Between March and June of 2006, Miriam Steinberg's third grade class at the Conservatory Lab Charter School studied measurement during math time and community time. She invited Annie Sevelius, Assistant Principal, and Masami Stampf, Learning Through Music Coordinator, into the classroom to document their multi-week project on measurment in order to help her class get a deeper understanding of "performance."
This is what happened...
Each group looked at a photo taken in the first part of the activity and answered one of four questions:
1. If measurement is math, why do you think this was a good activity for community time?
2. Do you see any similarities between music and measurement?
3. How is ?performance? in the classroom like ?performance? in the school concert?
4. What will be the next step in this activity?
The questions included the following:
1. Figure out each child?s height in feet and inches.
2. Make a graph of the heights in the classroom using centimeters.
3. Find the total height, in inches, of the class.
4. Describe the process that we went through in order to make a graph of heights.
[The last group was given access to the photos taken during this activity to help them remember all of the steps.]
1. Measured everyone and some kids measured other kids wrong. We remeasured and got it almost right but get the right answers.
2. Then we waited for a few weeks and we remeasured and got a diffrent height. Some heights were more then their first height and some were smaller then their first height.
3. We measured 3 times and the third time we got everyone in the whole class right that day.
4. We stared to put x's on our plot graph and when we were done we were lind up by our heights and that's how we know we got it right.
Ms. Miriam Steinberg
?It was pretty great to have Annie and Masami in the classroom documenting the way the class learns. We are a pretty noisy class. I was glad when they said to me, ?The class is so chaotic, but they are doing so much good learning!? The documentation process opened up conversations about how I teach and how the kids learn. Those conversations were exciting, reflective, and even validating to all the hard work we have been doing as a class all year.?
Masami:
?During this project, the children in the class responded extremely well to having Annie and I document their learning process. As a music teacher, I am always impressed with the children at concerts because they are all focused, trying their hardest, and on their best behavior. At these culminating events, families and friends are often taking pictures and providing the children with a respectful and admiring audience, and this project gave us a chance to bring that atmosphere into the classroom and show the students that we celebrate their learning process as much as the product. Their focus, effort, and behavior during this project was similar to that at our school concerts.?
Annie:
?To be honest, it was hard to find the time to get into the classroom for such a long period of time. But once we were in the classroom documenting the children and their work, I felt a tremendous sense of connection to the kids. I already knew all of the children very well, but being this intimate with their learning turned on a thousand lights in my mind and, at last(!), I felt I knew the whole child, how they struggle, how they process, and how they celebrate the a-ha moment.?
