Thank You!

Thank you all so much for the gift card! My new house in Winfield will be completed in late March, so I picked Crate and Barrel for my shopping spree. I am looking forward to picking out some new things for my new home. Have a wonderful Christmas everyone. I am very fortunate to spend my days with the amazing kids at Brookdale Elementary School. See you in January.

Thank you so much,

Mr. Schumann

 

PA and TD for the Week of 12-20

 TD kids will be having fun with alliteration this week as we explore the picture book Animalia by Graeme Base. This beautiful picture book explores the idea of alliteration, using the same letter sound at the beginning of a group of connected words, through the words and illustrations. Look at the pictures below and see how many images you can find that begin with the same letter. Teams of students will be making posters with a holiday twist.

3PA will have an opportunity to explore the projects classmates completed for the wrap-up of The Green Book. Shortly after we return from break, we will begin learning about Ancient Egypt. The kids will be exploring some of the links on this website that we will be using in 2022.

4PA will be watching the 1993 film version of the novel The Secret Garden. The group made this decision after watching the trailers of the 1949, 2020, and 1993 films and deciding which one looked like it stuck most closely with the original text. We will be discussing the film on Wednesday, with a focus on how well the film matched the original text. 

5PA will finish presenting TED talks on Monday, and on Tuesday, the kids will be picking a picture book to use for our Battle Bunny project that we will begin after break. 

PA and TD for the Week of 12-13

 K Math will be going on a shape hunt around the school this week. We will be learning about two-dimensional shapes and their properties. The kids will learn about vertices and sides, and we will be learning the names of some new shapes. 

K Lit students will continue our crayon theme this week with the picture book The Day the Crayons Came Home. Unlike last week, we won't begin by reading the story to start the week. Instead, the group will be writing Duncan post cards explaining the adventures that were had while on vacation and the ultimate reason why their crayon decided to come home, all before reading the book. Then, we will read the book and compare the adventures we came up with to the ideas in the story. 

1TD will be reading beginning chapter books that we are checking out from the LMC. These self-selected books will be used to identify and describe story elements. The group will also work on an oral book commercial to share with their friends. 

2TD will be exploring books written by the author of Frindle, Andrew Clements. The group will be reading and recording similarities to the book we just finished found in the new title. 

3PA will finish our work with The Green Book this week. The kids will be selecting two of three projects to develop in the time we have left before break. All three options are in Google Classroom. We will also be discussing the book, now that everyone is finished with the reading. What do the moth people look like???

4PA was given permission to finish The Secret Garden, and I encouraged everyone to bring the books home last week to read in the evenings and to take it over the weekend to read. Parents, please check in with your student to make sure they finish reading the book this week. While all the kids are at different places in the book, the class will be working on a few things at the same time. We need to finish character notes, finish the examples of figurative language, and develop discussion questions that we will use next week and after break. 

5PA has one more day to polish up their TED Talks because we will be presenting them in class beginning Tuesday. When we finish up this mini-unit, we will begin a complicated creative writing project based on the Jon Scieszka picture book Battle Bunny. This book began life as Birthday Bunny, but some sneaky kid got a pencil and changed the words and the illustrations to write a completely new story. I have about 30 picture books, lots of pencils, and some wildly creative thinkers. 

PA and TD for the Week of 12-6

 K Math will be playing a version of BINGO with addition and subtraction facts, but a simple game like this can become more challenging with how the numbers are called. For example, if the card has 3, I might say, "This number is three more than the difference between six and six." My goal is to develop mathematical thinking though this game. 

K Lit really enjoyed last week's adventures with Gurple and Preen, so this week, I'm keeping with the crayon theme with Drew Daywalt's The Day the Crayons Quit. The kids will all be writing a letter to Duncan using a color not mentioned in the book, explaining why they quit the crayon box. 

First grade TD is still working on the A. A. Milne story "Eeyore has a Birthday and Gets Two Presents." The kids and I are having fun with voices and reading with expression and we discuss the events in this classic tale. 

Second grade TD finished reading Frindle last week. The kids all agreed that this was a great read. This week, the class will be creating detailed pictures of Nick and Mrs. Granger at the beginning of the book, and a picture of these two at the end of the book illustrating how the characters changed during the story. The kids will also complete a short writing assessment on Friday.

3PA worked hard to design their homes on Shine using only the resources available on this strange new world. This week, we will continue our reading in The Green Book to see what happens when the colonists begin farming and what would happen if the crops fail. Can the colonists use the jellyfish they find? What is a famine? Stay tuned!

4PA began the week with an hour-long discussion about why The Secret Garden was set in a 100 room house on an English Moor. Does the house hold a deeper meaning? Does the Moor represent something connected to characters in the novel? We also discussed the similarities between Mary and Ben. What do a 70 year old gardener and a 10 year old girl have in common? Why did the author pair these two? In Google Classroom, there is a list of questions we will be sitting down to discuss all week long.

5PA will be developing the TED Talks this week about a young person who was a catalyst for change in the world. The class will begin presenting these 8 minute talks next Tuesday. This week, kids will be finishing their research, creating their slides, and outlining their speeches using the supporting documents in Google Classroom.

PA PTA Zoom Meeting Tuesday

 This is a message from the PA PTA, a district wide organization for parents of students in Project Arrow. There is a Zoom meeting next Tuesday at 6:30. 

Hi Project Arrow Friends, We're planning to briefly discuss the audit and budget. And also focus on reducing kids' stress, and maintaining a strong PA. Hope you can join us! Topic: Project Arrow Zoom Meeting Time: Dec 7, 2021 06:30 PM Central Time Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/3740887024?pwd=Ukw2YmJQNFZSZFI0dDVJSUh1THRFQT09 Meeting ID: 374 088 7024 Passcode: 247880 Dial by your location +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)

PA for the Week of 11-29

 3PA will arrive on planet Shine this week in The Green Book. What is this new world like? What resources are available? What will new homes on Shine look like? What is the soil like? Can the colonists successfully farm the land? Is Shine safe? To follow along with what we are working on, check out the hyperdoc in Google Classroom. My plan is to get through the end of chapter 5 this week.

4PA will begin the week learning more about figurative language. The kids will focus on finding examples of  several types of figurative language in The Secret Garden. We will spend the week with metaphors, similes, hyperbole, allusion, personification, and imagery within the walls of the garden and Misslethwaite Manor. By the end of the week, students need to be at the beginning of chapter 11. 

5PA will begin the week going through the organizer for the TED Talk we are working on about a young person who was a catalyst for change in the world. The kids will be completing their research this week, and organizing their notes using the structure provided on the organizer/outline for the final presentations. 

TD for the Week of 11-29

 K Math will be busy during our hour together working through a few complex estimation problems. We will be using arrays of dots to see what multiplication means, and we will be using post-it notes to create layered patterns following different patterns.

K Literacy will be making story maps this week as we focus more on story elements like characters, location, action, problem, and solution...CLAPS. We will be clapping our way through a few picture books based on Crayons this week, beginning with Gurple and Preen by Linda Sue Park. 

1TD will be traveling to the Hundred Acre Wood this week for a special birthday. The kids and I will be reading the A. A. Milne classic story "Eeyore has a Birthday." As we read we will discuss key elements of the plot, what to do with a very useful pot, and how all of the characters have unique personalities that add flavor to the story.

2TD is half way through Frindle! This week, we will see what happens when the media finds out about the new word. We will continue to discuss how the two main characters are evolving and changing as the story unfolds. 

PA for the Week of 11-15

It's almost Thanksgiving!!! That does not seem possible, but it is here already. Today, I am going to start off all the PA groups with a bit of Thanksgiving fun. Kindergarten teachers sometimes ask their students to provide directions on how to roast a turkey, a hilarious exercise for the adults who read them...but what have the 3-5 kids learned from watching you cooking at home? Today, the kids will be writing their detailed instructions on how to roast the bird. I will read them tonight and declare a winner in each group tomorrow. I'm not going to prepare the winning recipes, but whoever comes the closest in each group will get culinary bragging rights. Sometimes, just having an hour to do something fun is just what school needs. Have your son or daughter give you their take on how to cook a turkey tonight!

 3PA will blast off into space this week for a journey to a distant planet called Shine. The kids are I are beginning Jill Patton Walsh's The Green Book. We will be working off of a multi-page document in Google Classroom with daily activities for each chapter and links to explore. 

4PA begins reading The Secret Garden on Tuesday. There are a variety of activities in Google Classroom that we will be working on as we begin the journey to the moors that surround the manor that Mary Lennox will soon call home.

5PA  will spend our week doing research on a young person who has made a positive impact in their community. The kids have an outline and a guide for how to develop a TED style talk using the information we gather this week. After Thanksgiving, we will use the research to develop a TED Talk about this person who was a catalyst for change. 

Talent Development for the Week of 11-15

 K Lit students will be spending time with the David Wiesner picture book Sector 7 during our time together this week. The story is about a field trip to The Empire State Building and ends up in the sky factory called Sector 7 where all the clouds get their weather assignments for the day. This wordless adventure will spark conversations about story elements and development of the plot in a story.

K Math will work on two different video math problems that focus on estimation. We will be thinking about graham crackers and those tasty perforated lines, but we will use them to explore multiplication as repeated addition, and we will estimate using Whoppers. 

First grade will be working on summarizing this week. I have sets of a variety of picture books that we will be reading in pairs and discussing as a group. The class will develop a summary together, but that's not the final goal. Summarizing is hard, but condensing an entire book into a short summary of only 7 words creates a challenge that will be our focus for the week. We began today with Scaredy Squirrel. 

Second grade will continue to dive into the story of Nick and Mrs. Granger in the novel Frindle. The kids and I will be focusing on how the characters evolve as the story plays out. Today, we began writing down our observations of the characters from the first five chapters we have explored. 

Thank You

 

5PA A 12-year-old app developer | Thomas Suarez

5PA Richard Turere: My invention that made peace with lions

PA for the Week of 11-8

 3PA finished reading our novel last week! I am so excited to have a whole group discussion today about what the kids think about the completion of this tale. The kids will be working most of the week on finishing up their journals based on the book, they are really into this assignment, most are at the six page mark in their journals already. By Friday, we will be ready to begin a new novel, one with many connective thematic threads to this last book. On Friday, we will begin a science fiction story about a group of families who need to leave Earth and colonize a new planet. We will be reading The Green Book by Jill Patton Walsh.

4PA will begin presenting their work on The Harlem Renaissance this week. I am excited to see how the class will do with this visual storytelling project. When I told the class that the words were only going to be in their speeches and not on their slides, there were many confused looks in the crowd. Looking at a presentation from the viewer and listener perspective is new for the kids, and I am anticipating a fun few days of sharing. Next, we will be moving into one of my favorite parts of the 4PA curriculum. The kids and I will begin reading the 1911 classic, The Secret Garden.

5PA will be presenting their digital quiz shows, based on the stories by Ray Bradbury we have been reading, on Monday and Tuesday. Then, we will be moving into a new unit on young people making a positive difference in the world. There are three new links under the "student resources" section of the website that we will be using as a jumping off point for this unit. The kids are going to explore the people on the lists I have linked, and then pick one person to learn more about. One of the people on the list participated in a Zoom call last year with the students! The end goal is going to be a mini-TED Talk about the person who inspired your son or daughter the most with their positive impact. 

Talent Development for the Week of 11-8-21

 Welcome to Talent Development

My kindergarten group swapped students two weeks ago, and this week, I will have all new first and second grade students for the next six weeks. TD is a 30 minute pull-out literacy enrichment program for our youngest students who show an aptitude for reading. We will meet every school day to work on reading skills that will provide some challenge. The work we do will typically be one school year above the grade your child is currently in and I do not assign homework. Here is what we will be working on this week.

Kindergarten Math will spend time learning about breaking down larger numbers, or showing the number in new ways. How many ways are there to show the number 12? We can use addition, subtraction, basic multiplication, pictures, tallies, words, there are a lot of ways to show numbers. The kids will be in groups using blank hexagons and dry erase markers to make chains of ways to "decompose" a number.

Kindergarten Literacy will read a memoir this week. The memoir of a goldfish. What would be in the life story of a goldfish? What if other animals or objects could write their own life story or memoir? That's the kind of fun we will be having together this week!

First Grade TD will begin our week reading a picture book about inventing something new. All inventions stem from the same initial spark, you need to create a solution to a problem. Maxine's problem is that she needs to figure out a way to march with her pet fish in her class pet parade. How does one march with a fish? What problems will the kids in first grade attempt to solve with their own invention? I hope that inspiration will come from a few articles about other inventions that we will be reading together. We will read about how the Slip-N-Slide was created, how the Wright Brothers worked on flying, and we will read about a camp for kids who want to learn how to be an inventor.

Second Grade TD will begin a novel study this week using Frindle by Andrew Clements. This is a fun story about a boy named Nick, his teacher Mrs. Granger, and the epic journey of how words are invented. The first group of students read this book and they loved it! We will focus our time on how the two main characters evolve and change as the story unfolds. 

Happy Diwali

 

Kindergarten Talent Development

 This week, the kindergarten groups will be switching so more students have an opportunity for some enrichment during the day at Brookdale. My literature groups will have all new students this week and I'm starting a math group! The literature kids will come on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and the math kids will come on Thursday and Friday from 11:30-12:00. The math students will be playing a dice game this week focusing on doubling numbers. 

PA for the Week of 10-25

 Project Arrow Progress Reports will be given to each student on Friday in class. Please look for it in your son or daughter's backpack. 

3PA will continue to read and discuss The Girl Who Owned a City this week. The kids will be working on their journals and recording examples of change in teams as they read.

4PA will be working on their slide shows on an artist, or group of artists, from the Harlem Renaissance. This week, we will set a due date for the project and the kids will be designing the rubric I will use to assess the final project and speech. 

5PA will be discussing one of the final Ray Bradbury stories for this unit during our time together this week. "A Sound of Thunder" will likely spark a memorable discussion on Monday! Then I'm using an idea from one of the 5th graders for the wrap-up for this unit. Teams of kids will be making a Kahoot! I'm going to design this project with the kids and the standards in mind, so I really don't know what the topics will be, but I do know that this group of students gets excited when their ideas are the inspiration for the work we do in PA. 

TD for the Week of 10-25

 KTD will be talking about the idea of being "perfect" and what that even means. The kids and I will be reading two picture books and using the ideas to make a few projects based on the inspiration in the stories. On Friday, we will be making Monster Traps inspired by a book by the same name.

1TD will spend the week reading a Hindu folktale called "The Mouse and the Wizard." The kids and I will discuss how the story reflects the culture it came from, and if we have time, we will also be making monster traps on Friday!

2TD will be visiting the LMC this week to find a new book by the author of Frindle. After we discuss the end of the book, the letter that Nick waited 10 years to open, and what was going on inside of Mrs. Granger's head the whole time, the kids will work on finishing their character maps showing how the two main characters changed from the beginning of the novel to the end. Andrew Clements has written many engaging chapter books that are perfect for these second graders. The kids will be checking out a book of their choice to use in TD for the next two weeks.

PA for the Week of 10-18

 3PA will be ending the 1st quarter of school with Lisa, Todd, Julie, Charlie, and Tom Logan. This week we will continue our reading and analysis of Girl Who Owned a City. There is a graphic novel version of this book that would make a fantastic gift for a 3rd grader reader, built in desire to read the whole book! The cover of the graphic novel is pictured here...

4PA will spend the week working on their Harlem Renaissance Google Slide project. The kids and I went through what should be included in this project and I dropped it into Google Classroom for everyone to use as they create their slides. Because of the web filter at school, inserting a YouTube video is difficult. A video will enhance the presentation so adding one as homework this week would be a great activity.

5PA will be continuing our work with Ray Bradbury's "All Summer in a Day" about an incident that took place at a school on Venus on a very special day. This week, pairs of kids will be acting as the school's disciplinary committee using specific evidence from the story to determine the intentions of the students who locked Margot in the closet. The pairs will make a determination about who was at fault and assign any appropriate consequences for the choices made by the group of students led by William.  At the end of the week, we will be reading about time travel and dinosaurs in Bradbury's story "A Sound of Thunder." 

TD for the Week of 10-18

 KTD  is going to have a really Creepy Week! The kids and I will be reading two fantastic October picture books, Creepy Carrots and Creepy Pair of Underwear! We will discuss the similarities and differences Jasper experiences in both stories, the kids and I will create frightening fruit, and we will be inventing an alternate use for Creepy underwear on Friday. 

1TD will continue reading the chapter books we checked out last week. I will be meeting with the kids to have reading conferences to discuss the stories, make predictions, discuss main idea, and work on retelling what they've read so far. At the end of the week, we will be sharing oral book commercials. This is something I did in the classroom to replace book reports. Just stand up, tell us about your book and why others might enjoy reading it as well.

2TD is 1/2 way through Frindle! We had fun using a calligraphy frindle last week, and this week we will continue to learn more about the battle between Mrs. Granger and Nick, what happens after the newspaper article is published, and what happens when the word goes nation-wide!

PA for the Week of 10-12

 3PA began a journal writing activity last week focused on how characters respond to challenging situations in our novel The Girl Who Owned a City. This week we will discover what happens at the militia meeting, if the Jewel warehouse is all they imagined, and how to protect Grand Avenue. The kids will be reading independently, writing in their journals, and reading together as we continue to discuss all of the examples of change in this page turner. 

4PA will begin the week working on analyzing a second Langston Hughes poem using the tool I put into Google Classroom. Later in the week, we will transition to a new project focused on the Harlem Renaissance. Writing and poetry were only a small part of what was going on in 1920's Harlem, so we need to explore some of the other artists who were working in Harlem at the same times Langston Hughes was writing. The kids will explore a variety of musicians, singers, dancers, poets, actors, painters, or photographers who were contemporaries of Hughes. A Google Slide project will be developed based on what interests each student.         

5PA will be finishing up the writing project we began last week comparing "The Veldt" to the Brother's Grimm version of "Little Red Riding Hood." Then, we will begin a new Ray Bradbury short story, "All Summer in a Day" about a day on Venus that a group of children will never forget.