we learned a bit more about each other as everyone explained the new name they would choose to represent themselves - just as Bandit did before she left for America.

Students then split into two teams (The Jackie Robinsons and The Three Cousins), determined their line-up, and played a rousing game of “Vocabulary Baseball”.  Each player up to bat
was “pitched” one of the week’s vocabulary words in various forms (definition, sentence/context, synonym), with a correct answer resulting in a base hit.  The list of words was long and challenging and I was very impressed with the obvious time the students had spent familiarizing themselves with the meanings.  We had many hits and several exciting instances of bases loaded, but no runs scored…yet. We look forward to continuing the game next week, with new words!

Next week in class we will begin creating a Character Collage, or visual representation, of Shirley.  Students should bring to class several items to add to the collage.  These may include pictures, drawings, maps, words, fabric/material, or most anything that can be added to our poster board to illustrate the setting of the story, Shirley’s personality, challenges, and activities in the story.

Everyone seemed comfortable with the amount of reading (three chapters) assigned last week.  This week we will aim for reading the next four (April – July).  I provided the students with a homework handout with new vocabulary words to learn and a journal question to write about.  Also, please have them continue to fill in Event/Changes log for each chapter/month and record Shirley’s progression through the novel.  

Happy Reading! See you next Monday!

This week, our CTC I group (ages 8-10) spent time wondering about "strange statements!"

Some of the areas covered were statement analysis, syllogisms and paradoxes.

We ended the day playing with some brain teasers. Your child was sent home with a list of twelve "problems" -- we answered eight problems in class. Please have your student play with possible answers for numbers nine through twelve. We will reveal suggested answers for these problems on Monday!

Along these lines, you may want to check out the following LINK. The web-site lists 99 different optical illusions -- children often have fun with these. If time is limited, I recommend playing with this illusion. This is one that a student could easily play with on his own, although you may need to read through the instructions one time with your child.

I would like the students to connect our last class to optical illusions, in other words, they should consider what do optical illusions and some of the "strange statements" we made on Monday have in common? I will ask them next week if they have come to any conclusions!

Next week, we will be playing with pentominoes (see above) for most of the class. If any student has extensive experience with solving pentomino problems -- please let me know!

Today brought another action-packed and information-filled class. The real work is now beginning, so it's critical that your students be on top of their homework assignments, as all of it relates to the eventual distribution of our first issue on November 12th.

Today's topics were; headline creation, the inverted pyramid style of writing, the criteria for selecting a newsworthy story, what purposes do publications serve, and developing interviewing skills.

In one activity, the students were asked to pull a random item from their lunch boxes or backpacks and interview that item using only open-ended questions. Creating open-ended vs. close-ended questions proved to be more challenging than we thought, but in the end, the students came up with some really creative queries!

Next week, the students will be interviewing a special guest! We are honored to be hosting a visiting relative of one of our students whose resume includes; professional staff writer for a weekly community newspaper in California, time as the managing editor for a company that publishes community magazines, and independent freelance writer/editor. She also publishes a quarterly literary arts journal. Our guest will be speaking about her experiences in writing and publishing, after which, each student will ask an open-ended interview question. This interview may be published in our first issue of The Mosaic Monthly!

Here are the items your students need to be working on this week:

• We need EVERYONE to design a "tile" that represents the area they are covering for the paper. Above is a sample tile from our photography and arts editor. It can be designed on the computer, or hand-drawn, but if hand-drawn, it will need to be scanned and turned into a digital file. If you don't have a scanner, just turn the artwork in to me, and we will get it scanned for you. The tiles will make up the background of our newspaper "flag." Please email them to me this week.
• Using either the newspaper you purchased or an on-line publication, choose one article to see if it follows the inverted pyramid style of writing (students should have this in their notes, but it is illustrated below). List who, what, where, when, why, and how and tell in what order these facts occur. It would be acceptable to simply create a list numbered 1-6 and place the 5 W's and H in the order they appear in the article.
• Fill in the Reporter's Notebook worksheet (Writing News Stories). Use the worksheet as an outline or rough draft and please have your student type the final piece, if possible. The news story can be on any subject, but should be realistic, not fantasy, and follow the inverted pyramid style of writing. It should have a lead paragraph and two or more supporting paragraphs.