Week ending 09.19.25

Week ending 09.19.25

◼︎ “Roast is Toast!”

“Roasting” is now a thing of the past.

We kicked the day off with a discussion of how rough-and-tumble physical and/or verbal play can, in a nanosecond and without warning, turn into not-play, with those involved no longer enjoying the interactions, perhaps walking away feeling hurt.

Students easily grasped that sudden transition, and equally easily identified what moved the game from “play” to “not play”: getting overly excited (as in having “too much fun”), saying something you didn’t mean to say, in- and out-groups forming on the spur of the moments such that some participants felt ganged up on, etc.

Any 5G students who are thinking about anthropology — or any field dealing with cognition, group dynamics, etc. — are already insightful and well prepared!

We agreed that for all members of the class to feel valued and included, and for us all to create the kind of class community we all want, “Roast is Toast!”

Ms. Sakiko, our school counselor and mindfulness instructor, joined us for the discussion.

In addition to “Roast is Toast!” we started our random seating for our family-style lunches.

◼︎ Rocking a Math Assessment

In our Math rounds today we again looked at how test / assessment / exam questions might be posed, how to interpret a variety of question forms, and how to select the best answer even if you’re not 100% sure of things.

We learned that if, with compound 3D shapes, that if we are given the “base” and asked about how many “faces” there are, even though the base is a face, as it’s “given,” it’s not counted among the faces to be noted.
We learned that even if we’ve forgotten how to calculate the area of a parallelogram — and perhaps have forgotten what a parallelogram is — if the answer choices include one answer where multiplication is used, and two choices where addition and subtraction are used — we can choose the answer using multiplication because we (typically) use multiplication to calculate areas (as in area = length x width), not addition or subtraction.
We also learned to look carefully and check our immediate (unthinking) responses, as in, “Yes, at first glance it looks like a hexagon. But could the sides and… there are eight sides. It’s an octagon!”

We reviewed the first 5G level “Geometry, Measurement & Algebra” assessment, then took the second.

And just look how we did!

All 5G student scored either 15/16 or 16/16! Mistakes were careless mistakes, not a lack of understanding.

That said, some students still need the courage of their (math) convictions!

As for improvement:

This handy-dandy graphic says it all! Compare the number of correct answers out of 16 08/12/25 to the number of correct answers today. All colored lines have positive gradients!

And everyone is near the 90th percentile!

Now… to keep it up for the rest of the year! (The 5G assessments do get harder as the year progresses, as you’d expect!)

◼︎ The Olmec

Today we continued to learn about the Olmec. As always, our working pairs are randomly drawn.

All of our jaws dropped while watching the second, 1’30” video that well shows the size of the famous Olmec heads carved of stone. They are MASSIVE.

• Only about 1’30”!

Then to see the 80 km (50 miles) of rough terrain these heads were transported across inspired awe, and was likened to the feat of King Kamehameha’s men moving stones across the mountains to build the Pu’ukohala Heiau (which we visited in May).

◼︎ And…

No gold stars for guessing what our final discussion of the day was about!

**• No local twisters, tornados or hurricanes on Monday. No nearby earthquakes either.**

◼︎ Remarkable, Extremely So

It’s hard to believe, but students continue to score new PBs (personal bests) in (almost) each morning’s ten minutes of Extreme Writing.

As a writing community, we’ve now written over 50,000 words since we started Extreme Writing!

If we added that 50,000 to all the words we’ve written in our yellow exercise books…

we believe we’re realizing our, “We’ll write A LOT this year” goal!

◼︎ A Lot of Reading Too!

Another stretch goal for 5G has been 5, ideally 6 assigned books, books we read as a class.

As student can hardly put Holes down, we are nearly done with our first book!

It looks as though we’ll start our next class book before Fall Break.

We’re ahead of our “We’ll Read A LOT This Year” schedule.

◼︎ Math: Of Tests & Teaching

While “teaching to the test” results in narrow, shallow student understanding, using a test to teach — and learn from — is proving invaluable.

Today we tackled the fourth in the set of “5-2” math assessments, “Proficient Math Progress Monitoring.”

To get a sense of how rich it can be to review an assessment (5-1 in our case today) in preparation for taking the next assessment, today we reviewed and retaught as needed:

Order of operations (e.g., calculate what’s within parentheses first)
In math, what is a product?
In math, what is a sum?
How to “find a pattern” in a series of numbers
Understanding word problems, and remembering to “do” everything suggested by them (e.g., if there is a “base rate,” don’t forget to add it to a variable amount you just calculated)
Understanding the difference between 96 ÷ 3 and 3 ÷ 96 — and how each of those if formally written such that they can be calculated
Decimals and fractions (e.g., 9/10 — or 9 ÷ 10 — is the same as 0.9)
Reading a problem carefully (e.g., “Oh! It says ‘times 2’ at the bottom! I didn’t see that!”
The rules of rounding up and rounding down (which always need reinforcing!)
“About,” “estimate,” etc. ≠ exact! (See Rounding Rules above)
Taking care with multi-digit multiplication
Not being confused by a simple word problem that is, in essence 2 x 3/4 or 1.5
When not sure whether to multiply or divide to answer a word problem, looking at the 3 possible answers as a clue (i.e., if the 3 answers are “smaller” than given quantities, division is likely the best choice of operations)
3D objects: edges, faces, vertices
Calculating volume (and distinguishing volume from surface area)
Coordinates (x, y)
Acute, obtuse and right angles
And more!

Spending time firming up our understanding of the above is time well spent.

On this harder, 30 question assessment, everyone is at grade level and above!

Almost all the dropped questions were “silly mistakes” rather than indications the subject matter wasn’t understood.

Which is why we will do these from time time and reduce silly mistakes that mean we don’t show on a test / assessment / exam what we really do know and understand.

As for improvement:

Again, all line gradients are positive! We’re moving in the right direction!

◼︎ Random Seating at 5G Family-Style Lunch

Our Basket of Randomness chooses where each student sits, each day. It’s working well!

Today, a boy from an all-boy family got a sense of what getting surrounded by sisters might be like!

◼︎ Body Stillness & Mental Silence

Our random seating for academic work and for lunch appears to be changing where students choose to position themselves for our 10 minutes of “Body Stillness & Mental Silence.”

Today, nobody drifted off to the corners of the room, and nobody buried their head under a book shelf. We’ll see if the pattern continues!

◼︎ Innovation & Robotics

Our Innovation & Robotics collaboration with 6G continues!

6G students did a bang-up job today teaching 5G students how to build small, mobile robots and how to use block coding to get said robots to dance they want students wanted them to dance!

◼︎ Narrative Structure

After diving — rather successfully — into personal narratives, we twisted the kaleidoscope and dived into story fiction narrative this week.

Always helpful when writing a story: structure. Narrative structure.

Perhaps the most famous story structure in currency these days — and for a number of decades if not millennia — is the “Hero Cycle” made famous by Joseph Campbell in A Hero with A Thousand Faces.

The very first Star Wars film is a classic Hero Cycle story:

We begin in ordinary life, ordinary reality (= Luke Skywalker on Tatooine)
The hero (or heroine) receives a call to adventure (= R2D2 arrives with a message from Princess Leia)
The hero (or heroine) answers the call, crosses a boundary into a new reality, and may get help along the way (= Luke leaves home, meets Obi Wan Kenobi, and learns about The Force)
The hero (or heroine) goes on a journey (= Luke is pulled into the great galactic conflict)
The hero (or heroine) fights the dragon, finds the treasure, wins the princess, etc. (= Luke, unsing the Force, destroys the Death Star)
The return: The hero (or heroine) returns to ordinary time and space, transformed in some way.

Needless to say, this same structure underlies many of the Magic Tree House stories!

Enjoy a look see into our story-development process based on a simplified version of the Hero/ine Cycle:

◼︎ Religion

After learning of the class story of the man who invites all his friends to a feast, only to have all of them produce 101 excuses for why they cannot accept the invitation, Rev. Jenn has 5G imagine who they would invite to their feast.

Needless to say, family ranked high!

◼︎ We Finished Holes!

After chapel and Extreme Writing, 5G finished our first class book, Holes by Louis Sachar.

For those still in the dark, Holes won the prestigious John Newbery Medal and the National Book Award.

Holes was, undeniably, written for a younger person audience. That said, the two adults in 5G assure you the book is a marvelous read!

◼︎ Reading Aloud Narrative #3

Holes in bag, 5G was chomping at the bit to read their structured narratives based on the Hero/ine Cycle.

Enjoy a few minutes of that adventure:

Given 5G’s fascination with The Hero/ine’s Journey, we believe they will enjoy the next book selected for class attention!

◼︎ Service Field Trip to the Honolulu Zoo

We created papier-mâché containers that will, in time, contain food for a variety of zoo animals. Getting to the food will be cognitive stimulation for these animals.

Again, we thank Ms. Keiburtz and 6G for inviting us to join them.

Mahalo to Rev. Jenn and Mr. Gibson for driving 5G students.