Week 4 -- the Railroad that cut through the Mission in the 1860s

5th Grade

This week we finally hit our stride with the fifth graders. We spent the beginning of our time setting the spatial arrangements for each group's Mission Creek material and that seemed to help everyone focus.

We then made group choreography having to do with the San Francisco-San Jose Railroad, which was cut through the Mission on Harrison Street back in the late 1800s. It was really fun to see what each group did. Six of my kids laid down parallel with one another and then rolled into the space between the other four, creating a grid of tracks. Another group staged a train robbery, complete with passengers, a driver and thieves.

We have also added Melissa Martinez to our crew of adults, so we'll now have four facilitators instead of just three... it will help to be less outnumbered.

3rd and 4th Grades

We only met with one third grade class due to a field trip, but the ones we did see made some fantastic train material. The longer we work with them, the more they are branching out into more complicated spatial relationships. Groups are traveling, changing levels and staying more in sync. And they're collaborating better, incorporating one another's ideas. Totally satisfying. 

Because of another field trip last week, the fourth graders are a week behind the rest of the students, so we went back and did Woodward's Garden material with them. I had thought that generating movement having to do with the hot air balloon and animals would be the most fun and interesting for all of us but that hasn't been the case. It seems like the relative familiarity of this source material leads to less creative choices. It may also be that the way I structured making this movement -- each kid has a frozen position, a move and a second frozen position -- limited things too much.