Wednesday, March 27, 2013

getting real...



Today the Clear Spring School lower elementary continued making toy horses for their imagined journey west. Not much is real about the journey west, but everything about the wood shop is. My students love making real things from wood, even when those things are just to facilitate playful learning of other things. My middle school students turned wood this afternoon, attempting to make French rolling pins. I also got help cleaning the school wood shop to have it ready for a social event and the annual board meeting which will take place onsite.

Reader, Keith, sent an article about what we hope can become a school movement in Kansas, and if it can happen in Kansas, it could happen anyplace. Farming theme saves small Kansas school
"The math book at this school is a barnyard. And the school’s math proficiency, according to the state of Kansas, is 100 percent.
“Math isn’t numbers on a piece of paper,” Principal Natise Vogt said.
No, Walton kids lug it in buckets, pat it on the nose and fill it to a mark. Math gets their hands dirty.
When the school nearly closed six years ago, officials in the Newton School District changed it to a charter with an agricultural theme. Science, reading, math — all tied to the barn out back, with each class paired with a local farm family."
Read it. As Keith noted, it is right in line with what I keep describing in the blog. There is no sure way of engaging the intellect and moral character of the child except through the hands. I've posted a shorter version of the new video reduced for viewing with iPhone.

Make, fix and create...

1 comment:

  1. You managed to condense years into those five minutes of the video. Well done!

    Mario

    ReplyDelete