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.
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 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.
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.
Pretty cool!
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