"How do you learn about motion?"

"How do you learn about motion?"

That was the question a couple of the kids asked me today after seeing motion listed among our things to discuss and explore.

"We already know that stuff," Reese assured me. He then began jogging across the room. "See! I can make motion."

It's a fair question and one that I batted around a bit over the break. The State of South Carolina has some very specific things they want the kids to know. I see these in the form of State Curriculum Standards. We don't use textbooks much here at CFI but we do reference this set of specific skills and topics the state mandates. In this case the standards said I should teach the kids to:

1. Identify the position of an object relative to a reference point by using position terms such as "above," "below," "inside of," "underneath," or "on top of" and a distance scale or measurement.

2. Compare the motion of common objects in terms of speed and direction.

3. Explain how the motion of an object is affected by the strength of a push or pull and the mass of the object.

4. Explain the relationship of the motion of an object and the pull of gravity.

So how DO you teach or learn about motion?

We started by throwing some things through the air and listing what we noticed. I threw a round ball, a football, a piece of paper, a paper scrap, a marker, and an eraser. "What'd you notice?" I asked.

"The scrap of paper is a lot worse at going places than like a ball," Jillian offered.
"The football and round ball rolled and bounced after they hit the ground," Madison said.
"The paper had to be rolled into a ball to move much," Jenna shared.
"The ball went the furthest because it's a sphere," Daniel guessed.
"Mr. Hass kept trying to put force into the scrap of paper but it was too light to go very far," Madison hypothesized.

The kids moved out into groups where they started lists of the observations they can make about the motion of objects ("Cars need gas and a motor to give them force or power to move and we need food," one group wrote). They also made another list of hypotheses about motion ("Things need power to make them move - either from gas or food or something," the same group said).

A little while later we packed up our sheets so that we could continue this work tomorrow. I then gave each of the kids a piece of computer paper and a challenge: Design something that will allow your piece of paper to travel further than anyone else's. The kids had already figured out that objects need force to make them move. They also were thinking that an object's shape, material, and weight might have some effect on motion. For this challenge we were keeping material (paper) and weight the same for everyone. However, we were each changing the shape based on our own designs.

We took these outside and practiced throwing them. Many of the kids decided to make changes. A lot of paper airplanes were quickly crumpled up into balls. Others fashioned gliders, paper footballs, or straws. The balls seemed to travel the furthest. However, Kayla was quick to point out that it wasn't really fair because some people threw better than others. Someone else pointed out that people were throwing with different motions as well (underarmed, overhanded, sidearmed). Yet another person guessed that the wind might have helped some people but not others since we didn't all throw them at the exact same time or from the same spot.

So in the end we decided this wouldn't be a reliable experiment of the effects of shape design on motion. However, we learned all kinds of things about carefully crafting an experiment so that it is reliable. This was where I was hoping our discussion would wind up so I was very pleased to see the kids get there. The kids will begin working on Tuesday to design their own experiments around a hypothesis their group made today. They will take these home and have one week to conduct the experiment and come back prepared to talk about it. We'll discuss as a class what this might look and sound like. It won't be a huge project at all. However, I want to make sure they are prepared to really explain what they did and what they learned from it - either about motion or about designing and conducting experiments.

Songwriters Extraordinaire

We've spent the past week or two working as songwriters during Writing Workshop. Each day we sing songs, share what we notice about different structures and rhyme patterns, and work individually and in small groups to write our own original songs. Unlike the handful of class songs we write as a class each year, these are being written by small groups - or as we like to refer to them, bands.


You'd expect this might be really hard or even intimidating for eight, nine, and ten year olds but everyone really jumped right in. We studied songwriting last year which I'm sure helped. But I think, too, the mere fact that the kids spend so much time writing within so many different genres each and every day has played a big part. They write informational non-fiction, reflections, fantasy, comics, written conversations, realistic fiction, poetry, jokes, and on and on. They are powerful writers for their age and that fact is certainly not lost in the songs they are creating.


Over the past few days the kids have worked to pick one song from their drafts to publish, rehearse,and record. Jillian's dad, Clark, will be coming in next Thursday to record their songs for our new CD (Release Date: Spring). We'll also be recording our two most recent class songs - "The Plant Song" and "Reading is Thinking (It's Good for You)" - as well as a song with our special guest, recording artist Hannah Miller (don't forget she has a new CD she'll be bringing along in case anyone would like a copy. It's $5 and she'd be more than happy to sign it.). Look for videos of her visit to appear on our class blog over Winter Break. Sadly, this will most likely be our last chance to work with her. She is planning to move to Nashville in just a few weeks.


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Today I recorded most of the groups as they rehearsed their songs and I thought you might enjoy hearing them as well. Although they were free to write songs about anything, most chose to write Christmas songs. There's one or two others who weren't ready for a recorded rehearsal just yet so I'll be adding those on Monday or Tuesday.

Enjoy

Homework Projects

Today the kids brought in the self-selected homework assignments they had been working on this week. Mrs. Vice and I were blown away. There was such a great variety of work. We saw: a biography of Rose's mother and Madison's grandpa, a nonfiction book about Mount Everest, a hand-made flip chart of the human body, various fact sheets on different animals, an assortment of experiments ranging from watering a plant to evaporation, a beautiful scrapbook with wonderfully written captions, multiplication and division problems, a detailed score sheet from a game of Scrabble with everyone's words and total scores, a rundown of a game of Yahtzee, and a slideshow from a visit to an International Fair.

This whole idea of letting the kids choose what they wanted to work on at home was exciting to me but a little scary too. Yet, look what they were able to do. Walking around looking at all their work as they shared it with their friends was easily one of the highlights of the year for me!

Illustrator Visit from James Ransome

We were lucky enough to receive a visit from illustrator James Ransome last Monday. He was in town for the Young Writers Conference in Irmo last Saturday and stuck around so that he could visit us all here at CFI and talk about his books. The kids were amazed by his many beautiful illustrations. In the video below he is explaining a bit of the process of taking a story and creating the illustrations for it.

A Great Gift

Roman came in on Thursday telling me he had written a song for his dad to sing for him on his birthday. He asked if I could put some chords to it and teach him how to play them. I had forgotten until about noon today when I looked over and saw his guitar propped up against the wall. Panicked,we grabbed our guitars and spent about ten or fifteen minutes finding something that matched the beautiful lyrics and melody he had created. Since he is just learning to play guitar it would be a lot to ask him to learn new chords and a new rhythm in just one day. So I am going to post a video of him singing his special song for his dad while I accompany on guitar. I hope you all enjoy it. I know his dad sure will!

Read Aloud

One of the greatest parts of our day happens just before dismissal. Once the kids get their things put together to go home they all head over to the floor for read aloud. This is an important structure for our learning because it allows the kids to access books that they may not be ready to read on their own just yet. Reading these books to them allows them to hear more complex sentence structures and vocabulary. Of course, it's also a great bonding experience. In this video, Mrs. Vice is reading our newest book, There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom.

Guitar Notes from March 2nd and 3rd

Be sure to work on that new G-chord and the new strum pattern. The strum pattern is counted 1 -and- 2- and- 3 -and- 4 -and-a- 1 -and- 2... It is all downstrokes except for the "a" after four. That one is an upstroke.