• There were 29 students in our class this year, 17 boys and 12 girls.

• Nineteen students spoke another language at home.
  • Eleven spoke Chinese.
  • Three spoke Russian.
  • Two spoke Hebrew.
  • One spoke Armenian.
  • One spoke Korean.
  • One spoke Spanish.

• Twenty-eight students were right-handed; one student was left-handed.

This year long multi-media project combining descriptive writing, art, and technology was supported by Federal Challenge 2000 funds and the Palo Alto Foundation for Education. Pairs of students in our class created portraits of aliens and wrote descriptions of the aliens. Students in our partner class at Walter Hays then attempted to re-create our aliens after reading our descriptions. We did the same with their descriptions. We exchanged the recreations and wrote evaluations of our descriptions. We then repeated the process with a modern art painting. Visit our Aliens and Abstracts website to see our project.

In the first section of this unit we walked to Bol Park to collect natural materials which we first used for a math lesson on Venn Diagrams, and then to make masks. In the second section we listened to myths, wrote our own myths, created posters to illustrate the myths, and shared our myths around a "campfire." In the final section of the unit we excavated "middens" and drew inferences about the culture from the artifacts we found.

The final activity of our study of Water was a Water Taste Test (in November 1997) comparing five different types of water.

Tuesday morning we found a line of mud on our sidewalk and debris all over the street. Monday night San Francisquito Creek, which divides Palo Alto and Menlo Park, flooded its banks and the streets in our neighborhood. Some parts of the creek bank collapsed, and tree parts collect in piles. Our flower beds looked more like ponds than earth. Luckily our house was not flooded, but we could not drive very far away from home. Many of our neighbors had to make sandbags to protect their houses. 101 South was closed; cars were drifting in the middle of the freeway. University Avenue was completely deserted except for items deposited by the flood. And Hoover School was closed for the first time since the Loma Prieta Earthquake of 1989!

We participated in a telecommunication project to track the progress of spring across the United States and Canada by observing the emergence of tulips. Our class was selected as one of the demonstration sites. We planted our tulips on November 25th. Our tulips bloomed in late February. Our tulips were the very first to bloom! Visit the Tulip Garden Web Site to read more about the project. Room 9's tulips were also the first to emerge in the 1996-1997 and 1995-1996 Tulip Projects.

The final activity of our study of Magnetism & Electricity was an Electric Fruit Investigation, comparing the amount of electricity produced by large and small samples of four different types of fruits and vegetables.

Our Aliens and Abstracts web site was one of the exhibits of exemplary student projects utilizing electronic media at the Palo Alto Unified School District's Electronic Media Exposition in March 1998.

Our miners staked their claims with the help of the "James River Assay Office" and filled their poke sacks with "gold" nuggets at the Bol Park Gold Fields. Our miners then exchanged their gold for money at "The Gold Rush Bank," enjoyed the food and great service at "Spend Your Money Here!" cafe, and purchased collectibles at the "Barron Town General Store."

Our end of the year Bowling and Pizza celebration with Room 10 was a perfect celebration of a wonderful year! Thanks to the parents who were able to join the celebration. Extra special thanks to all the students in Room 9 for helping us all have such a fun year.

Website for Ms. Surber’s Current Class

This page created by Lucinda Surber. Page completed 6/13/98

Copyright © 1997-2004 Lucinda Surber. All Rights Reserved.