Time issues in a project based classroom ...

Last winter, Dec 13 and Jan 14, I had my Middle School classes working on a weater and water unit, which included many different weather and atmosphere related activities.

One activity that I decided to spend more time on, was the collection and use of weather data.

Students collected weather data over a two week period just before the Christmas break. Those who were in New Hampshire last winter will agree when I say, it was very cold for a long time.

The kids braved the weather everyday, went outside and waited while the thermometer dropped from the warm 68 degrees of our classroom to 10 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Students also collected data on cloud cover, precipitation and windspeed, using basic weather tools. 

The most difficult tool was the anemometer, since it had to be held properly to allow air flow over the holes in the top. When using this tool, students quickly noticed that the school flag would be out straight in the breeze and the clouds were flying past at rapid speed, but only gusts were registering on the anemometer. The kids were quick to state that wind speed probably changes due to trees and buildings blocking the flow, and that it is probably very different at higher elevations than on the front lawn of our school.

When I planned this exercise, I scheduled in two weeks from start to completion, but due to the interest of the kids to learn how to use a new technology, and apply their weather data to it, we ended up going on for four weeks.

The most difficult thing for the kids was, to stick with their own movie, and not run around to see what their friends had accomplished so far. We had very few behavior issues during these sessions, no "I'm bored", "I'm done", "What do I do now?" "This is dumb" "When will I ever use this?" etc., out of any of the kids. When I finally declared a deadline for completion, most of the kids were ready, but many asked for more time, or to be able to complete the videos at home. 

Results of this activity were interesting, we had some amazing, and humorous weather reports, some very dry in content, but colorful reports, some animal reporters and some incomplete projects. When asked to evaluate the activity, the students all said that it was fun and that they learned how complex it really is to make the nightly TV weather report, and keep it interesting enough that people view it.

In order to allow students the time to complete this activity, I chose to skip some of the lessons in the unit. I believe that it was a worthwhile choice, all students learned something new, something about themselves and the value of coming to class prepared to work on the project.

When we worked on projects later in the year, more students arrived with all of the materials that they thought they would need, or asked to borrow them, and had a plan of action for the completion of the project. Overall, the extended time on this project payed off for all students in my classes this year.

Below is a stop motion video of my 6th grade students creating their stop motion weather videos.

cmk14

I had a wonderful experience this week at the Constructing Modern Knowledge Summer Institute (CMK14) in Manchester, NH.

This event has been happening in at the same location for the past 7 years, but I only heard about it two years ago. I was lucky enough to go for the first time last summer and loved it so much that I went back this year and probably will again next year.

CMK14 was an amazing four day event with hosts Gary Stager and Sylvia Libow Martinez of California.     http://constructingmodernknowledge.com/cmk08/

A symposium that is made up of "appointments, not schedules" with no formal structure to the activities that attendees can participate in, it can be overwhelming on the first day where all participants gathered and brainstormed ideas of what they were interested in making, inventing, or trying to accomplish over the course of four days, the ideas were posted on close to 50 different pieces of chart paper around the front of the main event room. After the brainstorming session participants wrote their names under the ideas that they were interested in, then chose the idea that they wanted to work on, some as large groups, small groups and some individuals.

I chose to work as an individual on an idea to make a wind up toy with the 3D printer. My idea stemmed out of my love for toys and especially the small tin wind up toys that my grandfather used to give us when we were really little. My father told me at one time that his father made those toys, but I was never able to ask my grandfather how, since he died when I was eight. What I learned was that it is more complicated than I thought, but I did get a working model by the end of the four days, learned a ton about how to design for 3D printing, and the limitations of the 3D printer that was available.

My goal in this was to learn enough about 3D printing, to help word grant writing for fundraising, in order to purchase a 3D printer to use in my science classes. While I was making my parts, I had many discussions with other teachers there, and one mentioned  that it would be cool if we could make a scale model of the solar system with the 3D printer. Just imagine how large that would be!!

Other awesome projects included a large Rube Goldberg machine, which used a large variety of recycled materials, electronics, water and bubbles to pull a sign open. This was an amazing problem solving activity, with so many different parts that had to work together to solve one problem.

 Another great aspect of CMK14, was the field trip to the MIT Media lab where we met Mitchel Resnick, one of the people involved in the making of the Scratch programing language for kids (and adults). I loved his take on the 'hour of code' that happened last winter, he mentioned that only an hour isn't long enough, and the kids (and adults) should be doing real coding, instead of playing code games, which were part of the 'hour'. Mr. Resnick explained how Scratch was developed and the new development of Scratch Jr. for younger kids.

Also at MIT, about half of us stayed for a fireside chat with Marvin Minsky one of the founders of the Media Lab, who was also one of the developers of the Logo Programing language for kids. He has quite the insight on teaching and learning, this year I took away from his chat this: "when they say, don't do it, don't listen", "currently the US is in a science desert", "Fortran is a much better programing language, it can do anything" and "never worry about a problem, find the right person."  

Mr. Minsky this year received, the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Information and Communication Technologies category. He is regarded as the founding father of artificial intelligence and the author of key theoretical and practical contributions in mathematics, cognitive science, robotics and philosophy. Not only that, he is willing to sit down with a group of educators and say that he stopped lecturing and decided to allow students to ask the questions that they wanted to learn about. 

An amazing man, and my hero! Mr. Minsky is also my inspiration to be a better teacher, by giving kids opportunities to learn, rather than spending time listening to me lecture.

 This is a Makey Makey sound garden

Below is an interactive heart beat, using a MakeyMakey and a sound program.

And one of my favorite projects, a light sensing chicken coop.





On Thursday we met Cam Perron, who pretty much single handedly from the age of 12 to now (he's about 19) has found more Negro League Baseball players than he, or anyone thought possible. Not only that, he has also found enough information on many of the former players to prove to Major League Baseball that they played the four years required in the Negro League, to earn a MLB pension. Check out this video on him. In my humble opinion, this young man deserves a Nobel Prize for all of his volunteer efforts on behalf of the Negro League players.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paoOpWzY-P8&index=2&list=FLf7k68NC_uo148DA92uOwmg

We also met tree house builder Pete Nelson and learned how he started building and continues to build tree houses all over the country. He was quite interesting and down to Earth about his methods, willing to share is ideas and plans, especially how to care for the trees that are used in construction.

I plan to bring the CMK14 energy to my classroom this year and look forward to seeing what my students will WOW me with.

Why projects are important to learning.

After the recent science fair at my school, one held a discussion of how the science fair went, what they liked and what they would do differently next time. This group of 7th graders asked if they would be assigned a project similar to what the 8th grade made for this year's science fair, next year.
I told them that they would be assigned almost the same project with some stricter rules about what could or could not be used for materials, especially given that one student this year went ahead and used the templates that I had put on the forbidden materials list from day one.

As the discussion went on, one of the kids mentioned a project and said that they expected something far better from the student who made it, stating "that student is so smart, we thought their project would be far better than all of the others". This lead to a discussion of how some people are more mechanically inclined than others regardless of what we consider as 'smarts'.

Later I got to thinking about this and looking back over the past year of project based activities in my classroom, how they evolved and improved over time with some students and how some students have totally balked at the idea of ever making another project, asking rather to have tests that they can study for and pass easily.
Maybe this is a reflection of our society, maybe not... In general, we have students who work very hard in class, study and prep for tests, and then pass the tests with flying colors, provided the test is straightforward question and answer. What I am finding is that when I go the next step and ask students to show their actual understanding of the concepts by creating a project, this is where those who can study and pass, often fail. The application of information is not internalized and these students have a harder time taking information and making use of it in any form or media.

In this particular 7th grade class this year, there have been students who fit both categories, those who would rather study for a test and just answer the questions and move on, and those who have gained higher understanding of the concepts by completing some unique and amazing projects. Project activities such as exponents and prime factorization in math class are an example, we had projects that were very simplistic showing a list of numbers and how they increase exponentially (kids who prefer tests) and then we had projects that took actual items such as a grain of rice and showed how that would increase with each exponent to the extent of how much the final pile of rice would weigh after 30 exponential increases. Other students used beads, straws, paper towel tubes, and pieces of string to show each change in the size of the number with each change in the exponent used. This group of students came to a clearer understanding of the concept than those who just did the calculations and showed the numbers. Similar projects were produced for prime factorization, once again with simple lists of a number being factored. Other students created tactile presentations using playing cards, groups of corn kernels, and a stop motion video of a tube that decreased in size each time it was divided in half. Several Scratch programs were created for this as well. My favorite project in math this year was made by one of the sixth graders, she titled it 'The sounds of Math'. It was her trimester project and she used musical notes for each required part of the project, making the connection between musical notes being factored from a whole note, to half notes, etc; patterns that make up a song and more. A photo of the project is below.

Yes, this is a flat, non-electronic project, but it shows an amazing connection of the concepts to real life applications in Music. This same student made her first project a stop motion animation of how patterns can change by color, number and size and ended with this nice combination of all of the concepts.

In science, many students produced projects related to the water cycle and the distribution of water over the Earth. The goal for this project was to go well beyond a simple water cycle diagram or presentation and to take it the next step to include how water is distributed around the Earth, and connected to all of the different Earth systems. Once again, we had students who only took this to the extent of making simple posters, with simplistic explainations of the water cycle. Then we had projects such as the one below, which were amazingly interactive (unfortunately the video didn't save) but below you can see students showing how snow falls on the ground, they also used water, and how the water soaks in and/or runs of the ground into ground water, eventually returning to the oceans.

Another group chose to show their understanding of the water cycle in game format. Below you can see some of the kids in this class playing the game, it followed a Chutes and Ladders format.

Other projects that kids did this year included stop motion animated videos of weather reports, I have not been able to upload all of the videos as of yet from the school iPads. Many of the videos were amazingly well done, with humor and attention grabbers that kept the audience interested. Once again though, a large portion of the projects were basic regurgitation of the data collected without any real analysis or though to what the overall project would look like. I will admit that this was indeed the first time many of the children have used the stop motion animation software, myself included, most students did in the end state that given more time, that the projects could have been better (I guess three weeks wasn't long enough for some of the kids).

I have also included tests in both my math and science classes this year, and in those tests were sections to apply data, or to create a lab report based on data. This continued to be a struggle for the kids who where more inclined to multiple choice preference, though students who were excelling in the project based activities did very well in this area of the tests.

This keeps me wondering why we test so much, and allow authentic learning so little. I am blessed to work in a school that supports my project based approach. I only wish that it could be implemented into all levels of education, starting in the early grades and at home. The more kids make and create with a large variety of materials and tools, the better they are able to understand the world around them. I am thankful for my parents who gave us more than enought opportunities to learn by doing, either by playing outside, building treehouses, helping dad with projects or learning how to knit, we were never without something to do or make. More of this type of learning would be so benifitial to all students... I will keep working in my small area of the world, to create learning possibilities... for all.

Blustery Day

I haven't posted on my personal blog for a while, and haven't added as much as last year onto my classroom blog, other than photos of the kids as we work on and complete projects in math and science this year.

Some of the things have happened since last summer. Mom moved out of her house into elderly apartments in Dover. She found a great place almost all on her own and made the decision to move to avoid another winter worrying about the house that we all grew up in. I miss my visits to the old neighborhood but am very happy that Mom made the move and doesn't have to be concerned with shoveling her porch or worrying about the ice in her driveway.
It was time for her to move anyway, most of the old families have passed on and only a few of her original neighbors are still in the area. She feels safer at her new apartment, and the best thing about it for her is that it is attached to a Catholic nursing home that has a chapel where they have daily Mass and Rosary.
The apartment building that Mom moved into, also allows cats; so Mom was able to bring her fuzzy black kitty Salem with her to her new home. Salem still spends most of her time under the bed covers or in a closet, pretty much like she did at Mom's old house. The kitty does come out to visit occasionally, if she likes the visitor. She doesn't like loud noises and will head back to her closet if she hears something, but she is great company for Mom and even lays at Mom's feet in the morning while the two of them say their morning Rosary together.

The house was sold this Fall to a young man who is currently working on upgrading the siding, finishing the upstairs and putting in new circuit breakers. He is probably doing a bit of living space renovation, possibly refinishing the floors and replacing the bathroom. He told Mom that he would invite her over for an open house once the remodeling is done.  Mom and I drove over one day before Christmas and they were busy working. It will be nice to see what changes are made, and how he remodeled.

There are alot of memories in that old house, and the young man who bought it did so with the words; "this house has obviously been well loved, and will be again."

On this blustery day, January 26, 2014; I look back on some of those memories, one in particular that came to me this past summer when a friend published her book Twelve Kinds of Ice. Once scene in this book is about field ice and I can remember a few winters, when we were kids, that Crosby's field down the road from our house on Richardson Drive froze into a gigantic skating park after a bit of freezing rain and very cold temperatures.

......

I put off finishing this for a while and now on March 12, 2014 I am finishing it. It is raining outside and the weatherman is saying that there is a good to very good chance this will all change to ice and snow overnight, so I may want to get my ice skates out because my back yard is currently a gigantic puddle that will freeze overnight.  Will make for good skating, though the dogs may complain a bit about the struggle to do their business without sliding around.

Songs of Summer Nostalgia

Back in the late 1970s I spent at least a week every summer as a Jr. Counselor at the NH 4-H camps and loved both Spruce Pond Camp and Bear Hill Camp. The summer after I graduated from high school, 1980, I worked the full summer at Spruce Pond Camp as a Sr. Counselor, a paid job, under a UNH-WorkStudy grant.
This was a great experience, my first full summer away from home, learning new things and where I first learned what teaching was all about.  Many of the older Sr. Counselors and Area (ayr) Heads were teachers working the camps as their extra money, summer jobs. The camp director at Spruce Pond that year was big on the Sr. Counselors writing and implementing lesson plans for various day and evening activities. I developed a strong dislike for written lesson plans during this summer, but otherwise had a great time.
After each meal, a section of campers would stay behind in the dining hall and clean up by sweeping and washing the tables. On Friday after lunch, the Jr. and Sr. Counselors had the job of REALLY cleaning the dining hall, moving all of the tables, sweeping and washing the floors. To do this we put on the most recent Neil Young album Live Rust, turn the volume up and sing at the top of our lungs. By the time we got through Sugar Mountain, I Am A Child, Comes A Time, After The Gold Rush and My, My, Hey Hey (Out of The Blue), we were usually finished with clean up and could go to the waterfront for a last minute swim before having to stand on the docks for camper free swim.
Today I was driving home and playing the Neil Young Decade CD full blast (except at stop lights and the gas station) and several of these songs are on that album, since it is almost summer just hearing them took me back 33 years to that summer at Spruce Pond 4-H Camp and I was singing at the top of my lungs again... Luckily no one could hear me this time...

Rain

Finally we are getting some rain today, and yesterday and the day before... before that we had not had any substantial rain in quite a while.  When I turned over the onion bed last weekend, the whole raised bed was totally dry, not the nice moist soil that you would expect to find there in the spring.

This weekend we are expecting several days of rain, I will still be planting some flowers and hopefully get some seeds in the ground to start on their own.  I'm experimenting with starting my own Sweet Anne, but will need to find some good bare spots to get it started in.   I have a good number of flax and climbing black-eyed-Susan seeds to start as well.  I'm a bit late in starting them but they are good for a long time once they get going.

While Mark was recovering from foot surgery our raspberry, blue berry and rose plants came, we put them in with in a few days of arrival.  They came with some cool stuff to mix with water that clings to the roots, it looked like all of the roots little balls of water sacks attached to them.  They all survived planting and are doing quite well regardless of the very dry spring so far.

Currently our wildflower bed is just starting to blossom, some of the white daisies are starting to bloom, they are usually the earliest followed by the Sweet William.  In another garden, the purple lupines are starting to bloom and our three lilac bushes are in full blossom.

Spring in NH and all we need is a bit of rain to keep it going.  No floods please, just enough and then some more sunshine in between.

Big dogs - and perspective

Today I had a chance to sit and talk with my elderly aunt for a while, unfortunately it was at a funeral for her grandson.
But we got to talking about some of the good times we had together and we reminisced about the camp that she and my uncle once owned and how my parents used to bring us to in the summer for family gatherings.  I began thinking about the HUGE dogs that she once had, she told us when we were kids that this breed was a Newfoundland.
What I remember is these two gigantic black dogs that were bigger than any dog I had ever seen and close to being horses.  My aunt had them for many years and when ever we visited I would always ask my dad if she still had the Big Black Dogs.  Both dogs crossed over the rainbow bridge long before I was a teenager and my aunt ended up with two smaller pekingese dogs.
Years later I met someone who had several Newfoundland dogs and remarked "aren't those dogs huge?" and she said yes.  Eventually, I had a chance to visit her house and meet the dogs, and my first thought when I saw them was "are they breeding these dogs smaller now?"
The next time that I visited, my friend's young neice was over and it finally dawned on me that, no, they are not breeding Newfoundlands smaller, I am actually taller and have a different view of this Big Dog.  But still my mind says that these dogs should be almost as big if not bigger than me.
Now that I bring my greyhound into my new school and walk past the kindergarten and first grade rooms to get to the stairs up to the fourth floor, we often meet several of the students as we pass by and their reaction is always "thats a really big dog Mrs Collins"!!  At that point I always look back and remember, yes, when you can look the dog directly in the eye and it is as tall as you are, it is one big dog.
Will these kids go one to think that greyhounds are HUGE dogs forever?  I wonder... it is all in size and perspective.