Totally Worth It!



This morning I was sitting in a room full of children busily building polyhedra. There were straws and twisty-ties EVERYWHERE! But people were engaged and excitedly talking about what happens when you squish a cube or what a twelve-sided polyhedron is called or if there can be a polyhedron with exactly three faces.  

 

Meanwhile a conversation started between students about how much they liked this kind of math. "At my old school we had to sit at our desk and do stacks of math worksheets!"

"Yeah, Sabot lets you have some creativity while you work."

The conversation went on an on. I was half listening as I called people over to demonstrate their understanding of these 3-D shapes by building a shape from clues about attributes.

"Build a shape that has exactly 5 vertices."

 

Later, we had to postpone snack (never a very welcomed change to the schedule) because it took so long to clean up. We ran out of time before P.E. I made a side comment about how doing these fun things took a lot more time to clean up and that we had to be flexible if we wanted to do things like this. On the way out the door one child said, "Well it is TOTALLY worth it!"

 

All in all, I just really appreciated the recognition the children had that they were being allowed to know and learn beyond making marks on paper. They were working with 3-D shapes as they were intended to be known-- in 3-D! It might be messier and it might now always translate to a multiple-choice test, but it is the kind of learning I value.

 

On another day, the children worked to produce designs that were
half-yellow as part of our study of fraction.
The children worked to develop systems of checking themselves.
How did they know their shape really was half yellow?
 In our checking, we often found errors and were eager to make
adjustments to have EXACTLY half yellow.