Another Exciting Math Lesson outside

I came across a fantastic BBC documentary for social studies called “What the Greeks Did for Us” which showed the innovations of Archimedes, Pythagoras, and other ancient Greeks. Something that caught my eye was around the 15:00 minute mark of the documentary- a piece on how the Greeks used geometry to drill through a mountain from either side and met perfectly in the middle.

Deciding to put it to the test for ourselves (go cross curricular connections!), I borrowed some clay from the art teacher, dowels, string and straws from the science lab and headed outside with the students.

First I explained the situation: a village of ancient Greeks is worried that they will be cut off from their fresh water supply on the North side of a mountain, if there is an attack from an enemy. They have an idea- drill through the mountain to create a tunnel. This wasn’t a totally crazy idea for the time as many aqueducts and incredibly elaborate irrigation systems had been developed. So off they set with picks and chisels. Soon, as you can imagine, they felt daunted by the task. They decided to send a team to the opposite side of the mountain so that they could double their efforts and complete the task more quickly. But how could they be sure that they would meet in the middle?

I asked the students to stick a dowel through the mountain from both the north and south and try to meet in the middle. Try as we might, no luck.

They played around with the string and dowels for about 5 minutes before I prompted them by sticking 4 of them in the ground at each quadrant around the mountain. This prompted some of them to use the knowledge of angles and degrees. They were on the right track by still needed prompting. I asked them to consider what we had learned previously about bisecting angles.

Finally, they had a square (ABCD) set up around the mountain (with string) and used point A and C as starting points for drilling. They used a square set to enter the dowel into the mountain (45 degree angle from corner post) and VOILA! they met in the middle! We “drilled”  a hole through the mountain, stuck in the straws and poured water through the straws. Much to our astonishment, water came all the way through!

All in all, this was a complete success and an incredible way to show the importance of circumference, perimeter, angles and bisecting angle. Not to mention a great activity for outdoors!

Long-term memory, here we come!

Can multiple intelligences enhance long-term retention of information, facts, or ideas?

Why is it that we all remember, as adults, the projects and science labs we completed in school? More to the point, how does a grade seven Ancient Egypt banquet hold more sway with the ol’ hippocampus than the trigonometry we spent hours labouring over? The answer is simple. Humans learn through context-based, personalized, tactile-based activities.

One of my favourite multiple intelligence activities is the body/picture smart task “create a plasticine/ claymation scene.” Students never cease to amaze me with their creativity and imagination; but what surprises me more is that this small task creates such deep learning.

The first claymation task I developed was designed as a “choice activity” for Lit Circles. Body Smart Character Detectives were asked to recreate four key scenes from their novel and to provide page numbers and a caption to support their plasticine work; Visual Smart Detectives were asked to sketch four scene and so forth. The results were phenomenal. Although I had only provided students with three small pieces of clay, they creates wonderfully detailed scenes.

I have since used this activity for math, science, and social studies, as way of engaging students with a particular topic on a level that might otherwise be somewhat one-dimensional (read: dull).  From models of the earth’s layers and thematic poetry to fraction circles and ancient Egyptian tablets, visual and tactile learning pushes students to personalize their learning. Unlike a worksheet that asks students to uniformly present their ideas either correctly or incorrectly, these activities engage students and involve them emotionally with their learning- hence the long-term retention.

Case in point: I assigned students a small homework task. I provided them with a “pinwheel” worksheet (see samples on my website http://www.mi-classroom.com). The eight MI activities were designed to draw out the student’s understanding of power in Ancient Egypt. 8/12 students chose the visual task: recreate the Palette of Narmer. What was interesting was that as they explained their favourite part of the task to the class the next day, they went into detail about the unification of upper and lower Egypt, the symbolism of power and the ideals of ancient kings in more depth than I could have anticipated; each student offered a unique Palette, with a detailed synopsis of its key information.

LOGIC SMART and SELF SMART SAMPLES

VISUAL SMART SAMPLES

I strongly believe that the reason science labs and field trips appeal so much to us, is the same reason these small tactile activities also appeal: haptically acquired information = unconscious learning.

Essentially, students who use visual and tactile tools to complete a task encode information differently than those completed completed on paper; they store information in their long term memory because it is a) interesting b) personal and c) contextual.

Words can certainly help us in the short term, but there just might be a strong case to be made for tactile, musical and visual learning tools. And if this can be proved than can we make a case for extending these forms of “learning through play” to Senior School students?