Connolly Crew News

Hey Crew! We have crossed the half way mark! Please look for progress reports on Friday. Here is an update on what’s going on in Connolly Crew…

Expedition

We have kicked-off our History Expedition, What the Bleep do We Know!? with a scavenger hunt through downtown Truckee. Students visited Truckee’s first dwelling, its first ski lift, and other places of historical significance. Everything is within walking distance; it might be fun to ask your son or daughter to show you where they went!

During this expedition students will continue to visit and reflect upon the essential question: How does perspective impact the interpretation of historical events? As we sift through America’s

history from the forming of our nation to WWI, students will analyze history through multiple perspectives; hence the title of our expedition. What do we know and where do we get our information? Our first Case Study, Rebel, Rebel, will take us from the first colonies to Jacksonian Democracy. I have scheduled our trip to San Francisco for April 15 – 17. We will be visiting Angel Island, Chinatown, the Cartoon Museum, and are volunteering our time at Glide Memorial Church. Please contact Marcy Thompson if you are interested in chaperoning.

Math

The students are wrapping up Chapter 7 where they learned how to use scatterplots to find the relationship between two different measurements for a set of objects. They identified associations between sets of data and represented the relationship with a trend line, found the slope of a line given its equation, its graph or two points on a line, and they found the equation of a trend line to fit linear data.

Reading/Literature

With our new expedition comes new reading. We are finished with science fiction, and are moving on to historical fiction and autobiography. Our first all-class read, Follow the River, tells the true story of Mary Ingalls, who was kidnapped by the Shawnee Indians in 1755. She escaped and followed the Ohio River back to her settlement after walking 800 miles. It is a powerful, and sometimes violent, story of a women’s determination to survive. We will be using this book to talk about perspective, stereotype, and courage. We will also be analyzing literary elements such as foreshadowing, perspective, style, mood, and others.

Writing

We have been working on honing our “on-demand” writing skills. This is a very hard, and sometimes frustrating skill to master. Our next writing assignment will have the students analyzing, from five different perspectives, Columbus’ expedition in 1492 and its results.

Students will also be analyzing political cartoons throughout this expedition and they will be required to create their own. These cartoons will incorporate writing pieces as explanations and to provide evidence on claims.

Who Am I?

Our Who Am I expedition is off to a great start. Because we are learning about advocacy and community, the students are drafting a proposal for SELS school improvements to be presented to our board of directors on March 2. They have identified needs and polled SELS’ students. After we whittle down the options, students will be drafting proposals and creating short presentations. The two groups with the best and most polished presentations will attend the board meeting that Monday night in March to present their proposals.

Upcoming Fieldwork