artsed4all Arts Education, Music, Technology, Visual Arts

MAKE YOUR MARK! International Dot Day @ Rooftop School

dot_sec

September 15th marks the anniversary of the publication of best-selling author/illustrator Peter H. Reynolds’ The Dot, a “story book for all ages.”

Author Peter Reynolds told School Library Journal. “I pinch myself, thinking that four decades ago I was being told to stop drawing in my classes and pay attention, and here we are in 2016 with a school sanctioned day to celebrate creativity.”

“The Dot more than anything celebrates the power of creative teaching,” Reynolds explains. “Despite the test-centric world we live in, creative teachers know how to find those aha moments — much the same way that my 7th grade math teacher Mr. Matson ‘connected the dots’ between math and art, which changed my life.” To honor that moment, Reynolds dedicated The Dot to Mr. Matson.

Rooftop School is joining the The Dot Club fun & inviting you to read-along, draw-along, and even sing-along!

20160908TheDotIMG_8755.jpg

To get things started, Rooftop librarian Tamra Marshall will be reading THE DOT with all K-2 classes.

dotday_connect

#DOTDAY LIVESTREAM

On Tuesday, September 13 at 10am, we’re connecting the dots via Skype and Discovery Education in the Burnett MPR. #CelebrateWithDE 

Author Peter H. Reynolds travels to the place where Dot Day began with Dot Day founder Terry Shay, a teacher at North Tama School in Traer, Iowa. Reynolds, Shay, and the students of North Tama will come together to celebrate creativity, courage, and collaboration on the 7th Annual International Dot Day. http://www.discoveryeducation.com/Events/monthly-themes/dot-day-2016.cfm 

#ArtIsAtTheCenter: DOT CENTRAL

Be sure to sign your work and share your dot art on International #DotDay – Thursday, September 15, 2016! Let’s fill “Dot Central” – aka the Burnett MPR – with some fresh art!

20160908TheDotIMG_8767.jpg

THE PALE BLUE DOT & COASTAL CLEANUP DAY

Then, help us to take care of the most important dot of all — “The Pale Blue” Dot! In celebration of Coastal Cleanup Day 2016, Rooftop School will hold a Schoolyard Cleanup on Friday, September 16.

Pale Blue Dot from ORDER Productions on Vimeo.

planting-the-seeds-of-blue-in-the-rooftop-gardenjan-3-2013

The trash gathered at school will be weighed and our information will be entered into the official International Coastal Cleanup Day database.

WHAT IS COASTAL CLEANUP DAY?

Every year, on the third Saturday in September, people join together at sites all over California to take part in the State’s largest volunteer event, California Coastal Cleanup Day. In 2015, more than 68,000 volunteers removed nearly 1,143,000 pounds of trash and recyclables from California’s beaches, lakes, and waterways.

Families, friends, coworkers, scout troops, school groups, service clubs, and individuals come together to celebrate and share their appreciation of California’s fabulous coast and waterways. The event is part of the International Coastal Cleanup, organized by the Ocean Conservancy, which is the largest volunteer event on the planet!

California Coastal Cleanup Day 2016 is Saturday, September 17, 2016

 

positive-impact-blue-marbles
“Positive Impact” – Teaching the World To “Live Blue” https://issuu.com/positiveimpactmagazine/docs/full_pim_magazine_book_2012_digital/38?e=2938531/2717353
artsed4all Arts Education, Media Arts, STEAM, Technology

San Francisco Middle Schools Maker Faire 2016

MakerFairePoster+2016

EVENT DETAILS

2016 Hosts: Rooftop School & Presidio Middle School

Location: Presidio Middle School located at 450 30th Avenue, between Geary & Clement in the Outer Richmond.

Date: Sunday, April 17th

Time: 1pm – 4pm

Cost:  Free!  But registration is encouraged to help us gauge attendance. For your efforts, you will be entered into a drawing for fun prizes!  The drawing will take place on Saturday evening. Prizes distributed at the registration table!

REGISTER: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/school-maker-faire-san-francisco-middle-schools-tickets-20963801294

EVENT PROGRAM: http://pms-sfusd-ca.schoolloop.com/file/1229223462130/1407474773124/4769176251528184421.pdf

FOR MORE INFORMATION: https://pms-sfusd-ca.schoolloop.com/SFSchoolMakerFaire

“San Francisco Movies and Makers” 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Auditorium Slot 1 2:00pm-2:45pm

2:00pm-2:20pm Live Sand Painting Demonstration (20 mins.) Students from Kruzhok Studio will create animation films live before your eyes by drawing with beach sand.

Artist Diego Rivera once said, “The motion picture is the ultimate development of mural painting, and is the most original contribution to art made by North American Culture.” Come to the Auditorium to enjoy short films by Rooftop moviemakers. Learn about San Francisco cinema history and explore the art & science of light and sound with hands-on activities. #sfmoviesandmakers

2:20pm -2:45pm SF Movies & Makers – Take I (25:00) 1- Anime Eyes and San Francisco Landmarks – Luz, Pretty; 2- How to be a Better Tourist in San Francisco – Emmanuel; 3- Comet- by Kara and Justine; 4- Timmie – Denise, Caitlin, Tyler; 5- Can’t Juggle – Jude, Ubaldo; 6- How To Do a Cartwheel – Jayon; 7- How To: 3 Different Styles of Eyes – Denise, Kaela; 8- How To Draw Something Evil – Rita, Paulina; 9- There’s a Dot – Rita, Paulina; 10- Boxshells – Olivia_Raquel_Maddy; 11- Fifty Shades of Violet – Luc, Violet; 12- How to Make a Raven Collage – Audrey, Camila, Isa; 13- Spooning for Money – Nyla, Shayna; 14- How to Get Your Crush – Ameyalli, Cassie; 15: Untitled – Stella

Auditorium Slot 2 3:15pm-4pm

3:15-3:40 SF Movies & Makers – Take 2 (25 mins) 16- To Be Continued – Corrin, Maddie, Sierra, Ryinn; 17- Titanic – Frankie, Grace; 18- The Chosen One – Crystal; 19- Help Meeeeeeeeee!! – NathanE; 20- Ling Ling Bullying Adventure – Ismael, Justin; 21- Banana Belle – Raiden, Bella; 22- Lonely – Tasha, Dasha, Biana, Jojo; 23- Broken Together – Paolo, Elena, Xavi; 24- The Shoe – Oscar, Dominic, Tommy, Marilyn; 25- Off to war – Annie, Karina; 26- Tic-Tac: The Movie – Dylan, Daisy, Lua, Emi; 27- The Chase – Braeden, Brianna; 28- Out of Battery – Camilla, Lili

3:40-3:50 “Meteor Miracle” Special Effects with Student Filmmaker Julian Jordan 

3:50-4:00 SF Movies & Makers – Take 3 (10 mins.) 29- Ball is Life – Julian, Roman, Cosmo, Finn; 30- Clayie – Tristan, Jonathon, Xavi; 31- Cybercatgoat – Peter; 32- Star Rolls – Darius, Kyle, Michael, Ronan; 33- Rock, Paper, Scissors – JessicaA, Hannah; 34- There Is A Holy Pie on Mount Doom – Brom, Milo

artsed4all STEAM, Technology, Visual Arts

Happy Lunar New Year!

Yin-Yang-5th-Grade

The terms yin and yang originated in ancient Chinese philosophy. Yin and yang mean literally the “dark side” and the “sunny side” of a hill. In Chinese and much other Eastern thought, they represent the opposites of which the world is thought to be composed: dark and light, female and male, Earth and heaven, death and birth, matter and spirit.

Yin yang drawings created by Ms. Hamilburg’s 5th graders at Rooftop School.

 

artsed4all Art & the Environment, STEAM, Technology, Uncategorized

Follow the Water

“When I was orbiting Earth in the space shuttle, I could float over to a window and gaze down at the delicate white clouds, brilliant orange deserts, and sparkling blue water of the planet below. I could see the coral reefs in the oceans, fertile farmlands in the valleys, and twinkling city lights beneath the clouds. Even from space, it is obvious that Earth is a living planet.” — Dr. Sally Ride

Sally Ride EarthKAM is a NASA educational outreach program that enables students, teachers, and the public to learn about Earth from the unique perspective of space.  The project was initiated by Dr. Sally Ride, America’s first woman in space. The EarthKAM camera was first operated on the International Space Station (ISS) on Expedition 1 in 2001. Sally Ride died in 2012, and in 2013, NASA renamed the program Sally Ride EarthKAM. The Sally Ride EarthKAM camera remains a permanent payload on the ISS, supporting about four missions annually. EarthKAM’s Mission 50 took place between November 10-13, and students around the world were able to request images of specific locations on Earth.

NASA has a familiar adage: Follow The Water, for where there is water, there is life. For Mission 50, Rooftop School’s fourth graders made a list of the places where they would like to see water.

I want to see water in...

As Sally Ride noted, “The view of Earth is spectacular.”

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

From November 30 to December 11, 2015 COP21, also known as the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, will brings the world together with hopes of achieving a legally binding and universal agreement on climate, with the aim of keeping global warming below 2°C.

The Association of Space Explorers reached out to their fellow astronauts to pass on a simple message of solidarity, hope and collaboration to combat climate change and reach our political leaders during such a crucial time.

artsed4all Art & the Environment, Arts Education, Drama / Theatre, STEAM, Technology, Visual Arts

Play and Partnership: Celebrating the 2015 International Day of Peace

Play and partnership can help us to imagine and create more peaceful world. On Monday, September 21, the students and teachers at Rooftop School will gather for a moment of peace at Morning Circle. We will fly the peace dove puppets made by third and fourth graders to mark the day with Roots and Shoots, Jane Goodall’s youth-focused organization.

“Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.” — Jane Goodall, With Love (1999)

When Dr. Jane Goodall was just over one year old, her father gave her a toy chimpanzee named Jubilee, in honor of a baby chimpanzee born at the London Zoo. Friends warn her parents that such a gift will cause nightmares for a child. However, Jane loves the toy carries it with her everywhere. Today, Jane travels with a stuffed monkey named Mr. H, who has been touched by over 2.5 million people from around the world and visited more than 60 countries with Jane.

Understanding the power of children in the conservation movement, Jane Goodall spoke directly to youth in this 2008 video interview.

As a United Nations Messenger of Peace, Dr. Jane makes it a priority each and every year to observe and celebrate the annual International Day of Peace on September 21. One of the ways that students can celebrate the day is by building a Peace Dove Puppet.

IMG_4973

Instructions for small and giant puppets can be found on the Roots and Shoots website.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Dr. Goodall encourages individuals around the globe to participate in the United Nations International Day of Peace which is celebrated on September 21 each year. This year, an especially auspicious one with the UN’s celebration its 70th anniversary, will have the theme of, “Partnerships for Peace – Dignity for All.” Click here to learn more about Dr. Goodall’s role as a UN Messenger of Peace and how you can participate in celebrating in the annual Day of Peace.

artsed4all Arts Education, Media Arts, STEAM, Technology

Hands across the Water

Today, a huge storm closed schools all over the Bay Area, but yesterday, a brave young woman took to the podium to speak out for “those 66 million girls who are out of school.”

Pakistan’s Malala Yousafzai is the “first Pashtun, the first Pakistani, and the first young person” to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Malala added with good humor, “I am pretty certain that I am also the first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize who still fights with her younger brothers.” Sharing the honor with 60-year old children’s rights activist Kailash Satyarthi of India, Malala accepted the prize on behalf of children all over the world. “It is for those forgotten children who want education. It is for those frightened children who want peace. It is for those voiceless children who want change.”

In her speech, Malala spoke of her love of learning and recalled “when my friends and I would decorate our hands with henna for special occasions. Instead of drawing flowers and patterns we would paint our hands with mathematical formulas and equations.”


Rooftop’s fourth grade Susty Girls celebrated by creating art from their own hands, while listening to Malala’s Nobel address.

Dear brothers and sisters, the so-called world of adults may understand it, but we children don’t. Why is it that countries which we call “strong” are so powerful in creating wars but so weak in bringing peace? Why is it that giving guns is so easy but giving books is so hard? Why is it that making tanks is so easy, but building schools is so difficult?

As we are living in the modern age, the 21st century and we all believe that nothing is impossible. We can reach the moon and maybe soon will land on Mars. Then, in this, the 21st century, we must be determined that our dream of quality education for all will also come true.

So let us bring equality, justice and peace for all. Not just the politicians and the world leaders, we all need to contribute. Me. You. It is our duty.

So we must work … and not wait.

Click here for video and transcript of the Nobel Lecture by Malala Yousafzai, Oslo, 10 December 2014.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Malala challenges girls everywhere to try their hand at coding by participating in The Hour of Code.

http://hourofcode.com/us

Students are encouraged to access and learn from these coding activities and tutorials all year round:

 

artsed4all Art & the Environment

Make that Change

Marcus & The North Star

Composer/educator Marcus Shelby received a Blue Marble in 2010 that he took with him to Japan when conducting the Count Basie Orchestra at the Blue Note in Tokyo. Marcus has since been exploring environmental issues in his own work as a composer of music and in his role as a teaching artist at Rooftop School. In his residency this year, Marcus introduced our K-8 students to the music of the cool jazz period, and shared the history of the green movement. His “Green & Blues” residency used music to illustrate environmental concepts, such as the 3+Rs, Renewable Energy, Sustainable Transport, and Waste Management. Music is a fantastic means to engage, involve, unify and spur people to action.

With The North Star Project in 2012, students explored the theme of the green economy and sustainability, and they talked about what they could do themselves to encourage others to “go green” and “live blue. They created their own artistic responses with poetry, music, dance and drama, and worked with art teacher Cyndy Sugawara to create eco-awareness video PSA’s for two community performances. The student-led performances also featured students as the set designers, stage managers, DJ’s and emcees.

 

Dezyre & Max are two best friends at Rooftop who were inspired to act after attending the North Star assembly. After seeing a PSA created by a Rooftop 8th grader, Daniel, about the impact of plastic pollution on the ocean, they were especially saddened to see a photo of a turtle eating a plastic bag. Dezyre and Max were determined to do something to help and they worked together to start a litter club. After Dezyre made a sign inviting others to join their efforts, and their teacher, Mr. John Mayhew shared his student’s plans.

Dezyre and Max really wanted to share their story, so we documented their daily routine on the playground using the Flip Camera received from EarthEcho. Their video is scored with music by Marcus Shelby, who graciously offered his support to our student effort to make a change.

Kids working together with their friends to create change on behalf of The Blue Marble.

artsed4all Arts Education, Drama / Theatre

The Human Rube Goldberg Machine

In 2009, the Rooftop teachers reported back to school and went right back to the business of play with our Art Is… Innovation study.  In this team-building exercise, the teachers worked together to make one big human Rube Goldberg Machine.  The simple task of moving a ball through the machine was completed with great panache, as each teacher came up with their own unique way to pass a ball to the next person.  The goal was to pass 40 balls safely through the machine, without dropping any.

Innovative solutions are often possible when problems are tackled from a different perspective, and new insights are drawn.  When the global design firm IDEO comes up with new ideas in order to solve a problem, they often get inspiration from analogous situations. They may look at the team effort of a racing pit crew and apply their observations and insights to designing an environment for an operating room in a hospital.

Link to IDEO’s Design Thinking Toolkit for Educators

After completing the activity, the Rooftop teachers talked about the challenges that they encountered, and the different ways that they solved the problems.  Sometimes, an artistic experience can help people look at everyday life from a different perspective.  The group found the activity to be a good metaphor for the student educational experience at Rooftop.  Teachers must work together in synchronicity to ensure that the children travel through their time at school.  The children are touched by many hands as they go through their 9 years at Rooftop, and the members of the school team do not work in isolation.  Education is a team effort.

artsed4all Art & the Environment, Music, Visual Arts

The Fundred Project

Artist Mel Chin’s The Fundred Dollar Bill Project invites children to create their own Fundred dollar bill to symbolically raise $300,000,000, the estimated cost to treat New Orleans soil to create a lead-safe New Orleans. In New Orleans alone 86,000 properties are estimated to have unsafe levels of lead in the soil. At least 30% of the inner city childhood population is affected from lead-poisoning. Operation Paydirt provides the science to transform lead so that it is no longer harmful and a citywide implementation strategy with the potential of creating a model for all cities facing a similar threat.  http://fundred.org/

You are invited to contribute your own original Fundred to the project.  Start by downloading the Fundred template, and get creative!  http://fundred.org/get-involved/

Image

Preparing for the Second Line

The Second Line parade is a New Orleans tradition that arose out of the two parts of a jazz funeral. The second line is a celebration of the life of the deceased, typically held by Social (Aide) & Pleasure Club of the neighborhood. Once a funeral service was over, a procession would travel from the church to the cemetery.  Led by a “Grand Marshal,” a brass band would play slow sad music representing the struggles, the hardships, the ups and downs of life. On the way back after the burial, the music would become more joyful. A Main Line is the “main section or the members of the actual club, that has the permit to parade. The “second line” refers to the group of people following the “main line.”

In the “Crescent City,” there are dozens of different second line parades put on throughout the year, held in neighborhoods all across the city. Each second parade has its own style and character, but there are the basics: a brass band, jubilant dancing in the street and people all decked out in colorful attire: sashes, hats and bonnets, parasols and banners.

“Oh Lord, I want to be in that number when the Saints go marching in…”

 

The Mask, The Umbrella  & The Song

Ms. Sugawara’s 7th graders made masks featuring a symbol designed by each student to represent their family’s cultural heritage.  The teachers decorated second line umbrellas for their classrooms. Louis Armstrong recorded “When the Saints Go Marching In” in 1938, and the song has remained a tried and true staple of American Music since then.  There are close to 1,000 different recordings of the song by artists as varied as Bruce Springsteen, Ray Charles, The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, James Brown, and even the Beatles, whose version was on the “B” side of the their first commercial release in 1961.  But it’s Satchmo’s version that people turn to capture that familiar New Orleans Spirit.

 

artsed4all Media Arts

Camera-less Animation

Rooftop Arts Coordinator Amy Balsbaugh worked with Mr. Roger’s 4th grade classroom to create “Ku-Ka-Illuminoku,” a stop-motion animated film using celluloid film strips, thumbtacks, Sharpie markers, and an old-school projector.

This camera-less technique was the perfect way to illuminate students’ interest in analog and digital film projects. As you’ll hear in Amy’s “In the Classroom” interview with KQED, there were a lot of “Oohs and aahs.”