September 27, Day1

Work-Skills/ I introduced the students to the idea of Area. After doing our landscape work on school property they were comfortable with a discussion about how much soil is required to cover a given space. I got around the Volume issue (that we haven't covered it) but simply stating that one bag of soil covers one square metre (the notion of a square metre being something that they are very familiar with from our planning and mapping work). So how many square metres are there in the atrium? This will tell us how many bags of soil we need. Using the Dy Dan technique of making them do the math the intuitive way I had them count the number of squares on their graph paper. It was 270 squares, thus 270 square metres and therefore 270 bags of soil. We then worked on the length times width calculation for area. Worked well. I used the diagram from the bags of soil as a hook to the lesson.

Pre-Work/ Full of beans today. Barely worked. Finally got them by doing Draw Squad: Lesson 2.

Work-Skills/ Inquiry method intro to science, as per their request. We did the card-held-by-water trick and the vinegar and baking soda trick to extinguish candles (CH3COOH + NsHCO3 -> CHsCOONa + H2O = CO2). They responded well to manipulating the variables in the water and card trick. We used glass and cardboard and a floor tile and loose leaf and everything else that they called out. Aluminum foil was mentioned but I didn't have any. Next year.