Halloween!

You'd think the Alchemists would have just celebrated Halloween on Thursday but, noooo, we had a busy morning before we even got to partying.
We first visited Tacoma's Information Technology department where we were given lots of information about how the city uses technology from the  Director of Information Technology, Jack Kelanic, as well as a number of other department heads. We then went on a tour of the department and the Alchemists got to see servers, meet many members of the staff and ask lots of great questions. One Alchemist commented afterward, 'I thought I wanted to be a pediatrician but maybe now I want to work in technology.' We call that a successful field study.

 We then visited with Stacy, the director of the Tacoma farmer's markets, who told us how they organize the market, find vendors and handle the day to day running of the market. This information will be applied to a math project the Alchemist's are working on where they are designing a farmer's market.

After a very quick lunch, the Alchemist's hopped on the bus, came back to the LS and found the parents had put together a great Halloween party for them. A wonderful time was had by all!

The Galapagos Finches

The Alchemists are studying evolution and have begun looking at the work of Charles Darwin. Darwin first theorized that animals evolved by his observations of the finches on the Galapagos Islands. He noticed that even though the birds were isolated and non migratory they had developed numerous adaptations to find food on the islands.
The Alchemists measured the beak sizes of various finches then made models of the large and small beaks. Using their models they tried to "eat" large and small seeds to see which adaptation would be the most effective example of natural selection.

First School Store

After much anticipation and preparation the Alchemists had their first school store. They learned how to count money, make change, unit pricing, preparing receipts and the all important customer service. The Alchemists felt like it went really well and are excited to continue School Store through out the year to raise money for their trip to Nature Bridge.

Getting to Know Tacoma

The Alchemists continue learning about Tacoma and how a city works. They spent over an hour Thursday morning with the Director of Economic Development, Richardo Noguera, learning about the many new projects underway in Tacoma and how they impact the economy.

In the afternoon we went to the Police Headquarters and had a tour led by two of the officers. The Alchemists saw the holding cells, the evidence lockers and met a sergeant and got to look at his equipment. But the big excitement was going in the garage to see the armored vehicles, the SWAT Team's trucks and meet the team that runs the bomb robot. They got to try on the helmet the bomb team wears and look at the robot up close and ask many questions.

We have many field studies left to go including visits to MultiCare, meetings with the City Attorney and City Council members. We are learning so much!

Math!

The students are excited about getting into their math books.  We have 3 different math groups in the class.  Each group takes a pre-test at the beginning of the chapter and only completes lessons that each individual needs.  There are times when the different groups will be working together, while at other times, they will have separate lessons.  

During each lesson, students are asked to complete a set of problems on their individual white board to show understanding of a concept.  Once students have shown comprehension, they are asked to do problems in their math book.

But students are not just working in their math books this year.  They work weekly on math that relates to our overarching concept and science and social studies topics.  Examples of this include calculating electoral college votes and creating a timeline using scale.  

We are also working in groups to create a farmers' market.  Students have been working on their concept and thinking about the types of stores they want in their market.  This past week, they drew a rough draft of their market, keeping in mind the flow, design, and placement of shops.  They then drew a scale model of their market using graph paper.  In the coming weeks, students will research who in the city is in charge of the market and how much it costs to run a market.  

Fossils

The Alchemists have been learning about the different kinds of fossils and how fossils are formed. To model this they made trace, mold and cast fossils with Model Magic, toy dinosaurs and plaster. They then filled a milk carton with plaster and objects, let them dry and found how hard it can be to carefully excavate their "fossils" like a paleontologist.