What Is Understanding?

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What is understanding? How do we acquire it? How do we recognize it, assess for it, and teach for it? Why should we care about it? What is the consequence of not teaching for understanding? These questions were explored last week, through activity, media, reflection and discussion, serving as an important frame of reference for the remainder of the school year. It is very important that we establish a conceptual vocabulary for understanding now, and return to the topic often. PYP units are designed around understanding goals; it is an understanding-based framework. Enduring understanding is our aim, by design.

For further commentaries on understanding, check out these blog entries:

What is understanding?

Multiple points of entry

Trolling for misconceptions

We Lost Her Head! Plot Analysis of Gary Soto's "Barbie"

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We have begun guided reading and literature response in class this week with two short stories from Gary Soto's Baseball in April. Photos above show students working in table groups to analyze the short story "Barbie" according to it's plot elements, as explained below:

The plot is how the author arranges events to develop his basic idea. It is the sequence of events in a story or play. The plot is a planned, logical series of events having a beginning, middle, and end. The short story usually has one plot so it can be read in one sitting. There are five essential parts of plot: 


a) Introduction - The beginning of the story where the characters and the setting is revealed.

b) Rising Action - This is where the events in the story become complicated and the conflict in the story is revealed (events between the introduction and climax).

c) Climax - This is the highest point of interest and the turning point of the story. The reader wonders what will happen next; will the conflict be resolved or not?

d) Falling action - The events and complications begin to resolve themselves. The reader knows what has happened next and if the conflict was resolved or not (events between climax and denouement).

e) Denouement - This is the final outcome or untangling of events in the story.

Where In The World?

Who's visiting Because of Time - ISM?

Check out View Stats feature of the blog. Click on it, and you will be taken to a menu of options, two of which are of particular interest: Recent Visitor Activity (which provides a list of recent visitors) and Recent Visitor Map (which plots visitor locations on a world map).

The world map reveals that some of my former students and families are checking us out from Senegal! It's a small world.

Grades 5/8 Collaboration2: Brainstorming Community Service Projects

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Mr. Hofsteen's 8th grade homeroom joined us for a second time on Friday with the intent of brainstorming candidate community service projects that we might together take on. Next week we will invite a panel of community leaders in to help us think outside the box -- beyond car washes, bake sales, and litter pick-up. How might we engage ourselves in the community, to the direct benefit of our neighbors?

A Final Thinking Routine

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Having practiced a series of thinking routines over the past three weeks, table groups were assigned to apply the four-step routine to an unknown object, all artifacts collected in Senegal. The activity was peer-assessed for active engagement on a five-point scale.