Dear friends,
We are happy to welcome two new additions to the seventh grade! They are not students, but rather two young Silkie chickens. Their names are "Squeakers" and "Chicken Little Bilbo." They have been a nice outlet for those students (of all ages) who are drawn to animals.
In our main lesson block, we have been entering the beautiful world of geometry. Beauty in number relationships such as "Phi" or the "Golden Ratio" have brought about an active time of exploration and learning. We have been recognising these proportions in artistic design, construction, nature and the human form. The drawings in the middle school building will show you the fruits of this ability to compose a drawing that has a working understanding of proportion. They actually look like people! We were reminded of our attempts and frustrations of drawing people a year or two ago. Now they have shown that they can observe, think and have the skill to render a beautiful work of art.
This ability to pay attention has carried over into our constructions with tools such as a compass and a straight edge. We are practicing precision as we create difficult forms such as a golden spiral from a pentagon and five pointed star. The class will have a project to allow for personal interest to enter into their understanding of these relationships of numbers and nature. They will create something inspired by the Fibonacci Sequence or the Golden Ratio and do a short writing to highlight the concepts they are working with.
Ratios are also a big theme of the year in math and we are working with these ideas and then grounding the concepts in practice problems and projects. The class observed three different rectangles with various height-width ratios. With out knowing it, the class agreed upon the golden ratio rectangle as having a more harmonious construction. They were able to have a lengthy and descriptive discussion about something as "simple" as three rectangles. The class saw different personalities and potentials for these shapes. To follow up on this lively thinking, we are going to create and write about three human characters who echo these differing geometric make-ups. They will then think of a situation where all the characters will have drastically different perspectives of the same event. They will exercise their ability to see life from different vantage points and have to think flexibly. This is relating to the back and forth that we all experience between the subjective and objective nature of phenomena.
I want to thank you for the conversation in the parent teacher conferences. I am constantly amazed by how much I learn about the students through this form of meeting. I also met individually with the students to let them know all the positive things we talked about in the conferences. We revisited the goals that were set in the beginning of the year and what needs to be worked on. Feel free to ask them about this. Above all, I reminded the students that I see them as humans and that I see them doing good deeds in the future as their generation inherits the responsibility of the future of this planet. We are in good hands.
