1. Hunter-gatherers
2. Agriculture & villages 
3. Towns & metallurgy
   

Why Rick Chose Our Expedtion
By Hannah M.

I am very interested in why Rick chose “Making History” as the room 17 expedition. I think parents and other students might be interested, too, so I did the following interview with him.

Hannah: Why did you chose the expedition you did?
Rick: I chose it was because I think it’s wonderful and also fun.
It’s also important to learn about different cultures.

H: Could you explain what the expedition is?
R: Making your own culture and learning about others.

H: What year was the first year doing this expedition?
R: 2000

H: Was it the same how you teached 7 years ago?
R: I teach the same but it’s still different because of the different students I get each year. I also learn a few things myself every time I do this expedition.

Room 17’s Trip to Wilderness Awareness School
By:Hans T.

In early October we went to Wilderness Awerness School to learn how to live in the wilderness. We learned how to make shelters & we also learned how to make fire with the bow-drill technique.We will go again in early November.

making "fire-bundles" with dry moss, grass, bark, and cottonwood seeds.

completed fire-bundles

demonstrating how to make a twig tent

using a bow-drill to create a spark

kids practice using a bow-drill

with a spark, breathing life into a fire-bundle

a successful fire

SHELTER MAKING

using available materials to make a shelter

using a tree to make a shelter with moss, twigs

using ferns, trees, and branches for a shelter

THE SCIENCE ASSEMBLY
by Hans T.

Today at the Science Assembly, four teachers from the Pacific Science Center did activities and talked to kids from our school. Some things they did with us were: talking to us about different types of engineering, electrical, mechanical, aeronautical, civil (roads, damns and bridges)

With electrical, they showed us a bike that you could hook up to an electric guitar. They hit a button on the guitar and played while the bike was being pedaled.

They demonstrated a bottle rocket for aeronautical engineering (see room 14 for discussion).

For civil engineeringThey showed us two metal triangles made out of pipes and somebody was pretending to be a car and a bridge, but they fell down and then they put two kids on the end to keep the bridge upright, and the car could get by without knocking the bridge over. They had a giganto postcard with a picture of a bridge.

They showed us a photo of a windmill for electrical engineering and pictures of bikes for mechanical engineering. They passed out gears and ice cream scoops for us to find where the gears were.

MATH CORNER
by Hans T.

Today (Sept 24), I saw this shape on the street corner, and I thought about parallelagrams and how this was NOT a parallelagram. Then I thought "what would I call this shape?" Can you help me identify it? Please email me with your answer (click here or on the picture to email).

Visting the Food Bank
by Hans T.

On Tuesday, Sept 18, Room 17 students went to the Foodbank in the U-District. We learned that not all people can afford to buy food, so they come to the Foodbank to get food to cook for their families. 10 or eleven kids went upstairs to sort out perishable food items.

Sorting out pastries, bread, vegetable and fruit, and rice.

The rest of us stayed downstairs and filled small bags with rice and flour.I thought bagging rice was fun, and felt sorry for the kids who might have had to sort out the semi-rotten vegetables. We finished just in time to catch the Metro bus back to school before lunch. We will do this once a month this year.

Learning about World Geometry

by Hans T.

What is World Geometry? Hemispheres, countries, and continents and oceans all make  up  the geometry of the world. We have already learned that about 70% of the earth’s surface is covered with water. Oceans and continents can be in the north, south, east or west hemispheres. We also learned where countries and continents were located and identified what hemisphere that they are in. Washington State is called a Northwestern state, but all the United States are located in the Northwestern Hemisphere.

FUN Internet Facts: The exact geographic center of the northwest hemisphere is located in Poniatowski, just a few miles west of Wausau, Wisconsin. Poniatowski is half way between the Equator and the North Pole and half way between Greenwich Meridian and the International Date Line. There are only four places like this in the entire world with two being under water and the other in China. The site is located in a cornfield and marked with the Reitbrock Geographical Marker.