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From the FREEP
It's GeoMAYnia!
You may remember that last autumn we engaged in an exciting all-school thematic study of Central American culture. We used this experience as an opportunity to practice teacher collaboration, coordinating and integrating curriculum, and using backward design principles to design curriculum. Similarly, this spring during the month of April, through May Time and the May Fair, the whole school will be studying and celebrating GeoMAYnia.
The first component of GeoMAYnia is an all-school coordinated study of geometry and measurement. During the four weeks of April, all groups will be studying geometry and measurement during their regular math times and, in some cases, in integrated academic projects. Some of the special subject teachers will be collaborating with groups in integrated curricula within the theme. Other specials teachers will be devoting at least some of their time to relating their subjects and fields to the theme (such as by teaching about measurement in wood shop, or using geometric shapes in art). The whole staff has benefited from sharing resources in this endeavor. We have also found lots of potential resources for classroom projects and special assemblies.
As we did for the Central America culture study, the teachers are using the principles of backward design to develop their curricula. With backwards design, first teachers identify the big concepts that they want the students to remember in years to come. From these they derive essential questions that will inspire student interest and inquiry. The teachers determine what tools they are going to use to assess how well the students have learned those big ideas. Then they plan specific activities, learning experiences and lessons to teach the concepts.
The second component of GeoMAYnia will be a four-week long Mini Course session during which all of the K-6th children's choices are related to the theme. The Mini Courses for April will be:
- Garden Math – doing math in the garden, including making beds, planting and creating
- The Art of Symmetry – exploring geometrical art forms from several cultures, such as Buddhist sand mandalas and Persian rugs
- Designing the Sound Panels in Grace – using patterns, measurement and shapes with collage and other art techniques to decorate two of the sound panels in Grace
- Tangrams – exploring this ancient Chinese moving piece puzzle, creating designs, and solving some of the world's oldest puzzles
- Squirrel Boxes –measuring and assembling wooden boxes for squirrels being housed until their release back into the wild from the Schuylkill Wildlife Rehabilitation Center
- Be Like Escher – looking at M.C. Escher's symmetrical and tessellated (repeated patterns) work, and creating some of our own
- "Leaves" – planning and designing the lay-out for this year's issue of "Leaves," SRV's annual literary magazine
- What's the Point? – discovering mystery pictures and hidden messages by plotting points on a grid
- LOGO – learning to write programs, to draw and combine simple and complex geometric shapes with the LOGO computer language
- How Math Can Draw! – turning equations such as y=x and y=x+1 into graphs
GeoMAYnia will also be the theme for this year's May Fair. Decorations, crafts, exhibits and games will all be related to what the children have been studying throughout the school. Much of this planning and preparation work will be done during May Time, the week that precedes the Fair. We will probably be looking for help with this, so check in with your children's teachers, or watch newsletters for opportunities to contribute.
