Fall 2020 Classes

 Kids no longer bring bags and bags full of projects they did at school.  It was a lot of work to sort through everything but also really fun to review and save memorable projects.  I still haven't completely sorted through the stuff from kindergarten!  What I liked about the mounds of schoolwork stuff was the way I could track what boys were up to.  With homeschooling almost everything is online and it is hard to capture the feel of the year.  

Before we get too far into the school year I want to capture what boys are up to this fall. 

(If you intend to continue reading this blog post, some of the more interesting stuff is at the bottom.)

Kestrel Classes

Social Studies: A History of US: 1855 – 1900

With a focus on primary source analysis, critical thinking, and interactive web tools, students will explore the story of America from the Civil War to the divisive class, race, gender and economic struggles of the developing United States at the advent of the 20th century.

This course covers:

• The Civil War
• Reconstruction
• Migration West
• Segregation
• Industrialization and Immigration
• Economic imbalances of the late 19th C.
• Rise of labor movements
  

Language Arts: Essay Prep: Research and Citation is part of a three-class series. The other two classes are Essay Prep: Dynamic Thinking and Essay Prep: Reading the Essay.

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. —Zora Neale Hurston

The best essays come from a spark in the writer's mind. They ask, What if? How? What now? Why? The stage that follows from this ignition of interest is often overlooked in discussions of the creative process: research. This essential next step allows an idea to evolve from a pinprick of a notion in the writer's mind to a finished piece of work ready to share with readers.

While we've come to think of research as something particularly grown up and laborious, children, when they are small, live in this enthusiastically curious state all the time. They naturally do research every day as they explore and learn about the world. They're passionate about monster trucks, princesses, or insects. As we grow older, this inquiry becomes more complex and formalized as our research is evaluated, recorded, synthesized, and shared.

It seems a big leap for the child who was obsessed with pandas as a child to now write an essay on whether it's ethical for them to live in zoos. This class offers teens guidance in the fundamentals of research at a high school level. It will be especially helpful for those who aren't sure how to get started with research or what to do with the 3,457 search results that popped up on Google! Research requires sifting through a plethora of texts at high reading levels, picking out accurate information, and ultimately relating it in the proper form. After we discuss and practice the different elements of research and citation over four weeks, students will emerge from this class with added confidence in this process. 

Language Arts: Expository Essay: Exploratory & Persuasive  (Begins Nov 2)

This class is especially designed for high school students. The expository essay is the primary writing format that ought to be learned before college. Expository essays are used in high school and college to help teachers ascertain how well the student manages material related to the course. Students are expected to read a range of sources, evaluate arguments and then take a position that they defend intelligently, with nuance. This course is the beginning of that journey. Most students asked to write essays haven't yet even read one! In this class, we'll look at two kinds of expository essays and then write them.

This course helps students become comfortable with the basic demands of academic writing:

• researching various expert opinions in the field
• asserting a position
• developing points
• discovering and providing support/examples
• drawing conclusions and asking meaningful follow-up questions

Every variety of essay or research paper builds from these fundamental principles. This course is a perfect way to introduce academic writing to kids who have had little or no exposure to the essay.

This course will cover both open and closed form essay writing, as well as training students in the art of:

• paraphrase
• thesis statement generation
• how to select points and particulars
• structuring an essay
• finding and using research in your writing
• incorporating writing voice into academic writing
  

Cedrus Classes

 Social Studies: Horrible Romans and Egyptians

Take a guided tour through Rome and Egypt by way of Headmaster Galahad and the acclaimed Horrible Histories series: a fun and accessible introduction to wicked, weird and woeful events of the ancient world.  Our end goal? To instill an unbridled love of history and the desire to go forward and explore in-depth even more world events, Horrible and otherwise. In and outside the webinars, this class will focus on the stories of the people of these ancient empires, while also beginning to introduce critical thinking skills and primary source analysis in supplement to the Horrible Histories.

This course covers:

• The Roman Kingdom, Republic and Principate
• The Egyptian Kingdoms
• Spartacus and Slave Revolts in the Roman Republic
• Julius Caesar and the Fall of the Republic
• Boudica and Her Uprising
• Cleopatra and the End of Independent Egypt

Language Arts: Novel Adventure Club

We'll explore the elements of creative writing while planning, writing, and editing original stories!

Novel Adventure Club is a fourteen-week class that will stretch your brain in all the right ways. Yes, really: We'll learn about crafting compelling characters, writing conflict that drives your story and plot forward, purposeful dialogue, setting and description, and more! 

Along the way, you'll each be planning your own novels and giving feedback to each other in discussion boards; then, starting in Week 7, you'll write your first draft in five separate installments, which you'll edit in Week 12. After that, we'll dive into submission letters and excepts. This is helpful if you ever want to publish your (fantastic) story. 

Finally, Week 14 is a wrap-up meeting and virtual party featuring Mad Libs,Never Have I Ever, excerpt readings, and other fun activities

 Language Arts: Paragraph Town  (Begins 10/6)

Town is a six-week workshop for students who want to improve their paragraph-writing skills. Our text, Michael Clay Thompson’s Paragraph Town, will guide our journey as we navigate the techniques needed to master the paragraphs. Students will learn about organization, sentence variety, the topic sentence, and transitions as they apply to the paragraph. We’ll work on paragraphs that describe and explain, with a goal of having students write not just stronger paragraphs in the workshop but also in their Online G3 classes and anywhere else good paragraph skills are required.

Kestrel & Cedrus

ATOM Science Club (Adventures Through Open Minds)

Cosmology

In this exploration of the amazing, action-packed story of our universe, club members will develop a timeline of the universe starting at its birth—the origin of space-time, called the Big Bang—until today. We will discuss the universe’s earliest moments before particles formed. We will ponder how the first particles sprang into existence out of the energy released at the moment of the Big Bang. How did those first particles become atoms? How is it possible that we are alive on planet earth 13.7 billion years later? All that’s required is a large pile of 3×5 cards, a hole punch, binder rings, a pencil, and the student’s curiosity!

In Steve's words:
The topic for this club is labeled "Cosmology: A Journey Through Time", but it could also be described as "Subatomic Physics and Cosmology: A History of the Universe Since the Big Bang". It'll be covering things like quarks and mesons and neutrinos, the Standard Model, the Uncertainty Principle, etc.

Math

Khan Academy course for 8th grade and 6th grade.  Although, we are trying to figure out how to branch out into a more conceptual exploration of math.  Who knows where this will go.  A math club?  I hope so.  There are already too much online learning.  Khan Academy is pretty awesome though.  It takes the guesswork out of what to learn in a particular grade. 

Dance (Starts next week)

I love House dancing.  If I could dance House is what I would do and maybe a little bit of Salsa too.  Vid is currently not teaching and we don't want to go to group classes.  So how to dance?  Last summer I started watching House dance videos with kids and discovered Jardy&Kerry. A couple of weeks ago when I was researching dance options I learned Jardy lives in San Jose and is a serious teacher! He has tons of dance material online.  This year he is experimenting and launching an online course on House dancing!  I got in touch with him to find out if there was an age limit for his class.  No age limit!  Kestrel and Cedrus are now signed up for it.  We''ll try it for a month.  Fingers crossed.

In this class you work at your own pace but you get homework!!  Weird....

https://www.house-dance.com/two-important-lessons/

Footwork Style (Expanded and Revised)

Revisit your home base with this new and improved 15-week module, including new Warm-Up Videos, Step-by-Step Breakdowns, Combo Drills, Freestyle Exercises, Styling and Musicality Sessions, and more!

 

Spanish

Kids got an amazing foundation in Spanish while they were at Charter.  At the end of 6th grade Kestrel was reading short books.  Cedrus was talking and writing and both boys had the pronunciation down so well.  It has been hard to replicate it at home.  Towards the end of last year I found Fluenz.com.  Of course, a lot of research went into it. We sampled a number of programs and Fluenz won.  We are slowly incorporating it as a regular activity.

 

Music

I have saved the best for last.  Guessing this is because it is hard for me to capture it.  It is a big part of boys' lives.  

 

Cedrus is composing pop music with a frenetic level of enthusiasm.  He gets to train as an accompanist because his Mom *LOVES* to have "Singing Playdates" with him.  Maybe he likes it too.  While his first love is pop music he dives into other forms of playing with ample enthusiasm.  He has been spending lots of quality time with classical music that comes his way every two weeks when he has a class with Frank Martinez.  Cedrus and I spend a lot of meaningful time cultivating music.

Kestrel just landed a whole room to mostly himself for music practice.  I say mostly because he will have to share it with me for singing practice.  Previously, Kestrel was deeply attached to a small space in the office where he has practiced guitar since he was 8? years old.  Well, times have changed.  The office is much more of a shared space because of homeschooling, Steve working from home, Munazza studying Qigong etc.  Long story short, Kestrel and I used to wander the house looking for a free room to practice music.  No more.  The guest room has been repurposed and as a result is a much more welcoming space now that it houses a beautiful Kestrel and his guitar and his voice.

Kestrel has been composing new songs on guitar.  It became a serious endeavor when I happen to have a conversation with our singing teacher and happen to mention that boys love to compose and she happen to decide she had to do a Young Songwriter's workshop.  So that's how it is right now.  A workshop that takes place every month.  Kids from ages 11-19 listen to each other's pieces and provide constructive criticism.  I listened in on the first workshop and was kinda blown away.

Kestrel also spends time with Frank Martinez every two weeks.  Until his last lesson he was geeking out on The Beatles.  Last lesson he started exploring jazz. We'll see where that takes him.