Measuring the Weather

Each week two students in each of the Grade 3 classes start the morning by going out to the courtyard in front of their classroom and collecting the weather data for the class.  These meteorologists are building up an essential data base for us.   Because London has such dynamic weather and so many micro-climates there is no local weather station that is close enough to us for accurate data on our neighborhood.
At the end of last week, I interviewed the students that are collecting the weather data to give you an idea of how we collect each kind of measurement.

An Encounter and An Invitation

Because we live close to two parks in London, (one small and one large) we often hear the strange calls, cries and barks of foxes at night, especially in the fall and spring.   But, we rarely see them.

One morning last week on my way to school I met a red fox (Vulpes vulpes).   He was trotting down the sidewalk – looking a little nervous and uncertain – but with enough confidence to have passed several buildings by the time he got to me.   I stood frozen in place while he looked quickly around and with a quick jump landed in the small cement courtyard surrounding an apartment building where I stood. He scanned his surroundings quickly and then trotted around the side of the building and jumped over a hedge and was out of sight into the back gardens behind the building.  A man was walking along the alleyway beside the building as this happened, he didn't see the fox.   He looked at me curiously as I was standing staring at a cement square that was now empty of anything save a hedge.  I looked at him and smiled and said "A fox".   He glanced towards the direction the fox had gone and nodded, smiled back and said "Fox". 

 I always feel such a jolt of surprise and joy when I see a wild creature in the city.  

I think that is one reason that I continue to keep several different kinds of animals in the science room.   In general, I have mixed feelings about having animals in elementary classrooms. It is so hard to give them a decent quality of life.  But, in our urban environment this is one of the few opportunities most children have to regularly encounter and observe animals.  When I first arrived at the school the science room already had several animals including corn snakes, a pond turtle and a tarantula.  Those are all still here (being long lived species) and have been joined by a number of animals that needed a home.  It started with a container of snail eggs that were left on my desk the first December.  Part of our first Christmas in London involved tending to new-hatched snails.   They turned out to be the large African snails and several are still resident in the science room.  Those were followed by more turtles that needed homes.  (Why do people think pet turtles are a good idea? - we humans have a hard time making a 30 year commitment to another human being - why do people think getting a long-lived reptile is a good idea?)  And, more recently some South American rodents include Degus and a Chinchilla.
I didn't go looking for any of them - all of them were animals that someone had gotten as a pet and then couldn't keep.   They make the lower school science room one of the most pleasant rooms in the school because they fill it with life.

Molly a chinchilla that needed a home.  

One of our Degus  (Octodon degus)

And, in addition to the regular residents of the science room in Grade 4 students also spend some time observing the smaller, more short-lived animals such as crayfish, crickets, mealworms/darkling beetles and locusts.  I hope by now the Grade 4 students have a better appreciation and understanding for the most numerous animals on earth - the arthropods (insects, spiders, isopods and crustaceans) and the molluscs (snails, clams, octopus and squid).

"Rosy" - the Chilean Rose Taratula (Grammostola  rosea) - just after she shed  or molted her skin

I do think it is important for children to have a chance to spend time observing and learning to respect and understand other kinds of living organisms. Each child needs an opportunity to develop their own relationship to other living things - and to develop a sense of respect for all life.  Not all animals are pets and that is a good thing.

But, back to my encounter with the fox one morning.  It reminded of why we have started the year with more time for the Grade 3 students to sit quietly and observe a small spot outside.  Even though we are a very urban campus we have nooks and crannies all around the school buildings that are full of vegetation and life.  If you sit quietly for a few moments you are sure to see some bird or squirrel or spider busily going about making it way in life.  

And that thought then reminded me of one Mary Oliver’s poems.  She has written so many wonderful poems about the natural world and a few of those have been about red foxes that she meets on occasion in her rambles.  But, that morning I was reminded of the poem by Mary Oliver that I shared with some the Grade 3 students at the beginning of school when we first started to observe our special spot in the Lower School courtyard.

Poet Mary Oliver

An Invitation
by Mary Oliver

Oh, do you have time
to linger
for just a little while
out of your busy

and very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistles

for a musical battle,
to see who can sing
the highest note, or the lowest,

of the most expressive of mirth,
or the most tender?
Their strong, blunt beaks
drink the air

as they strive
melodiously
not for your sake
and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning
but for sheer delight and gratitude -
believe us, they say,
it is a serious thing

just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in this broken world.
I beg of you,

do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something,
It could mean everything,
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life.

Here is a link to a recent interview that Mary Oliver had with National Public Radio "Mary Oliver is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet whose body of work is largely filled with imagery of the natural world — cats, opossums crossing the street, sunflowers and black oaks in the sunshine. Her most recent collection is entitled A Thousand Mornings."

Orb weaving spiders have been very abundant this year.  The Grade 3 students have been observing a couple spiders in our recent study of the courtyard area.  That gave me an idea for a short video to try out creating YouTube videos of our science projects.   So, here is a link to my freshman effort to link some observations of spiders with a related Mary Oliver poem.

   

Finally - back to foxes at last!

To hear some of the strange and wonderful calls that red foxes can make go to the Macaulay Library sound archives at the The Cornell Lab of Ornithology

And if you would like to have a few minutes of watching a red fox yourself - go to their video collection as well. 

And just for fun here is a short video from the BBC Wildlife site of urban foxes in London that have been trained to sit on command.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Red_Fox#p00tv4zd

The Importance of Careful Measurements

The Grade 3 the students start the year learning how to make a range of careful measurements .  They measure solids and liquids using a range of tools to measure properties from linear to volume and temperature.  These kinds of practices are the foundation to building a real data set from which the class can begin to trace the actual patterns of the world.  They are also fun.

 It is fun to measure the temperature is on a foggy day.

And it is a chance to get to use new and interesting tools such as graduated cylinders.

All this attention to careful and accurate measuring has made me think about a couple of recent stories about some remarkable and very precise measurements that have been in the news recently.  The annual announcements about the Nobel prizes have just come out.   This year the Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to two scientists who developed new ways to study individual quantum particles without damaging them.

Did you know that one of the two scientists, the American scientist Dr. David Wineland, works at the National Institute of Standards and Technology?  I didn't even know we had a national center for standards! - but of course, it makes sense. We need one.  When I read the article in the New York Times  - I knew that I had to share this announcement with the Grade 3 students.  Recently we have been discussing why it might be important to have a standard unit of measure.

Here is what the New York Times had to say about Dr. Wineland's research "Dr. Wineland said that much of the motivation for his work over the years came from the need for better and better clocks. 'Historically,' he said in an interview with the Nobel committee, 'when we have better clocks, we have better navigation.' "

"Dr. Wineland’s work has focused on the material side of where matter meets light. His prize is the fourth Nobel awarded to a scientist associated with the National Institute of Standards and Technology over the past 15 years for work involving the trapping and measuring of atoms. Dr. Wineland and his colleagues trap charged beryllium atoms, or ions, in an electric field and cool them with specially tuned lasers so that they are barely moving, which is another way of saying they are very, very cold.

NIST physicist and Nobel Prize-winner David Wineland adjusts an ultraviolet laser beam used to manipulate ions in a high-vacuum apparatus containing an "ion trap." These devices have been used to demonstrate the basic operations required for a quantum computer.

 The photo above is from a great blog post from NPR

"Some of the measurements may be a bit hard to wrap your head around, but for even the most seemingly useless measurement, there's a practical use.

That's where the really precise clock comes into play. Ever wonder how GPS works?

'The fact that they have highly accurate and synchronized clocks on board [the satellites] is the crux of how GPS works,' says Andrew Novick, an electrical engineer at NIST.

'If they were off by hundreds of nanoseconds from each other then the whole thing would fall apart,' he says.

If you are wondering about the elementary science curriculum we are using -   many of the lesson plans are based on the FOSS Measurement curriculum module -(which is also a great resource for math lessons for Grades 3 and 4 as well) - of course our measurements not only take place in the science room but we do lots of measuring outdoors as well.

As we are learning more about the types and names of plants in our observation area it is also important to include scale on our notebook drawings.

Most recently students are learning how to measure liquids using metric units for volume and capacity.

Accurate measurements is a team effort because it is important to check and double check each measurement before the recorder writes it down on the data sheet.

It is important to get down level with the liquid to make sure the reading is correct.

In addition, first thing every morning the Meteorologists in Grade 3 are also outside taking careful and accurate weather data including the temperature in both Fahrenheit and Celsius - but more about that in an upcoming post.....

An Unusual Author Visit and a Well-Deserved Award

Jacqueline Barber - Associate Director of the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley

We are very fortunate at the American School in London–  every year we have several wonderful children’s book authors come for a visit.   (One of my favorites was Kate DiCamillo – author of the wonderful book Because of Winn-Dixie).

But recently, we had a rather unusual author visiting in the Lower School.  For one thing this person was the author of non-fiction books.   Jacqueline Barber has written include a number of science books which are part of the reading for the 2^nd grade science unit called Designing Mixtures   One of these books is called Jess Makes Hair Gel and it is often one of the students' favorites.  (You can read a description of the book in the early post titled Building Smart Students).

As a result, many of the Grade 3 students were familiar with her books when Jacquey Barber came to ASL for a visit a few weeks ago.  She was able to spend time with both  John O’Toole and Jenna Laslocky’s classes.  She spent some of the time discussing her books and answering questions from the students and then she helped them as they continued making their observations and measurements of the weather and the plants and insects in the Lower School courtyard. 

But, writing cool children's science books is only a very small part of her job.  Most of the time she is busy managing a large curriculum research and development group because she is the Associate Director of the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley and Director of its Curriculum Center.  So, having her visit for a day was a very unique opportunity.  This rare chance to spend time with her was only possible because Jacquey was on her way back to San Francisco traveling back from the conference of the International Society for Design and Development in Education (ISDDE) which was held this fall in Holland.

At the conference she was awarded an “Eddie”!  So we were able to celebrate a very well deserved award with her.

"The International Society for Design and Development in Education (ISDDE) recently announced the winner of the organization’s fifth annual design awards, known as “the Eddies,” to recognize excellence in design of educational products and materials in science or mathematics. The 2012 award winner and recipient of a $10,000 prize is Jacqueline Barber, Associate Director of the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley, for  leadership of the design of Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading. Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading is a curriculum developed through a rigorous process to produce innovative materials with great demonstrated impact on students, teachers, and educational designers around the world."

You can read the whole announcement here.

Shape of Life in Art and Science

Recently, one of the Grade 4 science classes had a wonderful opportunity to go up to the high school and visit with one of Jenny Thomas'  art classes.   

It all started with an email message that I received from Jenny Thomas in the high school art department.  She wrote "Jodi Warren was showing some prospective parents through the art studios today and noticed I had dozens of jars of preserved animals from the science department in the classroom for students to draw. In fact we are doing huge, A1 size wax and ink drawings. She told me about the spider drawings you were doing with your grade 4 class and I got quite excited that just by chance we might try to do some kind of sharing activity or even just an observation with our high school and lower school children."

We are at a very exciting time at the moment, with students adding coloured inks to the wax crayon and watching the wax repel the liquid whilst making the huge drawings come alive."

I wrote her back immediately and said that I would love to bring my students up to visit her class. "We are focused on invertebrates at the moment - both molluscs and arthropods (insects/spiders vs. snails) - so they would be very interested in learning about how you and your students are using symmetry in your work - as well as the techniques that you are using in your wax/ink drawings."

So, the next morning we went up to visit and see what was happening in HS art.   We discovered that Ms. Thomas' students were closely observing several of the same animals that we had been studying in the last month.   We had a wonderful time and we are hoping that we can have some more visits in the coming months.  We would love to have the HS art students come down to our lower school science room and help us observe and draw some of the animals we have been studying.   The lower school science room has most of live critters in the school so we have a great resource to share with the art students as well. 

Learning to be Naturalists

In Grade 3 students have been working on taking notes based on careful observations and measurements.   During the month of September the students are practicing making accurate measurements of length using the metric units of centimeters and meters.  That includes measuring the height of each child in the class and measuring other interesting objects and animals around the science room. 

 But, careful observations are also central to scientific understanding.  As part of our science lessons we have been making weather and nature observations in the courtyard area adjacent to the Grade 3 classrooms.  After making the first set of observations we read a book about the observations that one child might make in visiting one location in the neighborhood over the course of several months.  

My Nature Notebook

My Nature Notebook shows how a small spot on the forest floor, where things grow, die, and decompose, changes over several months, and what a child's notebook recording those changes looks like. This book demonstrates the importance of careful and repeated observations, and of measurements, drawings, and detailed notes, in making good inferences about the nature and cause of changes. My Nature Notebook models careful observation and note taking, and also provides students with experience reading tables, and making inferences.

Through out the year, Grade 3 students will be heading outside to make observations through the changing seasons.   Recording observations is the foundation for learning about the natural world and all the students have chosen a small spot in the Lower School courtyard area to observe.  After just two visits they are already noticing many changes and noticing things that they had never realized were just outside their door before.

More on Molluscs

In Grade 4 science the students have started the year observing some common animals and thinking about what it means to talk about relatedness.  So, they have spent some time looking closely at two kinds of land snails we have in the science room.  We have both the large African snails and some common English garden snails. 

During one of our recent classes the fire alarm sounded and we were out of the classroom for 15 minutes or so.   When we got back we found that the snails had ventured out to explore around the notebooks and down the table legs.  So, some of the students had to be very inventive to be able to finish writing their observations while the snails chewed away at the paper in the notebooks.   

Here are some recent observations from Gr 4 student notebooks -