In my elevator pitch for progressive education, I often explain that, ideally, students should feel a need for what they are learning. That need can come from a variety of places. Sometimes it springs from curiosity and wonder. Sometimes it springs from utility. Sometimes it springs from both.
Our work with data landmarks affords a small example. Learning how to understand data is a part of the 4th and 5th grade math curriculum. For me, being able to parse data is a crucial part of being a citizen in a democracy. You have to understand statistics in order to unpack so much of what we are told on a daily basis. This skill begins with understanding how data is used in a variety of settings.
One of the Herons saw a dark eyed junco on September 29. Juncos are winter birds in our part of Minnesota and their arrival is a key phenological sign. How did this year's sighting compare to previous years? Was it earlier or later? We have Heron data that goes back five years but we have data from a naturalist in Faribault that goes back to the 1950s. Orwin Rustad kept track of hundreds of different natural things from ice out on various lakes to the arrival of birds to the peak of fall color.
But Orwin Rustad kept his record in month/day/year format. Scientists almost always use numerical days (February 1 is day 32, December 3 is day 337.) to ensure universal access regardless of language as well as enable easy comparison and averaging. The herons learned how to use a table to translate Rustad's data into a numerical day they could graph on a big graph we set up on the plaza. We then could found the earliest and the latest sightings as well as determine the average sighting.
The next day we were working on our primstavs (which are coming along beautifully) and needed to figure out where to mark things like May Day and birthdays. Primstavs aren't marked in months - they just use hatch marks for weeks and days. Our new found
of numerical dates came in very handy. We were able to translate our months and days into a number which we could then count off. Added bonus: our work with multiples meant that we could use multiples of 7 to skip count. Then some enterprising Herons realized they could divide the numerical day into groups of 7 to figure out how many weeks to skip ahead before they counted the extra days (a.k.a. the remainder when one divides by 7). Soon they were teaching this "fast" technique to other students who were learning about the usefulness of division long before they'll encounter the concept in 4th grade math.
Many years ago when I had to choose what level to get my teaching certification in, I chose elementary because I wanted to be able to build a learning community where the connections among the things we were learning could be made clear. In the elementary setting, we get to play with the messiness and wonderful complexity of our world.
Here we are working on our primstavs.