Welcome to 9-A!

The last day of school before Winter Break was full of holiday fun! First we revealed our Secret Snowflakes and exchanged gifts. Then we had a Holiday Sing Along. Lastly, the girls decorated gingerbread men at our holiday party. I don't know who had more fun, me or the girls!

We have quite a few budding songwriters and thespians in 9-A. A few of the girls started changing the words to Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me" at lunch one day. They came up with a very creative and silly song that they have titled "You Belong With Chicken." Within two days, every student in 9-A (And a few from 9-B) knew the lyrics. They wanted to share their song with family and friends so I agreed to put it on the blog. Enjoy!

In history we are learning about many inventions that originated in Ancient China. One of the most important items that the Ancient Chinese invented is paper. Yesterday Mr. Howe came in to teach the 9-A girls how to make paper. First the girls tore up pieces of yellow and blue paper. Then they put the paper scraps into a blender with lots of water and made a think pulp. Finally, the girls dipped a framed screen into the pulp mixture The rectangles of pulp sat on the radiator to dry overnight. Now the girls each have a beautiful sheet of blue, yellow, and green swirled paper!

Recently the Ninth Age took a field trip to the Walters Museum of Art. The girls enjoyed a tour of the Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome exhibits before venturing down to the studio to create some art of their own.

9-A and 9-B went outside again for some grammar fun! This time the girls applied their knowledge of helping verbs. They teamed up in groups of five and one girl from each team took a turn running across the blacktop and pulling a card with a verb written on it from a bag. If it was a helping verb she chose to either run back to her teammates and putting the verb in the "bank" or to choose a second card. She could continue to chose as many cards as she wanted, but if she chose a verb that was not a helping verb she had to put all of her cards back in the bag and run back to her team empty handed. The first team to bank twenty helping verbs won! The girls enjoyed the elements of strategy and risk involved in deciding how many cards to pick before banking them to avoid loosing them.

9-A had a blast celebrating Halloween in school on Friday!!

Recently, 9-A and 9-B partnered up and took our grammar lesson outside. We have been discussing verbs so we blayed a game to help us identify being verbs. Each girl spread out in a large circle and began walking. Each time she passed me she drew a slip of paper with a verb written on it out of a bag. If she selected an action verb, she acted it out as she continued around the circle. If she selected a being verb, she was banished to the Pit of Being in the center of the circle. There, she would chant, "Am, is, are, was, were, been, I'm stuck in the pit of being!" over and over until someone drew a slip of paper that said FREE THE PIT or until someone else drew the same being verb and took her place in the Pit. As you can imagine, this game was complicated but tons of fun!

The girls had a blast participating in a Greek fashion show on Monday! They dressed up as gods and goddesses including Zeus, Hera, Apollo, and more. Below are pictures and video of the event. Unfortunately, not everyone’s video turned out, but I included as many as I could!

The girls of 9-A got quite a treat this afternoon. One of the student’s grandmothers wrote a book called Teddy and Tommy about two young Least Terns who were born in a sand dune in the summer of 2009. Not only did our guest write the book, she also took the photographs that are used as illustrations. The girls learned a lot about terns and other kinds of beach wildlife. We even got a picture of Teddy and Tommy Tern in their Calvert baseball hats to hang in our classroom!

Here are more students reading about the creatures under their beds!

A recent composition was titled “The Creatures Under My Bed.” The girls appreciated the opportunity to do some creative writing, and they produced some amazing stories. Below are videos of some of the girls reading their compositions. The rest will be posted next week!

Thursdays in my reading class are known as “Theater Thursdays” because we begin each class with a short reader’s theater or partner poem. This week, the students took turns performing "The Grump" for their class. Here are a few videos for you to enjoy!

The 9th Age girls teamed up with the 6th Grade girls for a huge game of capture the flag during PE class on Monday. What an exciting way for our girls to spend time with the “big girls!”

As a part of our study of Ancient Egypt, the girls had the opportunity to write their names in hieroglyphics on real papyrus paper. As you can see in the slide show, they did a fantastic job and the finished products are beautiful!

We had a very special assembly yesterday. The entire Lower School had the opportunity to watch a broadcast from the studio of author/illustrator Mo Willems. Furthermore, Mrs. Thomas was invited to call and suggest a book title. She selected one submitted by a 9th Age boy called Who Ate My Cookie? Amazingly, Mr. Willems chose Calvert’s submission as his favorite and actually sketched a cover for the book complete with credit to Calvert students! The students were excited and so proud of their school. I am not allowed to post pictures or audio of the broadcast, but you can check out Mo’s blog by clicking here. He has a recap of the simulcast, and he has even found and linked to Mr. Howe’s blog which has a short video clip of the students’ reaction to their idea being chosen. Enjoy!

The title of this week’s composition is The Creatures Under My Bed. The girls are very excited to write such a creative essay. Yesterday we made a word bank. The girls brainstormed some ideas and words that they could use in their compositions. Click here to see some of the words/ideas that they came up with. I can’t wait to read these compositions!!

Recently we have been studying pyramids in 9-A. We read about them in history and wrote a composition on the Great Pyramid. The whole 9th Age even got together in the auditorium to watch a National Geographic special about Egypt’s pyramids. Just when we thought our pyramid study was coming to an end, Mr. Howe arrived with a special treat. He gave each girl an actual piece of the Great Pyramid! As you can see from the pictures below, the girls were shocked very excited. Thanks Mr. Howe!

Today in Grammar we discussed the difference between common and proper nouns. The girls then tested their understanding by playing Noun Charades. A student chose a noun from a bag, told her team whether it was a common or proper noun and whether it was a person, place, thing, or idea. She then acted out the noun and her teammates tried to guess what it was. Enjoy these video highlights of the game!

We have been studying Ancient Egypt this week in history. As part of our study, the girls have been labeling and coloring a map of Ancient Egypt. Here are pictures of a few girls hard at work.

On Thursday, a 9-A student brought in a chrysalis containing a monarch butterfly. The chrysalis was an opaque green color. Unfortunately, I did not get a picture of the chrysalis in that stage. By Friday morning, the chrysalis had become completely clear (See picture below) and I knew the butterfly would soon emerge.

Sure enough, at the beginning of my second reading class a student glanced at the chrysalis and noticed that the butterfly’s wings were beginning to emerge. Within about 20 seconds (The time it took me to grab the camera and turn it on) the butterfly had emerged completely and began moving about the habitat.

By the end of reading class, the butterfly had made its way to the top of the cage and was completely still. It stayed on this leaf for the rest of the school day, waiting for its wings to dry.

We have been using the laptop cart in Reading! Earlier this week we read Akiak by Robert Blake. The story is about a sled dog who is running in her seventh Iditarod! The girls and boys have been researching sled dog racing on the Scholastic website in preparation for writing a persuasive essay on the morality of sled dog racing. They were quick to point out that while sled dog racing provides dogs with an opportunity for exercise, dogs can also suffer injuries when running such far distances. They have enjoyed discussing both sides of the argument. Today, the students became pros at navigating the Scholastic website as well as a PowerPoint presentation with embedded hyperlinks. They even learned how to switch back and forth between the PowerPoint and the webpage! The students enjoyed using technology very much and I will be sure to incorporate the laptop cart into future reading lessons!

Yesterday the entire Ninth Age went out on the blacktop to test our cave tools. After taking a few group pictures, the girls got a chance to use their cave tools to break ice cubes. What fun!!

Above are the 9-A riddles of the week. A few astute girls have already figured out the purple and blue ones! Check out the picture, think about it, and talk with your family about it over dinner…But remember, “Google-ing” is cheating =)

Today the girls learned about the four kinds of sentences. They learned that a telling sentence makes a statement and ends with a period, an asking sentence asks a question and ends with a question mark, an exclamatory sentence shows strong feeling and ends with an exclamation point, and a request/command sentence tells someone to do something and ends with a period. After reviewing the four types of sentences, the girls were each assigned to write a certain kind of sentence on a small piece of paper. They then crumpled up their paper and threw it towards my pink chair in the front of the room. After everyone threw her paper, the girls came forward and chose a ball of crumpled paper. They read the sentence and proceeded to the corner of the room that was labeled with the type of sentence that they were holding. Once everyone was in a corner, the girls read their sentences aloud. The video below illustrates the organized chaos that ensued.

We have been studying cave people in history. This week, the girls were asked to bring in a stick no longer than their arms and a rock no bigger than their fists. The only information I gave them was that they would use these objects to make cave tools. Today they used about 4 feet of twine to attach the rock to the stick. Many girls thought that this would be easy, only to find that twenty minutes later they still had only a rock, a stick, and a piece of twine. Eventually, with some teamwork, each girl ended up with her very own cave tool. See the slide show below for highlights of the process. Check back next week for pictures of the girls testing out their cave tools!

A few parents asked for more information about the books and article that Mr. Martire mentioned during the general session at Parents’ Night. I have read all three and would strongly recommend them to all parents. In addition, the author of Girls Will be Girls (click here for more info), JoAnn Deak, spoke to the faculty before the school year started. I can honestly say that it was the best professional development session I have ever attended. She compared children’s brains to a pile of rubber bands. All children are born with different sized rubber bands. For example, one child may have a long, stretchy “math” rubber band and a shorter “musical” rubber band, while another may have a long, stretchy “spelling” rubber band and a shorter “math” rubber band. The longer the rubber band, the more easily that skill is learned and mastered. The shorter the rubber band, the more work it takes to develop proficiency in that area. It is important for children to know that THEY CANNOT CONTROL THE SIZE OF THE RUBBER BANDS THEY WERE BORN WITH but that THE CAN CONTROL WHAT THEY DO TO INCREASE THE SIZE AND STRETCH OF ALL OF THEIR RUBBER BANDS. Hard work can stretch the size of a small rubber band until it becomes a medium rubber band, or even a big one.
This idea runs along the same lines as the article by Carol Dweck. She stresses that telling children they are smart can actually be detrimental to the learning process. When these children encounter something that is hard, they tend to give up instead of persevering. Instead, teachers and parents should praise children for how hard they work. This kind of praise motivates children to work even harder. When they encounter something that is hard for them, they are more likely to keep at it until they succeed.
The other book, Boys Adrift by Leonard Sax, focuses on “the five factors driving the growing epidemic of unmotivated boys and underachieving young men.” If you have a son, this book is a must-read.

Today we had our first grammar lesson of the year. We discussed the qualities of a complete sentence and I introduced the terms subject and predicate to the girls. They learned that a subject tells whom or what the sentence is about and a predicate tells what the subject is or does. Then each girl received an index card with either a subject or a predicate on it. The class walked around the room reading the cards to each other until each child found a match that completed her sentence in a way that made sense. Below is a video of the pairs reading their complete sentences. Be sure to turn your volume up; we have some quiet speakers in 9-A!

On the first day of school, the girls posed for pictures. I used those pictures to create a silhouette of each child. The girls were very good at identifying their classmates. Can YOU tell who is who??