Block Creations

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So, the blogging has been a little light lately, and I think I figured out why: school has just been totally consuming. The trimester ended last week, so every day the students came to school, wrote an exam, had 2 regular classes, then went home at 11. The end of the trimester meant I was furiously finishing marking tests from before, then finishing up all my pre-exam marks, making the exams, then marking the exams, and now finalizing the marks and doing report cards, and (still to be done) making 3rd trimester plans.

I don't mean to say I haven't had time to blog, it's more that I've had nothing to tell you about that isn't school. So, my solution: maybe I will start to write about school a little more. I have a lot of thoughts about education, if you're into that kinda thing, and of course I always have all kinds of crazy stories about my students saying ridiculous things. Unfortunately, I usually forget to write them down, but if even 10% makes it through the sieve that should provide frequent content.

Anyway, the last few days I've done an activity where I gave my students, in groups of 4, a set of math manipulatives like cubilinks, those different-shaped tiles like yellow hexagons, green triangles, white diamonds, etc., and different-coloured squares, and challenged them to create various things which I wrote on the board (spaceship, robot, Mr. Dave, Colombia, any animal, soccer match, Chavez). It has nothing to do with what we're studying, but I still think it has a lot of value.

Anyway, here are some of the things that impressed/entertained me the most:

• one group made a candle, and used the multi-coloured squares as "solar panels". I don't know why you would need a candle when there's sunlight, but whatever.
• Most of the spaceships were pretty generic and 2-dimensional, but one grade 7 who is rarely an impressive student made a sweet 3-D one, and then even drew it pretty well (which was part of the assignment).
• On the topic of spaceships, a group of grade 8 boys made a pretty amazing replica of the space shuttle launch system, with the launching tower separate from the rocket. There was also a second launching pad, which they told me was actually a Pokeball, because of the colours I guess.
• The same group of boys, when unveiling their soccer match, brought out a blackberry and played a clip of a soccer goal (it was the "stadium scoreboard") while simultaneously acting out the goal with their block players.
• Pretty much all the groups elected to make a model of me (which I always included as an option, of course), and they all found it hilarious when I tried to emulate the pose my geometric counterpart was striking, which usually involved pointing my toes straight sideways and folding my arms into my body while sticking my hands straight out, but my favourite was the group that didn't know what to do with their last few pieces and so made "Mr. Dave with Sombrero"