Tag Archives: Airplane Project

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Otter Class: Much Ado About Alot

  By joremland • August 26, 2018

This week really was amazing — filled with many discoveries, struggles (that’s a good thing around here), FTEs (“First Time Evers”), and lots of laughter.

Welcome!

Thank you again for entrusting your children to our care.  Ms. Lee, Ms. Kapadia, and I have genuinely enjoyed beginning to get to know you and your children.  

Already, they have explored connections with each other, pairing- or tripling-off in small groups throughout our learning areas.  Sometimes they formed their groups based on the activity: children ended up together because they wanted to explore the same area at the same time.  Other times, children appeared to select specific peers, suggesting that it was the relationship itself, not the activity, that drew them together.

Not surprisingly, I’ve left school each day with a wide smile on my face, and feeling very enthusiastic about the next day and the year ahead.

This Week’s Curriculum – All About Me

Individuality and belonging.  These seemingly paradoxical components of human life are central to our development as people.  They also come right to the fore during this fundamental year of school.  Truly, your child is doing very profound work establishing their presence as a unique person and also as an essential member of a new group.

Every person engages in this journey in their own way.  It can be a difficult and scary trek and it can also be a very exciting and energizing one.  To provide a structure for this expedition, the curriculum during the initial weeks of school is designed to give students multiple opportunities to express who they are while also challenging them to work together.  For example, our morning welcome song (“Everybody Wave and Sing Hello”) gives each student the opportunity to add their own element to the song while also singing together.

Students also engage in a multi-step project: creating life-sized portraits. In the first three to five days of school, students lay the groundwork for this, by first tracing flat shapes,

then tracing trickier stuffed animals, all working towards tracing each others’ bodies.  In the process, students also explore math concepts including geometry, ordinal numbers, and counting.

Circle Time

Students very quickly dove into an important, ongoing task: creating agreements.  Inspired by their experiences, this week our focus was on ways to take of ourselves and of each other.  Specifically, students suggested and agreed on how to treat each others’ bodies (no hitting), how to go through a door (one at a time), and how to help each of us have our voice heard.  Students also began learning how to keep track of our daily routine using our schedule chart.

In group reading, the foci were emotions and punctuation.  We read Bear Feels Scared, by Karma Wilson, Yo? Yes!, by Chris Raschka, and the beginning of You’re Finally Here!!!, by Melanie Watts.  We took some time to read them, even reading a couple of them multiple times.  We paused often as students noticed the connections between characters’ facial expressions and their feelings, predicted future events in the stories, and discovered ways we change our inflection based on the punctuation.

Emerging Discoveries

On Friday, several students discovered a cicada on the equipment.  It was sluggish and patient as I pet its wing, demonstrating that it was safe to touch.  A few students came close to touching it themselves, and everyone was respectful of it. A few minutes later, a student approached me to report that it had been stepped on, and several other children chimed in with their versions of the story.  It sounded like it had been a genuine accident. One student dubbed it “Willy,” we conducted a short ceremony, and buried it in the ground. 

When we return to school Monday, I’ll pull some insect books from our library for us to learn more about them.  If student interest persists, we may find ourselves setting next week’s planned curriculum aside to study “cicadas,” or “insects” more in-depth.  We shall see!  (We call this process “emergent curriculum;” I’ll elaborate at Meet the Teacher Night.)

Some students inquired with Mr. Tecpanecatl regarding the loud work he was doing in the dumpster enclosure.

Music Listening

Image result for yo yo maMost days, we listen to music together to cool down after outdoor play.  This week, we listened to Bach’s Cello Suite #1. On Wednesday, we heard it played by Yo-yo Ma on cello, on Thursday, by Ana Vidovic on guitar, and on Friday, by Anna Dunford on marimba.  Each day, I encouraged students to imagine how many people were playing, or what kind of instrument it was, before revealing the video. By Friday, students began proclaiming their ideas without my prompts!  “Mr O! Is that Yo-yo Ma?” “I think four people are playing.” “That’s not a guitar.” I was very impressed. Next week, we’ll listen to more unaccompanied solos before moving on to duets.

 

Center Time

This could warrant its own post, but if you’re still reading, I’ve kept you long enough!  Here are some bullet points:

    • the easels were so popular that we had to open up table space for more students to paint   
    • the painting inspired some students to go beyond two dimensions and incorporate natural materials into 3D collages

  • gravity and friction, both physical and social, were explored at length at the sensory table
  • similarly, the loft was popular for explorations with gears and the doll house
  • several different types of parties were in full swing in the dramatic play center every day
  • What do we do when something gets broken? Fix it. 
  • construction was used but not particularly popular this week — time for some new inspiring materials! 
  • the library was home to explorations of literature and word structure, as students read at their own level and/or created words (both English and Martian) with our wooden letters
  • The climber was actually very popular, I just didn’t get a shot of that!

Finally, our first week also included the Otters’ first-of-the-year library class, first art class, and first Drama class!

It’s been a fantastic first week, and we’re super-excited about the year ahead — fun, enlightening, and wonder-full!!

Thanks,

— Jeff

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Otter Class: Piloting Disequilibrium

  By joremland • March 24, 2018

photo credit: Otter Student

A HUGE thank you to all of the parents and grandparents who joined us at Chicago Executive Airport on Wednesday.  I understand that several families needed to make special arrangements for it to work and your efforts are much appreciated.

I also need to deeply thank Madeleine Monaco, president of the Chicago Executive Pilots Association, who not only graciously and courageously opened the doors of her Cessna 150 to us all, but also made connections with several people affiliated with the airport to make our learning possible.  

Madeleine Monaco's Profile Photo, Image may contain: 1 person, smiling, outdoor

Thank you very, very much, Ms. Madeleine Monaco!

These included Jamie Abbott, Chicago Executive Airport’s Executive Director, who lent us the airport van as well as the wonderful tour-guide talents of Rob Mark, Chicago Executive Airport’s Communications Director. 

Thank you, Mr. Rob Mark

Mr. Mark is also a humble host: while he did tell us that he is a flight instructor, he didn’t mention that he is also a captain-rated commercial jet pilot, a former air traffic controller and FAA supervisor, and an award-winning aviation journalist.  Thanks also to Gina Zungrone, from Signature Flight Support, who coordinated our use of Signature’s hangar #19 as well as moving Ms Monaco’s aircraft into the hangar for us to investigate.

An Otter student’s grandfather enjoys learning from Signature Flight Support’s Gina Zungrone. Thank you, Ms. Zungrone!

And a special thanks to Mary Linstromberg, our original S.M.E. (subject matter expert) and the person who sparked the children’s interest in aviation, fanned those flames, and coordinated this amazing culminating event.  Mary, we’ve learned so much and we couldn’t have done it without you.

How it All Went Down (er..Up?)

photo credit: Otter Student

Every family had someone on-site and I’m sure you’ve shared your experience with each other at home, so here’s just a quick run-down of how the visit went (followed by a ridiculously long philosophical treatise).

We arrived on time (thanks, everyone!) and met up with Madeleine, who introduced us to Rob and got us out of the chilling wind, into the vestibule of hangar #19.

We’d been searching for practical uses of numbers. One student sketched the keypad lock in the vestibule of Hangar #19.

Inside the building, we split up into two groups. One group went with Rob to tour another hangar,

The structure on the left is a giant dolly used to bring the NBC 5 helicopter in and out of the hangar.

Sketching the engine of a plane with its cowling removed.

while the other stayed to take turns sitting in the cockpit of Madeleine’s plane, 

yes, there is a student in there!

working the yoke, and observing the effects of their actions on the elevators and ailerons.  

A student transforms from reluctant to enthusiastic, testing out the effects of her actions on the yoke.  Thank you, Ms. Monaco!

While waiting, students designed aircraft color schemes on forms provided by Ms. Monaco. Thank you!

When Rob’s first group returned, we all switched.

Rob’s two tours took folks to two different hangars.  One contained several large aircraft and the other contained many smaller planes.  Students had time to sketch their observations …and ask questions.

“Why don’t small planes have bathrooms?”

This was the very first question of the day.  Even I enjoyed a silent chuckle before I guided the student to talk to the expert.  Ms. Monaco answered quite thoroughly and illustratively and the essence was simply that small planes are too small to fit bathrooms into. 

Simple enough, but such questions are directly related to one of the reasons that I work to follow children’s interests.

The question revealed the fact that this child, just like every one of us, had experiences that led to the acquisition of knowledge.  That knowledge represented the child’s full understanding of the concept of airplane hygiene. But in this new experience (being told that there were no bathrooms on the plane), that understanding was directly challenged.  This young person was really saying, “hang on, I know that planes have bathrooms. I used a bathroom on a plane. What you are telling me is not right according to my view of the universe.”

Jean Piaget, the “father of cognitive developmental theory,” called this state of mind “disequilibrium.”  Disequilibrium can be accompanied by negative feelings like discomfort and frustration, or positive ones like excitement.  When a person encounters disequilibrium, there are a few paths that can follow:*

  • The person can reject the new information and maintain their prior understanding.
  • The person can reject their prior concept and replace it with the new one.
  • The person can modify their understanding of the overall phenomenon to include both the old and the new information (Piaget called this “accommodation”).

A person who is unaware that they are in disequilibrium will go down one of these three paths without making a conscious choice.  Conversely, a person who knows they are facing an apparent conflict between old and new learning can make a choice about where they will take it.  

They can choose to maintain a closed mind or to open up to new possibilities.  Even if they finally choose to reject the new information, they will have based that decision on an evaluation of the new and old information and made a conscious choice about the value of each.  This consciousness of one’s own learning is essential to co-creating a healthy society.

At age 3-4, our curious Otter student may or may not have been aware of their own disequilibrium.  Child development research suggests that this is exactly the age during which metacognition (thinking about thinking) begins to develop.  This is a time when adult guidance can really make a difference (Maria Montessori called times like these “sensitive periods”).

By honoring children’s questions, we model respect for disequilibrium and encourage children to respect it in themselves.  We show children that the uncomfortable feelings are worth paying attention to. These feelings are a signal that we are about to grow.  Listening to that signal gives us the power to decide what to do.

I believe that a society of people who better understand their own minds will make decisions that better reflect their values.  People with stronger metacognition may be more able to understand each other, leading to more listening, better communication, and better problem solving.  They will be better equipped to grapple with moral and ethical challenges.

I’m not proud to admit that I sometimes toss off a haphazard answer to a child’s question.  But I’m working on that, and I hope that the vast majority of the time I do place myself face-to-face with a child, and in some way, shape or form, tell them, “that’s a worthy question.  Let’s find out.”

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Otter Class: Quick and Dirty Update

  By joremland • January 29, 2018

First, a huge Otter Class welcome to our new friend!  It was an awesome week beginning to get know each other — personally, I thought it was a great start to new relationships and learning.  I hope your children thought so too.  I was impressed by our new friend’s openness and by the warmth and generosity that children showed him from his first day in class.

Last week, our good friends Nadia and Maddie from the Middle School visited and taught us a little bit more about respect.  The Otter class is remarkably respectful of each other.  Still, this lesson helped them grow more mindful of the ways they show respect and built more vocabulary around respect and the behaviors associated with it.  Part of the presentation was a great Sesame Street video about respect — it was humorous, well-targeted, and effective.  You might search it up on YouTube and watch it with your child.  Thank you, Maddie and Nadia!

I’ve written before about the transformative power of snow.  In the interest of getting this newsletter out, this time I’ll just say…it happened again!  Amazing science explorations and new connections made between students who had not really worked together before.

The airplane has been a great source of pretend scenarios as well as a springboard for more learning.  Students co-built a “knee-board,” a sort of portable table that pilots strap to their thigh in order to keep important papers and writing materials handy at all times.  This tool led to more authentic emergent writing during play scenes.  

As shown above, new efforts were put forth to secure the instrument panel to the plane.  We’ve tried duct tape, twine, and now students cut a long hole in the box, in the hopes of hanging the box itself onto the leading edge of the plane.  Students also painted fuselage panels that we hope to install later this week.  This week will also hopefully see the spinner installed, as well as new instruments for the re-installed instrument panel.

Last week also featured the unveiling of our light table.

Here’s looking forward to seeing you Thursday night1

 

 

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Otter Class: Aircraft Project Mid-Project Summary

  By joremland • December 13, 2017 ,

Hi again!  As promised, here’s a quick and dirty description of what the children have been doing, what they plan to do, and what I’ve observed them learning.  There’s also a useful link at the bottom.

In the previous posts, I didn’t describe these additional activities in which the children engaged:

  • Measured their feet to figure out how big to make the pedals
  • Measured a piece of wood to match (picture below)
  • The door cracked — they fixed it.
  • Pretended to go on a flight
  • Felt the sensation of wearing a real pilot’s headset
  • Continued learning how to read maps
  • Began learning about scale and its relationship to the phenomenon that things look smaller when they are farther away

Every pilot needs a flight bag containing vital equipment and information.

With two weeks to go before break, the students plan to:

  • Install port side wing strut
  • Make and install instrument panel
  • Paint the Piper logo (link is not an endorsement, just a reference!) on the first control yoke and install
  • Build, paint, and install second yoke
  • Possibly add the pedals and rudder

The kneeboard…

…holds the flight map securely to the pilot’s leg.

The pilot can’t drop it and never needs to hold it in their hands.

From an educator’s perspective, the students have been using and building a variety of skills and abilities:

  • book research
  • guided internet research
  • working with a subject matter expert (Mrs. Linstromberg)
  • using uniform, non-standard tools to take linear measurements for authentic purposes
  • solving problems using math
  • using divergent and convergent thinking to solve problems
  • writing (students made labels for various parts of their plane)
  • conducting physics experiments (cars on the wing)
  • iterative design:
    • evaluating the effectiveness of a strategy or technique
    • imagining and/or learning of new techniques to try
    • trying them
    • re-evaluating, re-imagining, re-trying…
  • reading diagrams of airplane parts
  • expanding fine motor skills through cutting and pasting a collage of aircraft
  • expanding gross motor skills through finding new ways to get in and out of the climber with the new door and with no slide attached

A white light in the cockpit would dangerously affect the pilot’s vision. A red light is used to illuminate anything the pilot needs to see inside.

Perhaps most important, I believe the students have been building the following dispositions:

  • the belief that they are autonomous beings whose contributions are valuable to themselves and to others
  • curiosity
  • as they see me learning from Mrs. Linstromberg, I believe they are seeing that learning is a lifelong, enjoyable endeavor
  • cooperation
  • creativity and inventiveness
  • problems are for solving and they have the capacity to solve them
  • persistence

measuring the wood we’ll use to make the pedals

Later, I found this.  A student had measured it all the way around…just for fun.

There are several sets of new photos to be enjoyed on the Otter Class Protected Images Page.  Click, enter your password, and enjoy!!

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Otter Class: Aircraft Project Update

  By joremland • December 11, 2017 ,

building the car wash (the gauzy fabric hanging down was the simulated water, the rope became the washing tentacles)

The airplane project started a few days after the students had built a car wash in the classroom.  The car wash had been a good springboard for pretend play, emergent writing (signs are needed to tell people where the entrance and exit are), useful conflict, and a great deal of laughter.  Students had installed the long washing tentacles that are so impressive when we first experience a car wash (I still think they’re pretty coo!) and blue fabric that simulated water.

making exit and enter signs

    

lets get clean!

When they decided to build an airplane, they first used blocks to build pilot seats.  It was an elaborate set up but a precarious one.   

It needed constant repair.

colored masking tape: our first favorite connecting strategy

They didn’t very much mind fixing it every few minutes. 

I guess that’s how it is sometimes with things we build from the heart.

 

“Don’t knock it down.”

“Please leave that alone. CHECK MARK!”

But with the car wash in the same space, the new airplane completely blocked the aisle.  The students were comfortable dismantling the car wash; it had lived its useful life.  Still, several people tripped on the pilot-seat blocks while trying to enter and exit the room, so we all agreed we needed to move the plane to a new location.

I suggested using the climber.  Everyone agreed, but some students were reluctant.  I felt conflicted.  On one hand, several children fell on the blocks and my adult eyes saw more danger in the future (like exiting in an emergency).  I also know from experience, which the children do not yet have, that the climber has been a rather inspiring canvas on which to create.  On the other hand, the children had created something and they deserved the right to decide its fate.  In the end, I don’t think I really badgered them into it, but I certainly pressed my opinion more than usual.  Fortunately, it has gone very well.

Students first identified the parts we needed to make, based on the knowledge they gained from Mrs. Linstromberg: wings, door, instrument panel, spinner, control yokes, and more.

The wings went up first, but they kept flopping down, so students installed struts using tubes and duct tape. After a few days, the adhesive lost its hold.

At this point in the year, students haven’t built a full toolbox of techniques for connecting things.  I’ll sometimes suggest new ideas for them to try and then add to their repertoire.  As we progress through the year, teachers encourage students to solve problems with the knowledge they possess.  They remember the techniques they’ve learned and choose the one they think is most applicable.  So far, the students have been primarily using tape and glue, along with the occasional use of staples.

For the wing strut, I suggested twine.  I showed students how to make holes in the wing and they threaded the twine through the holes, then we tied it down together.

A few days later it was time to install the door.  A student had suggested plastic for the door, and I pulled some from storage.

“Is this good?” I asked
“No, it needs to be white,” the student replied.
“Do you mean white like a cloud, or white like a translucent window…like this, it’s translucent,” I said, pointing to the glass.
“It needs to be translucent.”

Making the door took a few days. A student used unifix cubes to measure the width and height of the door opening,

transferred those measurements to the plastic, 

and then the cutting began.  Everyone took a turn cutting out the door panel (one picture is missing, it was in the previous post).

   

Finally, the door was ready to install. Students first tried out their current go-to strategy: duct-tape.

removing the protective film

When that failed, I didn’t tell them what to try next, but guided them to think of other connecting things they’d used recently.  Looking around the plane, one student noticed the twine and the light seemed to turn on.  ”That string!! Let’s go get some!”

The door is so translucent, you can’t really see that it’s there…

…but it is. See the duct tape apparently hanging in mid-air?

Did I mention I live for this stuff?!

Some students have been less deeply inspired by the plane but have still found ways to match their interests with the project.  Each day, these students have conducted intense research into the variables that cause toy cars to travel in different directions and speeds when placed on the wing.

“there it goes!” “where?” “that way!”

Meanwhile, other students worked on the yoke.  We’d collected some cylinders that would work well for the handles, but the central connecting part posed a challenge.  Students traveled the room looking for materials.  Mrs. Linstromberg gave little clues, “well, it should be square…”

In what seemed like a burst of excitement, a student said, “that!”
“What?” Mrs. Linstromberg asked.
“That block, the number one, it’s a square!”

With their trusty duct tape in hand, students connected all the parts and painted them black, just like the real thing.

Unfortunately, the next day, we arrived to see the black paint did not take to the plastic surface of the duct tape and flaked off.  Another problem to solve!

They did indeed solve that problem too but this post can’t go on forever (“too late!”).  Thanks for reading this far!!

OK, I know you have other things to do, so I’ll wrap it up here.  Tomorrow, just bullet points!

 

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Otter Class: The Passion is in the Air

  By joremland • December 9, 2017 ,

In the last two weeks, the Otter class has expressed an amazing, reignited passion for learning.  It’s the kind of excitement that an early childhood teacher like myself lives for.  Every day at school is a joy for me (ok, maybe not every single minute, that might be not-human, but definitely every day) and recently we’ve had some days on which I have said out loud, “this is why I do this!”

clamping a wing to the fuselage

So, thank you.  Thank you all for the privilege of working with these unique, curious, joyful and compassionate young people — your children.

hoisting the first captain’s seat into the cabin

That reignited passion came just at time when I’d been sensing a lull.  We’d been engaged in the auto racing project for a few weeks and the fire of interest we saw at the beginning seemed to be cooling.  This is not uncommon in classrooms that engage in emergent curriculum or the project approach as we do in the Quest preschool.

So, teachers ask questions.  Do students seem to be struggling to understand the content or are they uninspired by it?  Does their apparent lack of passion seem to relate more to the activities or to the topic itself?  We answer these, and more, and then make the best decision we can.

race car wheel in progress

The racing car project seemed to have a little bit of both. Racing cars, street vehicle makes and models, and racing superstars were a part of our daily conversations and jokes but they didn’t seem to like the books.  Students enjoyed watching Formula 1 races but they didn’t pretend to be race car drivers on the playground.  They built some race tracks but building a model race car in the classroom became something led more by the teachers than by the students.

making another wheel for the race car

When it happens, teachers face a challenge: do we push on or tack in a new direction. Pushing on could demonstrate the perseverance that we guide children to develop but it could also lead to days of boredom, uninspired activity, and, in turn, limited learning. Changing directions could spark new discoveries and extended learning but could also lead kids to surmise that one should give up in the face of a challenge.

Then, Mrs. Linstromberg had her special day and she taught us about small aircraft and piloting.  A new flame seemed to flash to life.  It was as if the students had become stagecoach drivers and Mrs. Linstromberg and I were clearing a road just ahead of them so they could continue the journey.

preparing a clamp for the other wing

The students are now leading several simultaneous aeronautic sub-projects, while Mrs. Linstromberg and I coach, help gather tools and materials, set up work areas, and facilitate problem solving.

 

donning safety goggles before working with tools

Some students have stuck with the race car, so that topic is still relevant.  We’re still working on at least one extraordinary car-related experience and a fun project.  Still, for the kids right now, the passion is clearly in the air.

Details to come!!