The Numbers Don't Lie



Rewind back a few weeks to just before winter break. We were at the end of our science project and in the throes of confronting our misconceptions about the James River. Remember back to our previous field trip, when we followed our creek to its end where it joined the waters of The Mighty James. While we had been there, the children were trying to determine what the water in the river was doing. Was it moving? Which way was it going?





To our left, we could see water flowing over a dam. The waterfall was flowing our direction. And yet, at the same moment, the wind was blowing back across the river diagonally back up steam causing ripples that were flowing in the opposite direction. To help them sort out what was happening the children had thrown sticks-- lots of them-- into the river to see which direction the water would carry them. Every single stick traveled downstream to our right, matching the flow we could see up river at the dam and yet everyone could see the ripples on the surface of the river further out. We couldn't throw sticks far enough out into the water of the river to test the current clear out there!

As we headed home from our creek-chasing-adventure the children developed a theory. The majority of the class decided that they believed that the river behaved differently from our creek. They began to hypothesize that the water was traveling different directions depending on which side of the river one was on, much like the flow of traffic on a road.

An example of the many diagrams we saw
the children draw to show their thinking

Over time, Mauren and I tried EVERYTHING we could think of to help the children confront their idea. We had our Force Battles, we had conversations, we posed questioned, brought up shared experienced that contradicted the new theory, built a model of mountain ranges and made it rain so that we could observe the water flowing one direction. And yet the idea that the water in the James was traveling both directions simultaneously persisted. Eventually, as our collaborative teams met to discuss the work, we decided that they needed to figure this out with the river itself.

To make a long story short, we planned a field trip to play a giant game of Pooh Sticks (a game played by Winnie the Pooh and his friends where they drop sticks into the stream and watch them flow with the water's current). We knew the perfect place-- a pedestrian bridge that spanned the majority of the width of the river. We knew certain things would have to happen for this experience to be convincing enough for the children.

• We needed to be able to throw sticks from various places across the bridge in order to test the current all the way across.
• We needed to throw A LOT of sticks to be sure the results were consistent over time.
• We hopped the wind would blow against the current so that the sticks movement would have to be attributed to the current rather than the wind.
• We wondered if one bridge would be convincing enough or if we would have to go to several in order to really feel certain about the water's behavior.

We built a model before we went to discuss what we thought we might see.

What would it mean if the sticks traveled this way?

What would it mean if we threw them of this side and then they traveled that direction?

And so we headed out to the bridge armed with piles and piles of sticks. As it turns out, just being over the water we could tell which direction it was moving and we could see how swiftly it was moving. We could see debris and foam. We could see ripples. We could see the water parting to move around rocks and pillars. And then we started throwing our sticks into the river. All the way across the bridge and all the way back, the children hurled sticks off the bridge and into the rushing water. They threw them off both sides of the bridge and watched closely to see the journey of each stick.

Back at school we sat down to discuss what we had observed. At first, as I questioned the children, it became obvious that some of them STILL wanted to hang on to their idea that the river water traveled multiple directions at the same time. They focused in on the few sticks that were outliers, the ones that got stuck in eddies or had some other pause before heading down stream. I decided that the only hope I had of letting this experience help them release those ideas would be to look at the data. And so, we each gave an account of the ten sticks we had thrown into the river, putting a tally to represent which direction the sticks had traveled. As children stopped to give detailed accounted of those exceptions they had seen, I pushed further with, "And what did that stick eventually do?" Each time they relayed that the stick had eventually traveled down stream like all of the rest.

Eventually we had the results:

148 to 0. One hundred and forty eight floated downstream. Zero floated up stream.

Dillon: Well zero can’t win against 148. Because 148 is 148 more than zero, so how could zero win? It means that the current has to be going that way. The current could be going this way if it’s windy enough, but….

Sydney: I wouldn’t be that convinced because if only one goes this way how do we know that the other way couldn’t….If 148 go this way, to zero over here, which way is most likely?

Tom: Yes, because there’s nothing for it to go against. It’s like a wrestler going against nobody, they won the match. Cause there’s nobody for them to go against.

The numbers eventually did the convincing because the numbers can't lie.

Following the Creek

Follow the Creek! from Andrea Pierotti on Vimeo.


A short documentary made by my lovely co-teacher, Mauren Campbell.


During our study of rivers, the third grade decided to follow our local creek to its source in order to find out how it began. When our search lead us to a small valley behind some neighboring houses, we decided to follow it the opposite way...where would our creek end? What would it look like? After thinking and predicting, we decided to take a field trip in order to find the end of the creek...

"How do rivers start, anyway?

On our first trip back into the forest, the children found the creek empty-- totally bone dry. What a mystery! They were so perplexed. On our walk back to was chatting with Sydney who let all of her curiosity spill out in questions like, "Why is the creek dry? Will it fill back up? How would it fill up again?" All of her questions about the creek led her to ask an even bigger question,

"How DO river start, anyway?"

We brought her questions to the group and we've been wondering ever since. We're working together to answer that question.

After a few interesting conversations, the children developed hypotheses and then planned and built models to test their ideas.

All along the way, we are listening to them gathering information about how they understand topic. What do they know? What misconceptions exist? We use all of these experience to help us identify what to do next. The way we plan our next steps forward is to consider what concrete experiences we can put in front of them in order to allow them to face their misconceptions head on and refine their schema.

Wind Makes Water Current from Andrea Pierotti on Vimeo.


The one big idea that was missing from most models was that creeks flow down hill. Even groups that included and incline did so intuitively rather than seeing the connection to the flow of the water. Recognizing this crucial missing pieces helped us plan experiences. We've spent days playing with water on the playground to observe "How does water behave?" We've taken trips back to observe our creek to find clues that would help us understand rivers.

All along the way through a project these interactions help us to snake our way through to new understandings. We listen and we make plans to answer their questions, not with our mouths but though life. We answer their questions with questions pointed directly towards their misconceptions.

Acorns!!!

Working with concrete objects, rather than only on paper in the abstract, helps develop one's sense of a number.

1,000!

acorns + organization + blood, sweat and tears = 5,295

Un-sticking Stories

"I don't know what to write!"

It is always a major task to get the writing momentum going at the beginning of every school year. It is as dependable as the seasons changing or the sun rising. We are working to write personal narratives, a task that seems to challenge the children even further. It feels like a chug-chug-chug up a hill. I've been through it enough to know that eventually we will come to a tipping point. The children will hear things they want to emulate in a friend's work, take some advice from a trusted source or start looking to authors as mentors. They will start taking some risks and trying new things. And when they start to see their writing improve, they will barrel forward at an unstoppable pace. But until we get there, it can feel like we ... never ... will.

 Our Writers' Workshops introduce brainstorming ideas for how to identify stories one might tell. We learn to relive the moment with a movie in our heads to remember how the events unfolded. We learn to make timelines and then work to turn those timelines into bare-bones stories that we later go back and fatten up with details-- action, setting and dialogue. And yet beyond all of that there is another level of "stuck-ness" that some writers find. Sometimes, for whatever reason, there comes a time when these strategies just do not work.

One thing I love about teaching at Sabot is the constant freedom to think outside the box, to experiment when things are not going well or just when we want them to be even better. We, like the children, take responsible risks in order to try to help the learning in our classrooms be as productive as it can be. We aren't always sure our new ideas will work, but it is worth a try.

Mauren and I have been thinking hard about how to help a few writers find their stories and get them down onto paper. It brought us back to a story from a few years ago.
 http://toputononesthinkingscap.blogspot.com/2012/05/how-i-work.html
There was a student who had discovered that acting his story out in blocks really helped him to form his thoughts before he put them on paper. Mauren came to third grade from Kindergarten where they work on writing through Story Workshop inspired by Opal School in Portland. Is there a way to bring the media of Story Workshop into our third grade writing without letting it distract from the work? How can we open the process of writing to the variety of ways we know minds can work? What other "languages" can we make room for as children think?

We decided to experiment some more.

We needed to set parameters and limit the pallet to media we felt like would be quick, editable and not make any kind of big mess. We decided on

• building materials (pop cubes, kapla blocks, pattern blocks etc.)
• loose piece collage (felt, paper, buttons, feathers, pebbles etc.)
• modeling clay
• story boarding

There were also guidelines. 

• The purpose was not to create a beautiful masterpiece
• The materials were meant to help us get our ideas out or as Tom put it, "to jot our ideas down." 
• They were to be built alone and then shared with a friend for rehearsal and feedback. 
• If the materials were becoming a way to avoid the hard work of writing, we would need to put them away. 

We set out to give it a try. 

After working with modeling clay, the hands and tables needed to be scrubbed. Without a sink in our room this took much longer than we intended and took writers away from their work, so we scratched it off of the list of available materials. 

"Is this helping you think through your story?"

"Not really."

"I wonder if you are building with too much detail. That is a very detailed dog and it looks great. But building it might have distracted you. What if a single pop cube were your dog?"

He built a few more piece in a matter of moments and moved on to rehearsing his story. 

Just today I saw a child playing with things after he had finished his initial writing assignment. I went over to help redirect him to his work. Turns out he was acting out his next story with loose piece collage materials. He was working. Looks like it takes some adjusting on the teacher end too. 

At first there were children who were using the materials as a way to avoid the work of writing. Over time, and as we stick to our guidelines, the children have been using the materials in ways that bring clarity. Not everyone uses them, just an occasional child or two. Mauren and I are watching, undecided. Will this be as useful as we hope? Will the children who like them still want to use them in six months time? We shall see.

Olden Time Photo Shoot

All throughout our project, the children were fascinated with the old photos we would see. They frequently commented about how serious everyone looked and theorized about why parts of some pictures were blurred out. Was it edited like the children see on TV? We realized that a single photo could communicate so much about the times in which it was taken. So one day, towards the end of our project, the children dressed up at their characters and set out to take "historical photos" that communicated information about the times in which the characters lived. Anna brought her camera and served as our photographer. With Anna's help,the children tried very hard to have their photos be as accurate as possible by making them grainy and black and white. They removed modern objects that would not have been present. They tried to match their clothes to the times and even chose books to read that would have been published in the days of their characters. Classmates stood in as family members or friends as needed. They often had to take pictures several times to get the serious faces they had seen in photos from the past (we're so used to giving a grin when we get our picture snapped). 

Nina Watson reads A Little Princess to her daughter, Moses, at bedtime.
The story was a popular one of the time. 

The Snyder family from Germany.
They look quite serious. No smiling in picture back then!

Joan Adwent hosts a tea party with new friends from America.

Bernard Bunnell poses with his copy of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.
The story was a hit in his day and so good that it remains well known today.

Rosa Maria De Rosa sleeping in her tenement building.

Kirsten Johnson sews her mothers ripped bonnet.

A Peek Into Our History Project

Our People: A look into history through the stories of our ancestors from Sabot at Stony Point on Vimeo.
A class of third graders learned about ancestors who immigrated to America. They did historical research to fill in unknown details. The truth about their ancestors, mixed with their research, helped form new characters. While their stories are part fact and part fiction, it may surprise you which parts are true (one child's ancestor did actually get captured by Algerian pirates and another's ancestor was split up from his brother when their ship sank and they were rescued by different boats passing by). There are other pieces that are completely fictional, like the characters' stories intersecting, because obviously our ancestors didn't know each other ... or did they? While individual stories may be hard to follow, I hope this video can be a glimpse into the knowledge and understanding the children gained and the power of taking on a character for the purpose of learning



A few teacher reflections on the project this year

• Taking on a character: There is something magical about becoming someone else for a moment. It is the natural way that children make sense of things and try the world out. We think about this a lot in very young children, but it is still very alive as the children grow older. Making room for that way of learning to be part of the official classroom work and not just saved for the playground has been important. We harnessed the power of their natural way of thinking to help accomplish the goal of learning how to do historical research. I heard one student, new to Sabot, stop to think about how much the playfulness of our project helped her to learn. While all previous years lead to strong investigations about immigration, the years in which the children created characters have been more compelling. The children are just that much more invested in their work when the development of their character depends on it.
• What they know vs. what they show: I've noticed over the years that there is often a large gap between the level of conversation and discourse during class and what ends up on the pages of something like the scrapbooks we made this year. When looking at the books alone it can be underwhelming. I know how much the children have learned. I see how far they have come in both their understanding of periods in history and in research skills. One of our ongoing goals is to help the children communicate what they know more effectively. That is a major part of an education. I also continue to ponder how to help reveal all that I've seen and trust about the work for others to marvel and enjoy with me. I suppose that is the Reggio way, to try to unlock the process, the thinking, and share it with the world. I'd been thinking about how to share more about this project when Cat (our math specialist) came for a visit. Listening to the children talk to her about the story of their characters revealed the depth of ownership and understanding. That conversation inspired this video as a supplement to the scrapbooks-- a window into just how well the children have come to know the character and their context.