Forest Ranger Bag

Spring Break is over now. The forest unit starts Monday.  I don’t know how ready I am, but I now have completed one exemplar Forest Ranger Bag which should be loads and loads of fun to make in the classroom.  I have filled in most of the information so that the other teachers in the school/grade level can see what one looks like.

This dual purpose bag will serve as a place to stash portfolio items that the kids have created in the classroom as well as a place to glue what they have learned.  It will also keep the fire marshal off of my back by reducing the amount of paper stapled to my wall.

I wish I could take credit for the idea of the bag, but I can’t.  The idea originates with http://tiny.cc/Rk1n9 by by Karen Simmons and Cindy Guinn.  These two teachers do magical things with paper bags.  They cut them apart and use them to create “backpacks”, dioramas and more.  The science C&I department of my school district introduced me to these at the last staff development.  They also gave us many ideas of what to put on and in the bags.  I left their example at school (and refused to go and get it over the break).  So, while I can’t take credit for the idea, I can take credit for the organization of the content on the bag.

The science TEKS ( http://tiny.cc/hUjxF ) in our district are supplemented by district specificities.  These are the details that the TEKS fail to give us.  For example, the TEK may say, “The student will compare and give examples of the ways living organisms depend on each other for their basic needs.”  The specificity would then say, “The student will learn that animals depend on each other in the forest.  For example: Food chain starting with the sun.”  Following the spirit of the TEKS, the specificities give teachers the freedom to teach that as they wish in their own classrooms.  Using the general topics and the specificities, I organized my Forest Ranger bag.  Each general topic has its own Thinking Map.

Thinking Maps are a wonderful system of graphic organizers (http://www.thinkingmaps.com/httmexam.php3).  They take the idea of the graphic organizer to the next level by asking the students to chose one based on what information they are organizing and the best way to organize that information.  In first grade, they are still learning the different Thinking Maps so the teacher selects the map rather than the student.

When you look at a paper grocery bag, you can see that the bag has sections based on the way that they are folded.  When you open the bag, the bottom forms a rectangle.  As you look at the open bag, turn it over so the the opening is setting on the table and the bottom is facing you.  This is the way that the bag will be handled forever more.  The rectangle at the top will need to be cut on three sides: both short sides and then one long side.  Now the flap opens and continues to give access to the inside of the bag.  Fold the other side over (the side the manufacturer intended as the opening) and glue the bottom of the bag closed. Now, you have a pyramid or a really angular ice cream cone.  See pictures here: http://flickr.com/gp/10816768@N08/p487g0 .

All sides of this bag will be covered with information.  I sat down yesterday and did the entire bag over the course of three NCAA March Madness games (Go Duke! Go UNC! Too bad, A&M, but we’re not really surprised). In my classroom, we’ll do one section per week as the kids learn to control the information.  

The sections of the bag are divided thusly: Food Chain (tree map), Temperate Forest Biome Model (construction paper), Tree Riddle (brace map), Life Cycles (flow map), comparisons between insects and arachnids (double bubble) and amphibians and reptiles (brace map).   

All of the information will be gathered from field experience and then charted on large pieces of butcher paper in the classroom.  First graders have a terrible time writing as small as they would need to in order to fit the information on the bag.  So, I will type the information they give me and then ask the kids to cut and glue information in the correct place per thinking map.  I gathered the information from these sites:  http://tiny.cc/UuQGT and will use that base information as a guide for the student learning.  If they miss key points, I’ll make certain to bring it up somehow.

I am really excited to start this unit and see how my ideas are interpreted by my students.  Feel free to use the ideas here, but please give credit where credit is due!   

Spring Break 2009

This is my fifth year in first grade and the first year that in 10 that I haven’t assigned homework to my students over the holiday.  I, of course, brought work home. I haven’t done much with it yet, but it sits on my desk (and the floor around my desk) staring at me, reminding me that I am being a slacker.

I am trying to work out why my kids got of scott free. There are two trains of thought. One is that I am worn down this year and couldn’t have faced the creating, assigning and then grading of a math packet and a reading packet. I’ll be honest, the whole thing would have been chucked into the recycling bucket the moment I arrived home with the stacks to be graded.  The other possibility is that I made an intentional decision to give the students the space and time to be kids outside.  Which one is true? I am not sure.  I have high hopes that the kids are outside experiencing life (and therefore science) and that they are reading self chosen books from the library each and every day. Hopefully, I am not delusional.

Meanwhile, I am pretending to work. I have started gathering artifacts for the forest unit.  This involves picking up leaves, pine cones and other realia on walks through the urban forests around my town.  Choosing these items is always fun.  I try to think like a 6 year old.  What is going to cause me to think about the urban forest?  What is going to spark  an investigable question? Is that pine cone better than this one because it is flawless?  My dogs (and neighbors) are mystified to see me gathering eco-trash, but I think these will be real assets in the classroom.

I received from friends some unidentified eggs.  R is going to love these. I have no idea what they are, but I am hoping for snakes.  Right now, they are in some sand/dirt in a box on my front porch. I hope that they hatch. Then, feeding them will be another matter. I am going to get worms and possibly snails as well as butterflies and praying mantis to have in the room.  The forest unit has many more touchable things than the desert unit did.

I have also been listening to the Science Friday Podcasts. (Go to http://tinyurl.com/dgjmyj for a snippet if you’ve not listened before.) I have learned so much about what’s going on right now in the scientific community.  There were some interesting podcasts on the state of science in education as well as my favorite so far: a podcast about a butterfly larva that convinces ants that it is the ant colony’s next queen. The ants then feed and protect it at the expense of their own young.  Did you know that ants make noise?

I digress, back to the classroom tie-in.  It’s always nice to hear what’s being studied or tried in classrooms in other states.  For instance, there was a study out of Ohio comparing the scientific reasoning of Chinese High School students (and college freshman) to American High School students (and college freshman.)  The Chinese students, against whom we are always comparing our students, are great at spitting out facts on tests. However, in college programs, they a step behind our students in scientific reasoning. There is speculation as to the length of time needed for those students to catch up to ours (longer than a matter of mere years.) The sponsors of the study hypothesize that our students can learn all the facts they need to compete with Chinese students in a matter of years. The implications are very interesting: there is a need to balance scientific literacy with scientific reasoning in classrooms.  

My reading list for the summer into the fall has been completed.  I am going to start with a book called “Not in our Classrooms”, which sounds like a treatise against mean spirited behavior in a classroom.  In reality (http://tinyurl.com/cjdkga) it is a book explaining why Intelligent Design is wrong for American schools.  To me, this must be a binary decision: 1= science guided by scientific principles in classrooms so that our students can compete in a future that none of us can imagine. 0=science guided by religious ideology in classrooms so that our students are left out of future careers in biology, chemistry, geology and space exploration.  Also,”Intelligent Design” and its corollary, “Strengths and Weaknesses”, allow me to teach the theology of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (http://www.venganza.org/) as a valid scientific possibility. (I am not serious, yet, but I can see the writing on the wall.) Since I can’t say, “You people are living in a cave believing that the shadows are reality” in the midst of a faculty meeting, this book should be a great tool. A tool that I can then wield like a fiery sword of righteousness.

Otherwise, there is not much school happening this week.  I revel in that.  Enjoy your spring everyone!

Field Trips vs. Field Experiences…

The ISD changed the rules for field trips this year. I say, “Hear! Hear!”.  For years, I have gone on field trips that looked about like this.

Step 1: Load bus, with students, lunches and teachers.  (20 minutes)

Step 2: Drive slowly through traffic to the site of the field trip.  Really, Really slowly. On a bus with about 130 kids and their parents. (an hour sometimes)

Step 3: Arrive and do cool field trip thing.  (an hour, maybe an hour and a half)

Step 4: Drive to lunch location.  (20 minutes)

Step 5: Eat lunch and play on the playground. (two hours)

Step 6: Load bus and drive home (an hour)

Total Hours: give or take 6…depending on traffic.  Ratio of hours on non-academics to academics:

3 hours, 40 minutes:: 1 hour (generously: 1 hour, 30 minutes)

This is more of a problem in the lower grades, but it does happen in the upper grades as well.  And while there have been shining examples to the contrary, this is the norm.

This year, the bulk of the time on the trip must be spent on academics. Which is great, I think.  Also, administration wants to know what you’ll do before, during and after the field trip in order to connect it to the approved curriculum.  This should be normal or expected.

The idea is to shine a light on the time spent and make certain that all time is efficient.  It also has to shine a light on the cobwebs and muddled thinking that happens at this time of the year

There are two drawbacks to this. The first, of course, is that it is a lot of work.  The second, surprisingly, is that the teachers are resistant. Partly, they are resistant because the parameters within which the district is working continuously change.  Partly, they are resistant because this is new and new is scary.

I am gleeful.  The only reason to go on field trip is for field experience, to get experience that you can’t get in the classroom.  The United States education system gives precious little time to educating children and demands a remarkable amount of learning in return.  Kids have time for picnic lunches and playgrounds on the weekends and in the afternoon.  During the school day, I need their brains for as much of the day as possible.

We submitted to take the first grade to the Ft Worth Nature Center to tour the river bottom forests that grow in the area. We’ll see if we jumped through all the hoops in the right order or not.