Hey, teachers, see what a 16 year old wrote to the NYT...

Educators, take a close look at this article in the NYT:

                                   Those Standardized Tests

To the Editor:

When I read “Rallying Cry in Anti-Test Movement: ‘Opt Out’ ” (front page, May 21), I found myself nodding my head repeatedly. As a high school student, I have seen firsthand that standardized tests don’t test true understanding.

Filling in bubbles does not test critical thinking, problem solving, decision-making and other skills necessary for students to develop their minds. Rather, it only tests if students know how to solve a particular style of problems that may or may not translate into real-world skills.

Numbers and statistics cannot hope to measure or define something as complex as a human being. By focusing on increasing test scores, educators are missing the point.

Learning is a natural process fueled by curiosity and discovery, not by the threat of failing or losing district funding. After all, what inspired great minds like Newton, Galileo and Einstein? Educators need to focus on instilling curiosity in students and igniting a spark that makes students want to learn. When we grow up and look for a job, what will matter more — our dedication to learning or how many bubbles we filled in correctly?

NIKHIL JAIN, 15

Middlesex County Academy for Science, Math and Engineering Technologies, 10th grade

Edison, N.J.

Good, good, good for you, Nikhil.
I SO hope you become a teacher............you'll be dead good at it!!

My dearest childhood friend...........Richard Hendry ......May 13th 1942 - May 28th 2015

RICHARD HENDRY On the right, back row........

May 13th 1942 - May 28th, 2015

I lost my dearest childhood friend, Dick Hendry, yesterday.

Friend, confidante, inspiration, soul-mate.......

Bless his cotton socks.

Quiet, thoughtful. kind, considerate, incredibly bright.............Richard had the BEST backhand on the tennis court...........the brightest brain in school..........................the widest smile .......and, always, the kindest words.........

Hey, hey, Dick...........I'll miss you.........and I'll carry YOUR wishing rock in YOUR OXO tin today - and every day............

See you later.

John

WOW!!!!!

In today's NYT              May 26th 2015

Bobby Scotto, a fourth grader at the Children’s Workshop School on 12th Street in the East Village, wants to be an archaeologist when he grows up, and he is already off to a good start. In the past few months he has excavated dozens of old coins, a toy watch and other artifacts, all from an unlikely dig site: his classroom’s closet.

Bobby, an earnest 10-year-old with a mop of dark hair and saucerlike brown eyes, was bitten by the archaeology bug four or five months ago, when his class read a book about a migrant farmworker who found old coins in a field. Bobby decided he wanted to collect old coins of his own, and he had noticed a small gap between the floorboards in the closet. So he reached into that gap as far as he could and, voilà, out came a bunch ofwheat pennies (minted from 1909 to 1958), a buffalo nickel and other treasures.

Bobby and his best friend in the class, Lizardo Lozada, soon began reaching farther underneath the floorboards with the help of simple tools — pencils, scissors, untwisted coat hangers. “At first the other kids were like, ‘What are you doing?’ ” Bobby said one recent afternoon while demonstrating his technique. “But then they saw we were finding old, cool stuff, so they started doing it and finding cool stuff, too. The fourth graders have unearthed old coins, ticket stubs, candy wrappers and a toy watch, among other items. And so began an improbable exercise in hands-on archaeology that soon attracted all 21 students in the class. “There’s something about the degree of difficulty that’s just perfect,” said the class’s teacher, Miriam Sicherman, 43, who has been teaching at the school for 15 years. “You can’t just reach in and grab something, but it is possible to get something. There’s just enough gratification.”

It is not clear exactly how the items ended up under the floorboards, or even when the floorboards themselves were installed. (They may not be original to the school, which was built in 1913.) But the variety of finds, including candy wrappers, ticket stubs, an old baseball card and a 1921 Red Cross service pin, has made the students more curious about the previous occupants of their classroom, and about history in general. The school has considered enlisting the custodial staff to remove some of the closet floorboards, which would provide easier access to whatever is still beneath them.

“Lately we’ve been studying Ellis Island,” Ms. Sicherman said. “And I explained to them how these things they’ve found could have been left by kids who’d been through Ellis Island. That makes it much more vivid for them.”

Along the way, the students have also become adept at research (when they find something, they try to learn more about it on the web); cataloging (each object is logged on a sheet that Ms. Sicherman helped the students design); preservation (the artifacts are kept in plastic bags); and documentation (Ms. Sicherman posts photos of the artifacts on an Instagram account). And as their excavations began to yield diminishing returns, they sought out new dig sites, receiving permission to explore

Some of the items the children have uncovered tie in directly with American history. One of Bobby’s finds was a gray penny from 1943. As he soon learned, that was the year that pennies were made from steel because of wartime copper shortages. Other finds offer intriguing glimpses into the school’s past incarnation as Public School 61, such as a tattered sheet of paper that appears to have been an assignment completed by Jane — or perhaps Janet — Capasso, a student in the 1940s.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the project is Ms. Sicherman’s support for it. Would most teachers let their students dig under old, dirty floorboards?  “Honestly, that never occurred to me, although maybe it should have,” she said. “History is my favorite thing to teach, and I always want to do stuff that’s not the standard curriculum. So I definitely hope it inspires an interest in history, but I hope it also makes them realize the world is full of interesting information waiting to be discovered.”

Ms. Sicherman has arranged for a professional archaeologist to visit the class, and there are plans for the artifacts to be displayed in some sort of exhibition, perhaps in the school’s library. The principal, Maria Velez-Clarke, said she had considered enlisting the custodial staff to remove some of the closet floorboards, which would provide easier access to whatever is still beneath them.

Not everyone likes that idea. “That might be a little too easy,” Bobby said. “We’d find something every five seconds.” Other students expressed similar reservations. The thrill of the hunt is apparently a big part of the project’s appeal.

That is not to say that Bobby is opposed to taking the hunt to the next level. He has asked his uncle, Robert Silver, for a metal detector. “But I told him it’s very expensive,” Mr. Silver said, “so he’ll have to wait until Christmas.”

Well.......WHAT a weekend!

Rain throughout each evening, a little sunshine in the day.......and the gardens are looking great!
It's been quite a weekend for our companions, too.

I've collected 48 little worms from the puddles and put them in the Worm Hotel (the compost heap), 8 gorgeous slimy slugs, saved a sweet bunny from Fiona who said she was 'only playing, Dad,' had a beautiful pheasant in the front garden, seen two golden orioles...............WOW!

Take a look:

DID NOT see the trapdoor spider, though!! Disappointing....

The pocket museum magic!!

My wishing rock - glued in my first-ever pocket museum, July 14, 1947

Sharing my 1947 wishing rock in a pocket museum story with kids and adults worked again at another one of my I'm a scientist classes!



We had planned on a young scientist walk in the wilds .........but it rained and rained first thing in the morning, so I took in some resources (tins, felt, small pieces of petrified wood, a jar full of ammonites, a few of my grandfather's clay marbles, glue, scissors, pens, a full copy of The NYT, etc) and set them out on a table. When the class came in, the young scientists sat around me and I slowly opened my wishing rock pocket museum and told them about my birthday treat when I was five -  a trip to the beach. where I found the wishing rock and a beautiful piece of amber:

They were wide eyes. I had their curiosity in the palm of my hand!! :)



Lowering g my voice, I reached behind me and showed the young scientists some more of my pocket museums (especially the one with the tarantula exoskeleton and the tube of green blood!).

I then made a pocket museum, gluing in place two of the ammonites on the table, and, hey, over the next two hours  the young scientists made some really good pocket museums for themselves, all dated with today's date from the NYT!

Collecting moondust from sand I collected from
the Cherry Creek stream bed.....

This 4 year old scientist made THE pocket museum. "Can I keep it forever, John Paull scientist? Go on....can I?

'LOOK, look, at this, my pocket museum! Look, Mr. Paull!'

Everyone had at least one pocket museum to take home with them.

Do YOU fancy making a pocket museum?
GO on - it's dead easy - and.......you can keep it FOREVER!

All you need is a tin (the older, the better), a piece of felt, a tube of glue, and an artifact.......

If you don't have an old tin (I have a collection of OXO tins saved from when I was a kid or bought on Ebay!!)  cover candy tins with pictures or rust them before use......

 

Glue the artifact in place......

Add the date, and save...FOREVER

Cigar boxes are dead good, too.........

IF you do this with young children, CAPTURE the MOMENT of excitement - FOREVER!!
How?
Easy............
All you need is a bottle..........................:)

Here's the story....:)

CAPTURE the MOMENT – FOREVER!

From a teacher’s diary: 1966

After a wonderful but windy afternoon walk around the woodland near Blaby Stokes school, looking for something really good to add to our nature table, my class of ten and eleven year olds began to talk about the afternoon’s experiences.

Dianne said how much she enjoyed the walk in the long grass around the trees. 

“Everything was beautiful, Mr. Paull…………….everything smelled dead good. Did you hear the wind? It was making a scary, howling noise and it made the leaves on the trees shake.” Then she added, wistfully, “Pity we can’t bring back the smells and the sounds of nature and put them on our nature table.” Then she thought for a minute……. “How could we do that, Mr. Paull? That'll be dead good!"

That made me think. And think.........and think again. I couldn’t get the question out of my head, and, that night, when washing out my milk bottle, I had an idea. If you half fill a bottle with water, then turn the bottle upside down, the water rushes out, yes? For a split second there’s nothing in the bottle. 

We know, don’t we, that nature abhors a vacuum, so the outside air rushes in and fills the bottle.

The air carries the smells and sounds ……….doesn’t it? 

The next time we went for a nature walk, I took a bottle half filled with water. When we reached the tall grass and trees, I gathered my class around me, waved the bottle then turned it upside down. The water gushed out. As soon as the last drop ran out of the bottle, air rushed in, filling the vacuum. I immediately pushed in the cork.

“Look,” I said, “Inside this bottle……..we have captured the sounds and the smells of nature………forever.” 

Dianne was particularly excited. “Hey, you did it, Mr. Paull! That’s so great!” When we got back to our classroom, I stuck a label on the bottle:

June 8^th 1966

This bottle holds the smells and sounds of the flowers

and the trees around our school.

And that started something!! 

The kids were fascinated, excited that we had caught THEM as well as the sounds and smells of nature and stored THEIR energy, sound and emotion in a bottle. And there it remains to this day…………

From then on, every time things were really humming in the classroom, I filled a bottle with all of the energy, sound, wit and wisdom of my children, labeled it and displayed it on a shelf that was looked after by Dianne.

John Paull.

See what I found today......

SLUGS

One worm and three slippery slugs.........

I found three slugs this morning - the day of my citizenship pledge of allegiance - when I was out saving several worms from drowning in pools of rainwater.

I placed them (the slugs and the worms) in my compost bin and then did some research. I wanted to know if the slugs were they the same species as we get in England. Were they?

This is what I discovered.

§  Only 5% of the slug pop­u­la­tion is above ground at any one time. The oth­er 95% is un­der­ground di­gest­ing your seed­lings, lay­ing eggs, and feed­ing on roots and seed sprouts.

§  A slug’s blood is green.

§  Most slugs eat rot­ting ve­get­a­tion, but a few are car­ni­vor­ous.

§  Slugs do play an im­port­ant role in eco­logy by eat­ing de­com­pos­ing ve­get­a­tion.

§  A slug lays 20-100 eggs sev­er­al times a year.

§  Slug eggs can lay dormant in the soil for years and then hatch when con­di­tions are right.

§  Gast­ro­pods form the second largest class in the an­im­al king­dom, the largest be­ing the in­sects.

§  Slugs are herm­aph­rod­ite, hav­ing both male and fe­male re­pro­duct­ive or­gans.

§  Slugs have been present since the end of the last ice age.

§  A slug can live for up to 6 years.

§  A slug is ba­sic­ally a mus­cu­lar foot, and the name ‘gast­ro­pod’ lit­er­ally means stom­ach foot.

§  Un­like snails that hi­bern­ate dur­ing winter, slugs are act­ive whenev­er the tem­per­at­ure is above 5°C.

§  A slug is es­sen­tially a snail without a shell.

§  Slugs used to live in the ocean, which is why they still need to keep moist.

§  One in­di­vidu­al field slug has the po­ten­tial to pro­duce about 90,000 grand­chil­dren.

§  It’s been es­tim­ated that an acre of farm­land may sup­port over 250,000 slugs.

§  Re­search has shown that the av­er­age well-watered garden has a pop­u­la­tion of over 20,000 slugs and snails.
YEP! Same species as we get in the UK. Bet we brought them over...........

WOW!! Welcome, slugs, to my compost tub, hotel to scores of worms!