This year I'm involved in a project recording on Tuesdays the shadow of the sun cast by a tetherball pole ( gnomon) at 11AM. This data is collected with many schools and has sprung my 1st graders into a great many investigations. Many i've reported here and many I've yet to blog. The project originated at Mesa School. It's pretty cool and has hooked me into believing that if I start a year with one similar project for each day of the week, it will through time have wide ranging affects on my students. So for next year I'm trying to think about it.

Some of my past posts on this can be found here:

• Circles in Space and Time
• EST Exploring Space and Time, A Video to Explain t...
• 
  Sun and Shadows
  
  The 2nd observation, Shadows, ChalkArt
  
  The 1st Observation, Explaining that watching Shadows has interesting meanings

One of the things we did was create around the tetherball pole a "grid" with the pole at the focus of a large circle. Then the directions were found ( north south east west) These became the x and y axis of this huge grid. So that when the students recorded the marks of the shadow it went onto a grid made in proportion to the tetherball pole. It was constructed with students learning how to make straight lines, how to find the parallel and perpendicular lines using angles, triangles, long story, very simple. Very good because we then used it to fully understand coordinates. My class play lots of games calling out and finding their position. You might hear west 4 north 3, and look u to see a student standing on this place. Or x5, y7 and see the same.These are first graders running an entire grid set up to illustrate coordinate system. Inside on paper later they have it. Positive and negative understood as well. All from this grid observatory.

Here are two videos my husband made from his work at Mesa Union about the grid as it was built by children at his school and evolved into use all year. I think mostly they are just celebrating this project with this video but it is fun to see. I need to create some video pieces myself. I'm just working on how to narrate them, learning the program....again any school may join this project and it's a great thing to try. It's been fantastically good for the kids.

You can see the newest video here as I can't get it to upload.
http://cyber3.iescentral.com/sites/mesausd/images/public_media_library/5.wmv

That's frustrating!

And the next here...

And I had to tell them to you today ( I'l pretend this is a meme)

1) Help to Myanmar

These agencies to donate were suggested on PBS:
International Relief Agencies
United Nations' Childrens Fund (UNICEF)
Oxfam International
Save the Children
InterAction Disaster Response
U.N. World Food Program

This evening on PBS news I watched a group of lovely children, now orphans sitting in the shock of their life now. It was so hard all I could do was sit and feel ridiculous in my things.

Don't know how we (I) can complain about anything after looking at them...for the first time today I gently talked to children in my 1st grade about this disaster and how I think there are things we can do. None had heard about it but I have a very "young" class. I also thankfully have a Reading Rainbow that reads a book called "Come A Tide," it is about storms (perfect for the weather unit) but it is about floods and natural disasters. It teaches how meteorology works to help us, how we can respond and prepare, it's excellent. In one scene victims of Hurricane Hugo are facing their homes devastated. I started to cry as several folks captured years ago spoke in the middle of facing awful days. It was so there for us to understand the disorientation and pain, the need to move forward. Echoed our New Orleans, echoed in so many events. But here we do not face a regime of madness such as these people must deal with every day in Myanmar. I'm going to find an idea this weekend so that my class can do a little something. And make a donation to a relief agency.

2) National Day of the Teacher...celebrating over a week or so....

Somehow I did not get it together on time and no one did anything here to notice. For my teacher readers I'll put out a post soon. You deserve many thanks. If your child is in school with teachers that you find human beings that are trying their best, may I suggest a book store gift card, a nice word, a gift of writing them a card of thanks , a hummingbird feeder, some strawberries, an electric pencil sharpener or, perhaps, just a nice basket of some favorite treat.Write out 15 or your favorite recipes, that's a great gift.
It's not too late and it's worth the time. So little recognition comes their way. our way. Someone remembered me on-line this week, I felt glad for that.

3) A day of love for mother's days...I wish...

reconciliation, calm, peace, understanding between all of us. Admitting to our own failures and to our weaknesses, seeing in motherhood the gift of nurturing, life. If I could heal the wounds of those that have pain contained in their holding this day, or allow those who have lost mothers to find them somehow for a few moments, I would wish for a place where we can feel the acceptance of a mother's love. Know our mother's true self. Hold onto the gift life is.
If I had a wish it would be for the time to sit with all I know to find a place where we could hear the stories of mothering and motherhood, and as a people understand woman better...

4)Peace

You have no idea how this state of being, how I wish we could find this .....with no loss.

5) If I had 5 wishes I used to, as a younger person wish for all things material for everyone, now I would like the health I need to be a mother, peacemaker, listener, writer, artist, person trying to find a way. It's becoming very hard for me, personally to find a way to teach as I know it should be, have energy, be able to look at myself. I wish for strength.
For us all, I think we need this.

This is long overdue but it is my answer to the Passion Quilt Meme.


A is the Art, for me my strength.... in teaching the artistry frames the whole day,
B is the bins, boxes, buttons, basics that will build the concepts in brains that are bridging.
C that cohesion containing the craft of the teacher at work categorizing and crunching, containing and conversing....don't laugh
D might be the direction, the drive, daily work , perhaps the details that are differentiated or detours delineated or dozens of D's that might disappear...
E evokes the energy, enthusiasm and examination, perhaps the empirical lyric evolves all from E.
F the folly of forgetting the first things a child will fathom: friends, freedoms, and first steps
to a frontier in future spent building it here.
G is the gateway a teacher can be.
H the help that a teacher can bring
I is initiative that Blooms in our eyes.
J is just in joy of this surprise.
K would categorize (if it could), so in K there is kindness and knowledge and some kaution
M is the measuring, marveling, mind and methodology must be a part of your mix.
O is observing and stating a theory, organizing to test and operate squarely
P with a passion a teacher goes to her practice with phonics and poem, partition and patience
Quite obviously she cares for the kids, seeing their potentials as her livelihood
Reflecting, restating you return to reteach, and read, we must read read read read we must read as we should
S being there to systematically display all the things that you know children must do today
the science, the sounds, the spelling and signals, the social studies, sums and suns and so much more
T is the time the growth will take, squared by the training you have to relate
U is understanding the work has great facets
Very few variables should narrow your view
Watch out for the wings that they might need to soar, whatever the day open that door
V is the values, the views and the vault where you store
W hatever you're wanting with teaching do more to prepare a student for
XY and Z with passionate energy and maybe far less of TV

The last line...bit weak....

The Art of Teaching Passionately

If, as I suspect we are, we are all bound together in a patchwork of meanings
And mutuality, destined to see to each other's mutual success
Then my teaching children, is moments in a lock of life
Each action, project, piece of learning
Bound together inside of the contexts
Of lives, of hearts, of children interpreting an adult. Keys.
A place, in community finding their way into a new life, new challenge, looking
Observing us as we are, as we say we are, trying to figure out
Possible reasons, seasons, explanations for why we rotate
As we do.

Teaching is all I've really ever entertained as my life
With children, with friends, with those I know
We might paint, draw, dance, we might collect data, read , add , subtract but we will give all of Ourselves to the tasks that we are mandated and creating
Into the world we are going a world of hope, if only because that is full engagement
Learning language, culture, being motivated
Seen for abilities, guided into opportunities to apply knowledge,
Develop skill sets, see there are windows and doors that are opening, not closing.
The passion to serve our fellow being, acknowledge suffering, be compassionate
Kind, caring, set up the conditions to allow this child to bloom.
This teaching life has allowed me as my life gift, I can learn how wonderful.
My garden blooms here in a classroom contained within my being.

(Our First Finished Mural, Our Earth, A Nice Place to Spin Around the Sun, For Earthday 2008)

All year my class has been involved in a project that was started years ago when teaching in Greenfield, CA.
Stephen C. Clark and my husband Dr. John D. Puglisi, really began the project around a pole (gnomon) that watched the shadow cast by the sun with their students, I think they were 2nd graders. In time an analemma results as well as understandings of data collection, observation, earth rotation, light, seasons and much of the application of math constructs especially with circles, degrees. It has evolved into Exploring Space and Time, a project that I am now building with their HELP at my school. We taught as a team then, with other terrific individuals and evolved engaged constructive science and math inquiry work to engage students in many modalities and situations to do a better job making it a system for thought for children in many fundamental ways life altering.

This year joining Mesa School District in the Exploring Space and Time Project has really been remarkable and though it will be a bit long in the explaining this day, Thursday May 1, 2008 really was a treat for us because of the on-going work with the project all year I saw just what this has done for my kids. Students reveal so much knowledge and understanding, well, I was proud of them! Every week my children spent an hour or so in an extension of the project besides the Tuesday few minutes to mark the shadow that is cast from the gnomon, so here is what we were doing this week.

Math For The Ages( by Stephen Clark) is what Steve eventually built upon retiring from teaching and he has been generating kits and materials to bring to classroom teachers as ways to reinforce Science and Math Standards by working from materials designed really to induce "ah ha" math moments. You are not told , you do. Then you reflect and do more. On another day I'll map the standards explicitly here, but today I'd like to speak conversationally, as I often do in this format. A more professional discussion might then be built reflecting backwards from the event, as I try to put it in the dialog of my think aloud to the blog, into a formal look at the this work.

So today....just for a second I will diverge to say we ALSO had a moth hatch...or do we say emerge. It is a moth, it met the test for "moth." In some way it was very beautiful, though ordinarily I struggle to find that in a moth. And it seems definitely to be one employing hiding or based on it's coloration the children thought so. I liked to listen to them thinking this through. We are searching for it's name on-line. We did release it, but we would like to know more. I have a computer microscope for kids and they gently put it in a small container, to be able to see it projected on our screen.
We captured a set of pictures in the new document camera so we can continue to figure out the moth.
Here are a few pictures of those exciting discoveries a part of on-going science work too. One thing I'm learning about observation, you need to flexibly respond to the moment.

Then my husband came over Thursday as he often does, to do the EST lessons to build a bridge from work outside observing to inside in ways to record our weekly observation data or do a variety of work on skills I name for him I want to reinforce. This week I wanted to hit angles, circles, degrees, measurement standards.

It's time to move information and understandings from one place to another to see connections. As he guides the lessons I have the opportunity to watch learners and assist concepts being built. This teaming we did bi-weekly, sometimes weekly, certainly engaged students in higher order work with more expertise available. I notice this year the mime instructor on Fridays, my husband's contribution, our assemblies in folktelling and music as well as guests I could get or other things we did on-line or with our third grade buddies teaming to write gave some advantages to the instruction. It expanded rather than narrowed.

Anyway he came with some goals.
Most of our work so far on Exploring Space and Time has involved going outside to a giant North/South/East /West grid that was built on the play yard around a large tether ball pole in a proportional relationship. The grid is one quarter the gnomon ( tether ball pole). Then each Tuesday at 11AM (10 in Daylight Savings) we went out and marked the shadow cast from the sun. As this changes location each week leading an analemma forming it leads to much work on why, how this records earth's rotation and spin on it's axis. Withing a few seconds students saw the movement of the earth the very first time we did this a very BIG DISCOVERY, and through the integration of a solar orbital calendar indoors and lots of expanded games and exercises in this space outside, students have watched the shadow until it really is making a very nice analemma.

Recently as we sat down to ask good questions about the project and to think of ways to get them answered one student said, "Are we seeing shorter shadows in summer, longer in winter? Then he asked why. Each week we generate a few good questions on Monday as goals. Next week I hope to look at how we can get to multiplication, somehow , in this. i already know how to do this using the grid.

The project is exploration of many aspects of how we have constructed Space and Time in our world. So today he brought a kit created to work with a circle. If you join the project these are pieces you will get to use. You'd love this kit of "circle makers" with young kids.






























It's really hard for a first grader to make a good circle with a protractor. This kit was designed to start with solving that issue first.

As you can see the children made a point that became their "focus." We work with that word everywhere. They learned the word locus as well. As I turn that focus wall into the idea of "focus" as we know it in the art of learning, in math, and here at the center of the circle.


Using this wooden tool students marked short lines all the way around keeping the focus in the center of a small hole Steve drilled. And every child in no time had a circle. Kids in no way I thought could did every step of this, no errors. That alone was amazing. Very validating.

Outside in the past they recall that on the grid a circle was created around the tether ball pole with a piece of tied string and a chalk pulled taut. So they have seen the circle all year and the pole as a focus. In their discussions with Dr. Puglisi they noted that. From the one place to another, a connection made.

Now that the children were making circles they got tag and began constructing 3 / 4/ 5 inch triangles so that within the circle they could accurately make right angles and make their directional lines (N,S, E, W)just as we did earlier in the year on the yard. Another standard.
Perhaps pictures will help..

The circle maker in action, 100% success, no sliding around.

Demonstrating the 4 inch mark on the edge of the tag with a document camera,
what an asset they are to instruction.

Now marking 3 inches.
We use a ruler every week a the least to measure and mark so I was proud of what they did with rulers. no issues.

And now drawing the 5 inch line connecting the corners.

look! They show a lot. Full engagement.

You see the way they lined up the triangle to make the lines.

And then we went outside with grids that were exactly like the grid we work on making our observations, a scale model. We took a compass so that the papers would be lined up North, South, East, West. Inside we had a peek at how a compass works but outside it was time to understand this.

Your turn to do it!

Lining up the compass took just a very few moments because through the grid they already have developed an abstract relationship to the "directions." They will think a minute and orient from what they learned outside.

Time to add the pole:

A small wooden replica gnomon:

From this:

To this: Pointing out the place to mark the shadow rom a tiny gnomon.

Now they are ready to continue data collection in a paper format. This is KEY understanding as I want to start them in a few weeks marking the paper at home on weekends and continuing to do this through the summer.

Our next goal is HOME kits.

Below you will find a newly minted video to introduce a project that had tremendous effects on my 1st graders. You are invited to join. It is called Exploring Space and Time and here on this blog from time to time I've talked to what we have been doing.

It is not a tremendously time involved commitment for a class but it does require my class every Tuesday at 11AM to mark a shadow cast by the sun, additionally once a week they are engaged in some connected activity. It might be in working on directions with compasses, making circles, work on a grid showing data points, construction of a grid that is directional around the central pole used to cast the shadow, it might be figuring out coordinates, noticing shadows in chalk art pieces. It might be playing a directional game on the grid to internalize coordinate systems. It has many forms. The film does a better job of giving a peek.
Suggests even more.
Briefly in Exploring Space and Time students track the shadow cast from the sun to learn about the earth's rotation, data collection, inquiry, seasons, and a host of math and science standards mapped at the MESA site. I'll be re-mapping these over the summer to provide myself with greater understandings of how the project fit the 1st grade requirements.
Please just email at
smpuglisi@gmail.com
so that we can get you, your class, your school or community involved.
It's exciting. In my next EST post I'll show you a sample weekly interaction.

Every song in the CD by Laurie Beckner works well with 1st graders.
I was recently accused of loving CD's that others find, "just acceptable", but I do like it, really.
A Lot. Because I can sing with it is probably high on the list.....of why.
And if you think I like her then go here and read a wayyyyyy lot of why.


Every one on the CD, I now like. How often can you say that of a children's CD? But you have to be thinking for when, to pull them to help make the connections through the year within the contexts for learning. Use it to find your way to build the bridges to higher order thought. At 6 moving, singing your truths really is important.

She gets kids. Completely. Smart. She knows what they experience, what they like to do, how to be clear, enunciate, be crisp, clear, funny.

But the Song There's A Little Wheel Turning In My Heart and the way it was lyrically modified to get kids up, moving, thinking and acting out the thoughts, well that shows the lovely work that this is. Umm I think I'll just show you and give you a little taste.

It is somehow the one I feel the rest springs out of...I find it the CD centerpiece. Listen and see for yourself. We have a prayer wheel sent by a donor from Tibet ( friend of mine that visited a few years ago) and this song they like to get it out, they made that connection my 1st graders themselves, and wrote their own verses...wow...each time through you think of something happening in your heart ( kids sleeping, hands clapping, eyes blinking, truck honking, pot boiling, raindrops falling, grass growing complete with adjectives to boot) My Estevan waits to hit the keys in the right place to blink the eyes.It is a beautiful tune, hit the preview thingy on itunes or Ammy or wherever and see for yourself.

I, personally think Laurie Beckner sounds like a long lost Roche sister....the songs a pleasure and a change from my many male singers in the kid collections of songs I have. A welcome addition. Lots of these songs suggest rounds, interaction, but take one like Rum Sum Sum that one, as a round tool is excellent and it's delightfully clear about what a child should do. Can clap rhythms of many, work on harmony if you are up to it. Directions too like in I'm a Mess. I like this one for the rappy sound. As rapping as we white girls get.

Magic Box ( with that Irish violin piece) worked well with my third theme mandated in my curriculum in literature.(Surprises with several box stories) It was so well written the box becomes a box with wings, it flies, goes, takes on a transportation modality into the realms of imagination. And as I am teaching a new language and the way that language functions, a song like this one expands for us into imagery.Very hard to do, very wonderfully helped by music. I know I wish I had a magic box that could do anything just as she sings.. The violin here lovely, good thing I could play this part. And make it a bit more interesting for them as we l learned this tune.

I used the CD for traditional pieces, Down in the Valley with a nice twist into the Garden valley of vegetables. I need to teach all this classification vocabulary, teaches onomatopoeia too! onions, you can eat em they make you go oh oh u u u ..Very cute.

She is vegan...but her last milk product to go she says was ice cream, if you sing her Ice Cream Cone before you share a luscious ice cream treat I think you'll be happy with the vocabulary you develop as you lick round and round, take a little bite there fellow, of her tune instead.

YES, she has a clean up tune I play everyday. I am so thankful for this with it's brass support and marching get to business sound. Fun.
And the men join in to reinforce they have to do some of that work TOO!

Erie Canal( why do I love this so much, but I do), The More We Get Together, I've Been Working On The Railroad...( bass is fantastic, singable, train horn) all standards are re-done in a bright, cheering lyrical, singable way.

I have to admit this CD has grown on me, really grown on me ( today I'm printing out all their songs over at school-you can learn to read from song lyrics, really) grown on me as I hear pieces with basses plucking, instrumentation that just allows me to say....wait and listen kids... in this piece we are going to get to hear alto sax, or violin, trombone, snap our fingers, cluck, puff, wait for the piano. You can teach the a capella Telephone Song, it's wonderful with children, ohhhhh how sad...nobodies there. Call you up on the telephone. Ring, ring, ring.
No sarcasms in this work, cheer, happy to be alive...exactly right for my teaching)

So If You Really Love To Dance you'll have a song to get the feet going, lovely. How about monsters are you into them? I know one, so I dedicate the tune Monster Boogie to you, shout out there fellow, go with it cootie man. Get down.

Cookies???Try The Cookie Baker's of the Night and mix up your treat, this one is great if baking, both at home and in a classroom.Another one that really is a beauty.i like to listen to this CD myself but this is one I hit a couple times to sing...

When I got pretzels and we finished a treat we put on the Pretzel Store got out the play dough rolled our play dough and made some really wild new imaginative tricky pretzels inspired by her fantastic ideas.
Just gallop those horses...everyday, find a form in your tricky pretzel. Her melody is delightful here so bouncy.


Sometimes I have my problems but..you know Laurie has a mmmmmmmmMUCH bigger one.Yeah you knew it,
Pig on the Head. So play and listen to all the animals on the head in her family sing your own. I know a guy with a gorilla on the head, you? This one is very, very funny.
Kids laugh. Having a bad day in primary might try it.



I can go on here.......

But the point is this collection was a great find. I appreciate it, I kid tested it as I do all things I recommend for a variety of situations with children. It worked to develop many things, suggesting lots of activities and joy, as it should be for kids.
I recommend this for teachers, parents for kids.
....... I might play it to age 48, can't speak for 49 yet!

Try it out Buzz, Bumblebee is terrific to riff. Bring in your harmonica, voice, violin, balloons and enjoy the fun in your class or life.