Tag: slow learning

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Relationships through social distancing

First couple of weeks have been going pretty well. Being back in the classroom is pretty exciting (since I can’t go out and explore with the kids). I’ve been working and wondering on how to build positive relationships in this new world.

Normally, as humans we rely so much on non-verbal communication, and wearing a mask and keeping our distance makes things like this harder. As a class we’ve been wondering about how to create a community in this new world. We haven’t come to any conclusions yet but I’ll list some of our questions.

  • How can we understand how people are feeling when we can’t see their mouths.
  • How can we help if we can’t be so close.
  • How can we respect other people’s need to be in a quiet place if we have to be louder to talk through our masks.
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Kind of outside.

Measuring the soil.

As we continue to work with this virus and what it means for us and our learning, we’ve been able to be outside a little more often. While we still can’t leave the campus there are some opportunities for us to be learning with and for our environment.

We’ve started to explore our school’s person constructed ecosystems. We’ve been measuring the soil ph, moisture and the light that hits the soil. We’ve used these measurements along with data from species collection to start trying to understand the interconnections between living and non-living things.

So far, it’s been a bit of a stretch for the kids, but I think they are starting to understand ecosystem interconnection and how diversity is important. When we look at our field that barely has grass in some areas, look at the soil and the species diversity we can see that some “ecosystems” are badly damaged and we have to work in that system to make it better.

There hasn’t been a whole lot happening other than that, we’ve been working hard at making sure students have an opportunity to be outside and learn, we’re planning things in class for them to do to connect to their own research projects, it’s just a slow process, or so it feels, but hey, slow learning is good too.