I Think, Therefore I.....Ah.....I Forget

This week's work included ongoing progress in the Place Out of Time simulation. The U of M facilitators assigned identities to our kids, ranging from Dian Fossey to Eva Peron to Richard Dawkins. It's a rich and original collection. The next step is for the kids to build on their character request essays and write extensive autobiographies, which are called 'resumes' in the lingo of the program. We also read our way into Act III of Twelfth Night, a highlight of our days. We returned to the classroom constitution activity. Each student selected an element of the proposed constitution about which they were particularly passionate and argued the case to the rest of the group. Next up: the art of compromise.

Math tasks for the pre-algebra students featured the continuation of work on scientific notation and exponents, the latter moving into the realm of negatives. Ed Feng came in as usual to work with the kids on probability and statistics. Algebra students carried on their work with the slope-intercept form, part of which you will remember as 'rise over run'. They also had a lesson on Rene Descartes and the origin of the Cartesian coordinate system.

In PE, we took advantage of the lousy weather to go over to County Farm Park--since the sky was grey and the air was cold, there was no one else on the playground. We played a game called 'fetch' and three invented ball games, then played soccer through the obstacles of playground equipment.