The Power of Zooming Out
10/10/2020
Although school schedules and structures often require us to divide our learning activities into specific subjects, in reality those divisions are less clear cut and rigid. Even in the world of careers, a scientist must consider the connections and impact of geography and economics, of history and civics. Skills and knowledge of math and language arts come to play across all of content areas and real life work. Students who understand how interconnected all learning is, who can “zoom out” in their thinking, are better able to be creative problem solvers. Exceptional learners are challenged to look for connections across subject areas and learning activities: to see a bigger picture and to wrestle with abstract concepts. A common topic wove its way into our learning this week: scale and powers of ten. In math we began our second unit by diving into our understanding of ten: what happens when we multiply by ten? And again by ten? And again? How do numbers change when we continually increase them tenfold? And how can we conceptualize large numbers? Students reached back to their early learnings about place value, using place value tiles to represent 1 (a unit), 10 (a strip), and 100 (a mat.) Then we used the mat, an array of 10 by 10 units, to construct a strip-mat: 1000. And then a mat-mat: 10,000. Physically building these models helps students to make a very abstract thing more concrete and real. This model will be hanging in our classroom for the next weeks as a visual aid in understanding the process of multiplying by 2-digit numbers. How then did the “power of ten” show up elsewhere in our learning day? Well, we are digging deeper into geography, and especially the geography of the United States. Again, some big ideas and varying terms that are somewhat abstract somehow needed to be made concrete and applicable. What is the difference between a continent, a country, a state, and a city? How are they related in size and function? This can be really challenging for young learners to sort out. So we watched an old film that “zooms” our view of a picnic on the grass from one square meter all the way out to millions of meters, watching how our view changes with each power of ten. Then we created a paper model to help situate ourselves on the map: from our home or school out to the solar system. This model can help students to sort out the differences between all the geography terms they are learning, and to more clearly understand the maps they are studying. We saw other point of connection between our science studies and the fantasy/science fiction book we are reading in ELA: Gregor the Overlander. Gregor, an 11 year old boy, finds himself below the Earth’s surface in an Underland populated with people and animals who have adapted to living with very light. How easy it was to connect our learning in science about how the eye works, what role light plays, and how animals’ body structures are adopted for survival! Though we may organize our day and our resources around individual subjects, learning in our fourth grade classroom is always an opportunity to see how all of our skills and knowledge in those subjects come together to build bigger understandings. Listen closely to your child’s conversations to see these connections being made. It's where the learning happens! Comments are closed.
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Martina HenkeMartina Henke has been a K-8 educator for 30+ years. A life-long learner, she loves working with kids of all ages, new technology, great books, fiber arts, and her wonderful family! Archives
April 2021
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