Week of Sept. 19: applied mathematics, wagon train, and more

Math and social studies have been woven together this week several times. As we were finishing the packing of our wagons, we rolled dice to determine how much cash each family would have. Students rolled a die twice, added the numbers, and multiplied by 10. Most ended up with less than $100. “How much is that?” one student asked, wondering if she were rich or not. We talked a bit about determining the value of money — what it will buy in a specific time and place, and how long one would have to work to earn it. The next day, I gave students an excerpt from an article published in a New York City newspaper in 1851, not long after our westward journey takes place. It described a carpenters’ strike in Philadelphia. The workers wanted an increase of 25 cents per day, which would make their weekly wage rise to $10.50.  The article then went on to list the typical living expenses of a carpenter with a wife and three children. After discussing what was a strike and what carpenters actually do, we did some math with the data in the article and found that, even with the increase, the imaginary typical carpenter would still not have enough money to meet basic expenses. What would the family do? We discussed things they might do without and the possibility of going into debt. This led to a discussion of the debate about minimum wage today. Was it needed for people to live above the poverty line? Would it drive out small businesses, or would it give people more money to spend in those same businesses?   Obviously, all this is a large topic that cannot be addressed or understood in a single class meeting, but it gives a clear idea of how working with numbers and mathematics in a genuine context leads to a deep and thought-provoking experience.

Continuing with math and social studies, we explored the 4-color theorem by coloring 3 maps that showed the expansion of the United States from the original 13 colonies to the USA now. Students were challenged to color the zones in each map using as few colors as possible. Several were able to share good strategies for keeping the number as low as possible. And yes, the map with the “lower 48” states could be done with just 4 colors. A few students left the room convinced that they would be able to draw a design that would need 5. We’ll be eager to see what they come up with.

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In connection with the map coloring, we gave students 2 copies of a page that lists the states and their 2-letter postal codes. Many maps and other informational materials assume that students know those codes and don’t write out the state names in full. We’ll be playing our knowledge-based bingo game starting next week, and the state/code match will be the first topic. Students will have their lists to help them, and the game will enable most students to master the list over time.

A copy of the postal code list went into each of their binders — the big binder that stays in the classroom and the homework binder that travels. The students’ binders gradually become a resource as well as a filing system and a way to transport papers securely. Vocabulary and spelling lists, place value charts, fraction-decimal equivalencies, maps, and other such things will be there to use at home and at school. Their student planner also contains a built-in collection of information that could come in handy, such as a multiplication fact table. Parents may need to remind students that they have all those things when it’s clear that something is needed.

Our dulcimers are all finished, and we have started to work on playing them. Our students have a wide range of music knowledge and experience. These instruments are an excellent way to introduce some things that are new to everyone as well as to consolidate and provide a new application for things that a child may already know. We are starting to play simple songs and also teaching students to tune their instrument. We’re encouraging them to use their ear to figure out other songs on their own, and we have already heard some impressive results!

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Our wagons rolled out from Ft. Independence on Tuesday. Several parents have commented that their children are discussing this simulation at home with language that makes it sound quite real. And that’s the idea. I brought in a Dutch oven and a butter mold, two of the items on their packing list. Students could see the three legs that hold the heavy cast iron pot above the coals of the fire and the rimmed lid that makes it possible to put hot coals on top, too, thus turning the pot into an oven suitable for baking as well as being a good container for stews, soups, and the like. The butter mold is one I got at a farm auction many years ago — it’s probably from the early 20th century. We looked at the tight dovetail joints of the box and imagined packing in freshly-churned butter and pushing out a tidy one-pound block.

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The big event this week was the decision each team had to make on Wednesday. After a difficult, slow, and very dry couple of weeks, they arrived at the small settlement of Prairie Wells, expecting to fill their barrels with sweet, cool well water that the town always gave away to passing pioneers. Instead, there were armed guards at the wells who wanted $10 per barrel. The extensive drought had made the town concerned about their water, and they decided to charge for it in order to limit what was taken and make sure they had enough for themselves. What to do? Buy the water? Not everyone thinks they can afford it. Let the people who have the money buy it and let the others do without? Share with those who can’t buy? Refuse to pay and go back on the trail hoping to find another source? Rush the guards and try to take the water?

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We introduced our procedure for this kind of decision-making . . . Consider the options. List their pros and cons. Think about what is likely to happen instead of what you hope will happen. Think about what a bad action may cost you. And then decide. Students will use this process several times in their journey west.

One more important event of the week was starting to read a novel that the whole group will use:  Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie: The Oregon Trail Diary of Hattie Campbell, 1847. It’s part of a large collection of first-person historical fiction published by Scholastic.

We don’t often ask everyone in our group to read the same book, but this is so well-connected to our own journey that it seems like a good idea. It’s also available as an audio-supported book through Learning Ally, which some of our students use to help them enjoy books that connect to their interests and maturational level but may be too challenging in terms of the reading skills needed just yet.

Students will be asked to read it at their own pace, but some parental reminding will help. It will be an explicit part of our homework on most nights, and the book should come to school each day because there may be some time to read then, too. When they finish the story, we will ask them to write about the ways in which Hattie changed during her journey, giving some examples to support their observations. Students have a vocabulary list to help with the unfamiliar world of the mid-19th century. As students were previewing the book on Wednesday, there were questions already: What’s a camisole? What’s a shivaree? The information they glean from this story should help them bring realistic details into their own diary-writing for our simulation.

And, finally, we have just begun our new chapter book: Watership Down by Richard Adams. This is a beautifully-written long novel about a group of rabbits that leave their warren in search of a new place to live because a housing development is going to be built on top of the warren that has been their home. It connects, of course, with our overall theme of migration this year. It’s a fantasy, but it’s also a complex tale that has a lot in common with human experience, as good fantasies should. (If you know the animated version, you haven’t experienced the original story at all.)

We did more, as always — too much to report here. And this is missing one day’s information because I am posting it on Thursday. I’m taking a personal day on Friday to go to the annual music weekend in the Berkshires that Tony and I help to organize. It’s a delightful gathering of players of accordions and concertinas. We swap songs and tunes in an astonishing range of genres, run impromptu workshops for each other, do an amazingly eclectic concert on Saturday night, and recharge our musical batteries for the year ahead. It’s sort of a festival without an audience. As one of our attendees said many years ago, “I just need to be with my people.” I’ll return to school exhausted but rejuvenated on Monday. In the meantime, your children will be in Mark’s very capable hands. You might ask your child about what the group did on Friday.

 

 

Week of Sept. 12: dulcimers, a trip, packing the wagons, and more

We went to the Mercer Museum in Doylestown on Tuesday to see the collection that Henry Mercer began in the late 19th century. He wanted to preserve the tools and other material aspects of life before the Industrial Revolution. Since many things in the vast and varied collection would have been familiar to most of the families who journeyed in covered wagons, we wanted students to see them. They engaged with it as a scavenger hunt, trying to find as many things as possible that were on their own packing list. In small teams, they roamed the floors, looked at the objects hung just about everywhere, and were able to find quite a few things that they could take with them. We looked closely at the Conestoga wagon, which was the heavier predecessor of the “prairie schooners” in which our students will travel. Thank you to Jim Staples and Douglas Gauck for coming with us. Their participation made it possible for us to tour in small groups.

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A temporary exhibit at the museum focused on the American flag — its history and its use in advertising, art, and design. We spent some time there after lunch. One of the more moving displays was an enormous copy of the President’s executive order issued after Pearl Harbor that required people living on the west coast who were as little as 1/16th Japanese in their ancestry to move to concentration camps further inland. They had 6 days to pack what they could carry. Hanging in front of the document in the exhibit were dozens and dozens of red, white, and blue paper cranes that represented the flag. We had a good discussion about this and several other socio-political works.

Our dulcimers are just about completed. After we put a clear polyurethane coating on the inside of the cardboard soundbox, we painted the outside, folded and glued it, stacked on books to keep it togethr overnight, glued on the fretboard, stacked books again, and finally put in a few more screws so we could attach the three strings. Students needed a partner for much of this work, as two hands were just not enough. We’ll finish putting the strings on the unfinished ones on Monday. Then students will start learning to play them. Stay tuned.  (Joke.)

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Packing the wagons involves learning to use a spreadsheet. While some students were completing their dulcimers on Friday afternoon, I introduced others to the use of formulas and some early-computer history. I told them about the creation of the spreadsheet software called VisiCalc in the late 1970s, which led to greatly expanded use of small computers in homes and businesses. As students started to pack, they could see that the spreadsheet would not only figure the total weight for each choice (such as six 25-pound bags of flour) but also would add it to the running total for the wagon. Their upper limit is 1,500 “bulk weight units” — which means making some hard choices. The “BWU” number for each item was assigned by the creators of this simulation and represents both the mass and the size of the item. Although I have made many changes to this lengthy activity over the years, this part has been kept intact. As always, there were a lot of questions. What’s a grain cradle? (We saw one at the Mercer museum.) Do we need a bedpan? How big is a keg of gunpowder? What’s a . . . elb? A lib? (It’s the abbreviation for pound, I explained.)

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We got started in our Primary Mathematics workbooks this week. The early activities are intended to be review, but some students encountered information and processes for the first time. This series of books is part of the approach generally known as Singapore math. We got out our atlases to find Singapore and talked about the way this city-state developed a mathematics curriculum that is used in some form all around world. Although these books will be used heavily throughout the year, they are only one part of a resource-rich mathematics curriculum at Miquon. For example, students analyzed some data about their wagon train groups. What percent of your train’s people are children under 16? What are the mean and median number of people in your train’s families? We used calculators, learned more about their features, reviewed and introduced vocabulary, and rounded a lot of inconvenient decimal numbers.

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We released two butterflies on Monday that had emerged during the weekend and waved them off on their long journey to Mexico. Our one caterpillar changed into a chrysalis, which we suspect is going to have its butterfly emerge next weekend. I hope it will wait until Monday. Seeing the chrysalis split open and a wet-winged butterfly appear is a magical experience that entrances our kids (and the teachers) every time — when we are lucky enough to see it.

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Another event of the week was our first lunch sale. Students had to collect and record each classroom’s orders on Thursday as well as pack and deliver the lunches on Friday. We are proud to report that their work was perfect! This is not an easy job.

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Thanks to our maintenance guy, Mike Batchelor, we got a chinning bar put up in a doorway this week. Students have long enjoyed trying to jump up and slap that same doorway. The bar is a bit more fun. We really need more large-muscle equipment around the school for our oldest students, and it is coming slowly. One of the mini-courses in this session is building a low, horizontal-travel climbing wall on the concrete wall of the Moore building. It will be kept low so students can use it freely during their choice time.

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We’ve been doing some touch-typing practice in class, using some of the free sites that are available online. This is an important skill, as we work on the computers frequently. It would be a big help if parents could remind students to practice at home, too. Ten or fifteen minutes several times a week will build speed and accuracy.

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It’s been another very full week!

Week of Sept. 6 — the first days of school

One of the new ideas we are trying this year is for the specialists to have no regular classes during the first week so they can spend some extended time visiting each classroom. So we had Diego, Amy, Nicole, Lisa, and Kate each in our room on various days. They helped with some of our activities, did a lot of observing of students, and got a sense of the tone, expectations, and routines of our classroom. Next week, we will pick up on our regular schedule, which will give us half-groups for 45 minutes each in the mornings and afternoons.

We got started on the first part of our migration study: making an imaginary wagon train journey to Oregon. The groups has been divided into 3 teams. They have, within their teams, chosen a family from a provided list and then an individual identity within that family. As that single character, each child will be keeping a journal that records the events of the day (which come from a fairly flexible script that is presented by the teachers). The diaries will receive points for accuracy and completeness, and those points will be totaled up to help move each team’s wagons along the trail.

wagon-teamsBut we haven’t yet begun to move because we need to pack. Students will be learning to use the spreadsheet feature of their Google drive in order to select items and also record when and where they were consumed, lost, or replaced. To help them make informed choices, we’re going to the Mercer Museum in Doylestown on Tuesday to see some of what kinds of things people would have had. There will be a lot of questions — What’s a Dutch oven? Do we need a bedpan? How big is a spinning wheel? What’s a powder horn? What are family heirlooms? What’s a match bottle? This is one of the best ways for children to learn. They realize that they need information, and they take the initiative in finding it.

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We started making our cardboard dulcimers this week. We should have them completed and be ready to learn to play by the end of next week. Students finished sanding the fret board, putting a clear coat of polyurethane on the inside of the cardboard sound box, and installing the tuning pegs with tiny screws this week (which was NOT easy).  The next steps are painting the outside, gluing the sound box together, attaching the fret board, and finally putting on the strings. There has been a lot of learning already, including which way to turn the screwdriver and how far a brush should get dipped into a can of paint.

A “mountain dulcimer” is a simple folk instrument, variations of which have been created by cultures all around the world. They were (and are) very popular in the Appalachian region. A dulcimer, banjo, or fiddle was likely to be in some of the wagons that journeyed to the West.

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We’ll be playing and singing some of the tunes and songs that would have been heard around the campfire when the train stopped for the night. Students will be able to take their instruments home when we have finished learning about the westward migrations in 19th century America.

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Our camping trip was a wonderful way to start the year. (Sadly, we didn’t take as many pictures as usual, but we’ll do better next time.) We are very appreciative of the parents who came along as drivers and helpers. It was hot, so our kids spent a lot of time swimming and exploring the creek that flows past my house as well as roaming the woods.

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After our cookout dinner, we went back to the pool for a final late-day dip.

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After roasting marshmallows and enjoying a campfire sing, we tucked into our sleeping bags. I told a long story that was quiet and unexciting, so many kids were asleep before I finished (as intended). The night started clear, with lots of stars and even a very bright meteor that flashed overhead just as the story ended. Then it clouded over. A highly-localized rain shower disrupted the night. It began to rain lightly around 1:30 am, and the weather forecast on some of the adults’ phones showed a heavier band coming in. So we woke everyone up, had them gather most of their stuff, and moved inside my house. There was about 10 minutes of very intense rain around 2 am, but that was it. The kids did an excellent job of dealing with the need to change location and then get settled down again in their sleeping bags on the floor of just about every room in our little house. In the morning, the sun was out and we were able to go back to the campsite for breakfast and more time in the pool, woods, and creek. Shortly before lunch, we went to our chicken pen to see the now-grown-up chickens that we raised in our classroom last spring and decided on which three would come back to school as our new flock on Monday. Let’s hope for a totally-dry repeat of this adventure when we do it in June.

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They were so small only a few months ago . . .

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And that was just some of what we did in the first four days of school.