Did you miss me? I finally got around to trouble-shooting my home computer and now I can access Weebly! We have been mighty busy these past few weeks and I'll try to give a brief synopsis.

First and foremost, we want to extend loving arms to Madeline and Mr. Jeffrey. This is a time of coming together as a classroom and school community to reach out and comfort those we care about. Our kids had discussions and wrote cards expressing feelings they have for our dear classmate and librarian. You continue to be in our thoughts...

We have been fortunate to have Ms. Heike take on her student teaching role and we have been team-teaching the past few weeks. It has been so nice to meet with small groups daily and have two teachers supporting student growth. If only this is how it were all the time! We have launched our social studies unit "The Parade" and have big plans ahead. This week your child decided on a cultural heritage and created a character around that culture. In the upcoming weeks, each student will research more about this culture and create a float for the parade and provide a food dish to share at our celebration on February 20th. Please mark this day on your calendars as we would love for you to join us and help by bringing a food dish to this event. 

In other areas:
Reading: Characters go on Journeys-we are doing a whole-class book study on Shiloh, by Phillis Reynolds Naylor.  
Writing: Persuasive writing-watch out parents, some kids are writing with you in mind! Some current writing topics: Why I should play more Mindcraft (Tate), Why dogs are better pets than cats (Zoe), Why kids shouldn't have to go to school (Julius), Why Magic is Real (Kostya), Why sushi is the best food to eat (Asa), and it goes on...
Math: Measurement-centimeters & meters (for now)
Black History:  Guided Reading groups have been reading books about Ruby Bridges, Martin Luther King Jr., and Thurgood Marshall. We will continue our studies into February. 
Class Meeting: Win/Win situations
Technology: Establishing iPad agreements, responding to prompts on KidBlog. You can access and blog using Kidblog from home. 
http://kidblog.org/MsLeckiesLearners-2

Ask your child to enlighten you:

• What does segregation mean?
• Play the continent game: Give your child a country and see if they know what continent it's in.
• Ask them, How does a double-stuffed OREO help you with your opinion/persuasion writing?
• Tell me about Kangaroo jumps!
• How big is a millimeter, centimeter, meter, kilometer?

AND, what all the hype has been about... The QAE/Perseverance video lead by Ms. Stone. What a fun and collective production this turned out to be! 
As a HUGE Seahawks fan, I am thrilled by all this buzz. Shortly after it was released, Pete Carroll retweeted it and posted it on his Facebook page. Then Fox Sports and CBS picked it up. It was on Good Morning America on Thursday and Ms. Stone and some QAE students will be interviewed on King 5 News this Saturday morning in the 8:00-9:00 hour. Our very own Sage and Josiah will be among those interviewed so be on the look out this Saturday! Even the Arizona Iced Tea company called the school wanting to send us cases of iced tea (they must be appreciative for the free advertising!). Only three more sleeps until Super Bowl, but who can really sleep anyway?

I realized that I started writing this blog post on December 19th and now it's nearly a month later. 

We came, we coded, we can change the world! The students at QAE joined about 70 million others worldwide in an hour of code. The kids helped Anna and Elsa create a winter wonderland and then some. We also learned a thing or two about left/right and degrees (angles and turning). I found myself frustrated trying to code at first, but after watching your kids and learning from them, I started to catch on and found myself coaching others! Coding is about breaking down a problem or task and what an empowering skill to learn! My guess is that your child came home excited to tell you about their experience. I'd love to get your comments about what they reported. 

On Monday Mr. Elliott and Ms. Ward launched Dwankhozi week at our Monday Morning Meeting. Throughout the week we read stories, watched videos and went to a Dwankhozi gallery walk that featured different aspects of Zambian life. At the gallery walk Ms. Ward shared about Fabric Uses that included how they use one piece of fabric for a variety of purposes (such as carrying a baby). Ms. Amsel shared a Print Making and other African Crafts station and the printed fabric is hanging in the cafeteria. There was a Maize Table where most kids sampled nshima, one of Zambia's staple foods made of corn and eaten with the hands. Ms. Stone ran a Drum Circle, Ms. Marks lead the Zambia Futbool station where she showed kids how to make soccer balls out of plastic bags. Mr. Bailey had a Story Telling area and I ran the Water Awareness station and got to share my experience of what I observed first hand while in Zambia.

It was fun to be part of this connecting experience and watch kindergartners-fifth graders' (and adults) fascination at work. The Dwankhozi partnership brings our school together and connects us to new friends and the way of life of those halfway around the globe. 

We had a closing assembly on Friday and had a chance to meet Charles Masala, who grew up in Zambia and was the originator of the Seattle-Dwankhozi connection. Mrs. Stone and the 4th graders sang a special African song and the older students taught us about the Hungry Season and how it impacted the students at our partner school. They introduced the Raise for Maize Campaign our school will be participating in for the next two weeks.  


In rural southern Africa, subsistence farmers experience a Hungry Season (January-March) when their stored food grown is depleted as they wait for the rainy season to end and the March harvest to be ready. That means their children are coming to school hungry, which makes learning very difficult for them. The school day has to be shortened during this period as the students have no energy to learn. About half of the students don't make it to school as their focus is on finding food. 

They told us that some women in the Dwankhozi Primary School community are willing to make the students a school lunch during this Hungry Season. They just need us to help buy some maize. Then they invited us to participate in a Raise for Maize Campaign that will start on Monday. They encouraged students to ask friends and family if they could do chores, or service projects, for a Raise for Maize donation. They suggested things like raking leaves or cleaning extra parts of the house or caring for a pet. 


Dwankhozi is a community of people who care deeply about their school and want to help. When the students are provided with a nutritious meal during the school day for the duration of this tough season, school attendance remains high and the students’ and teachers' momentum for learning is sustained. 

$10 feeds 60 students for one day.
$50 feeds 300 students for one day.


$100 feeds the entire school for one day.


They only need to be fed for 6 weeks  
   (30 school days.)

That's $3,000. ~ which is our fundraising goal.
To keep 600 students learning!


Here are some videos that highlight our partnership.
2014 Dwankhozi Week
2014 Zambia Trip
2013 Zambia Trip
"The Martin" Video, this was also a video that helped launched our Water PBL unit 
"The Martha" Video captures the day-in-the-life of a female student from Dwankhozi

Dashing through the rain, in an almost single-file line, over to the other side of the hill we go, caroling all the way, ha ha ha. Did you do it? Did you sing that line to the Jingle Bells melody? The kids had fun caroling in fron of the Trader Joes Plaza on Friday. Eventhough it drizzled on us on our walk to the Ave., we were all smiles as we caroled to some of our favorite holiday songs. Thank you to Ms. Sara, Ms. Karen and Ms. Chris for joining us and a big thank-you to Ms. Stone for organizing the trip. 
Photo credit: Ms. Sara

Connecting to the QAE monthly theme of GRATITUDE, I'd like to thank you all for meeting with me for conferences. While collecting student work, scoring and writing reports can be a demanding, the outcome and time spent talking with you all is so rewarding. It is refreshing to meet with parents committed to their child's well-being and understanding of the partnership we have. I am thankful for countless things in my life and I want to let you know that I'm thankful for our kids and all of you!

Our class had the great pleasure of going to the Mercer Slough Environmental Center on Tuesday. We walked in the beautiful woods and wetlands areas, went on a scavenger hunt, took soil samples and conducted tests on them. We spent time in the lab and learned all about Soil Adventurers–F.B.I. (fungi, bacteria and invertebrates). We found millipedes, centipedes, worms, pill and sow bugs, slugs and other fascinating creatures in the soil and saw them magnified on "bug t.v.". Learning from the Mercer Slough docents in nature's classroom was a nice way to wrap-up our soils unit and carry on into our water exploration. 

A BIG banana slug thank you goes out to our drivers and chaperones for making this field trip possible:
Karen, Rebecca, Muneer, Jennifer, Tanea, Lorraine, & Robin! 

We had the pleasure of learning from Shaun  O'Neil, a QAE parent and King County water treatment expert. I am proud to announce that our second graders know more about our local water treatment process than about 95% of adults do. What we learned was fascinating and will hopefully raise more environmentally conscience citizens out of all of us.

Here are some of the things we learned:

• Some countries don't have sewage treatment plants and don't have clean water and can get sick and sometimes die because of unclean drinking water. (Hugo)
• When you flush the toilet it travels a far distance and finally gets to the treatment center. (Oliver)
• If you put grease down pipes they can clog and can overflow. (Joshua)
• There are big pipes and small pipes. Some pipes can fit a car inside. (Mollie)
• They use robots to get to pipes that are broken or to check that they don't have cracks. (Jack)
• When there are pipes full of bad stuff and no oxygen they send robots to check them. Sometimes they send in people when it's not as dangerous. (Sage)
• Less than 1% of the water in the world is freshwater to drink. (Juliette)
• Flushable wipes should not be flushed down the toilet. (Madeline)
• Chlorine kills a lot of bad bacteria. (Wyatt)
• The robots take pictures of the inside of pipes in the sewer. (Jenna)
• You only should flush toilet paper and things that come from your body. (Mason)
• There is a tube in the secondary step of treating water that clarifies the water with filters. (Zoe) 
• Seattle gets fresh water from the nearby mountains. (Angelica)
• Scientists find large amounts of caffeine and cinnamon in waste water because our bodies don't break them down. (Ms. Leckie) 

We are fortunate to live in an area where we get our water from the mountains, is available in the twist of a knob, and gets treated thoroughly before being sent out into Puget Sound. Most cities get their water from the same place it gets sent back out (such as Lake Michigan in Chigaco). Unfortunately there are many countries that do not have treatment facilities that purify waste water before being put back into the water source. This is one reason we have the global water crisis and this is where our learning will take us next…

It was a lot of fun to have Mr. Mike come from Seattle Tilth and do a "Soil in a Box" presentation with our class. We enjoyed his humor and the over-sized, sunglass-wearing worm that accompanied him. We learned some interesting worm facts such as how many hearts they have, the myth behind if a worm would live if it were split into two, and that all worms can have babies. If that's not all, we discovered how valuable worms castings are (and that it's a fancy/scientific name for saying worm poop!). Ask your child to tell you about it. We thought that the giant worm that Mr. Mike brought in was funny, but we came to find out that there's really an earth worm called the Giant Gippsland, that's about the same size!  

I would like to thank Ms. Leland for helping us with the behind the scenes work and arranging more learning opportunities for us. And a BIG THANK YOU to the QAE PTSA for funding our guest speaker-it's fun to have entertaining experts work with our kids. 

So, have you been wondering what those empty milk jugs were going to be used for? The students have been filling them from puddles that have formed generously over the last couple of weeks. Today I told the class that we were going launch our first Project Based Learning unit on WATER. After this they predicted what we were going to do with the jugs. Answers varied from making a giant puddle on the playground and testing how water drains in different soil to adding up how many jugs there are or that we were going to weigh them. Well no one guessed what we actually did. With the help of Mr. R's enthusiasm, all three second grade classrooms gathered in the play court where he gave us a task. He set us off to carry the nearly 8 pound jugs around the playground. After this exercise we gathered back in class to discuss how it felt and why we did this. Due to the windy and rainy conditions we only did a lap or two around the school. In this short time most thought it was fun but we all agreed that the water got heavier and the job got harder to do the longer you carried the gallon. Some found that carrying it on your head, using two hands, or switching hands along the way made the job easier. Some kids made a connection that some people don't live near water and they have to go get water to bring home. This simulation will guide us to further study....

We then created a Padlet of what we think we already know about water.

Wow, the kids already know a variety of things about water. I'm excited to see where their curiosities take us now that we have launched into the great be-known.

{If you've been wanting help carrying in the groceries and your child thinks the milk is too heavy to carry, they should think differently now! Thank you for providing the jugs!}