Blog 3 (June 4 and 6)

Our decorated game board

The beginning of class on Monday was spent working on our games. We had split up responsibilities during last Wednesday's class, so we began working on those. Audrey and Laura worked on gluing the paper on the board. Sam worked on making the game pieces, while Hali worked on trivia questions. While we were working on those tasks, we noticed that we talked a lot less than the other groups. After a brief discussion, we determined that this was because we make plans very quickly and efficiently and we work very well together. Towards the end of the time we had to work on our games, we split up what we would be doing outside of class.

Next, we, as a class, talked about children's drawing. We learned to think of children's drawings as a verb instead of a noun. It is important to recognize the drawings of children as so much more than cute scribbles. They are representations of thoughts, feelings, and ideas that are important to the child and should be respected and nurtured. In chapter 10 of Engaging Children's Minds: The Project Approach, it says, "Drawing in project work can contribute to all of the four kinds of learning goals: knowledge, skills, dispositions, and feelings." Drawing is an important part of the child's learning.

Team LASH on
the Paws

On Wednesday, we got to put what we learned about drawing and other types of documentation into work.  Our group chose to make maps, record videos, draw and take pictures, and take notes to best represent our time spent at the lion shrine and the Palmer paws and our journey to and from those monuments.

Team LASH on
the Lion Shrine

Sam was in charge of mapping. While we walked, she took note of buildings we were passing and the direction we were going. She noticed that noting everything the group was passing was very difficult because the campus is filled with so many things. She decided to just take note of the important places that we passed. This was an important thing to document because it helped us to see the environment surrounding the shrine and the paws. The surroundings added to the feeling of being at the shrine and the paws. It made us feel immense school pride. While Sam was mapping; Laura, Audrey, and Hali were taking video and pictures of the journey. They documented the path that we were taking and also the buildings, landmarks, and environment that were surrounding us. The video also captured our conversations during the journey and also the sounds that we heard while we were walking such as construction and a lawnmower.

Audrey, Sam & Hali on our
journey through the library.

Our path took us from the Palmer Art Museum, across Curtin Road, and winding around multiple buildings down to the Library Mall. From here we could see Old Main in one direction and the library in the other. We then walked up the mall, through the library, and out of the library towards Chambers. We then walked between Chambers and Kern, around the back of Kern, and we came towards the Lion Shrine from the back of it.

Sam, Hali & Audrey working
on the map!

Hali was in charge of some of the video and photos during our journey. She was very excited about going to the lion shrine because she has never really been there before! She felt that having a picture on the lion shrine gave her a feeling of officially becoming a part of the Penn State family. At the lion shrine, our group decided to use our large sheet of paper to draw out a map of our journey from the paws to the shrine. The map is not geographically accurate, but it does highlight the main buildings we saw and shows what we found to be most important. Hali collected some leaves and flowers from the surrounding forestry to add onto the map, and as a group, we drew and colored the map!

Our finished map highlighting
our journey!

Everything touching fingertips from
the lion to the street!

Laura was in charge of documenting our journey through the use of pictures. She loved taking pictures of our journey and snapped images of everything she saw! Her favorite part of the day was when the whole class was at the lion shrine and we decided to measure the shrine using people. She never thought of measuring the shrine in that way. We discovered that when we stood shoulder to shoulder, the lion shrine was twenty one people around and six people across. When everyone touched fingertips, including two random people who were nice enough to help us out, it took twenty one people to reach from the lion to the street. It was interesting to Laura that it took the same amount of people to go around it that it did to touch from the lion to the street! She also enjoyed taking a video of each member of our group telling their favorite memories about the lion shrine, we all had something to share!

Pattee Library Mall

 Audrey was in charge of taking video and some pictures of our journey from the Palmer Art Museum lion paws to the Lion Shrine. She really liked being able to document the big landmarks such as the library and Chambers Building, but she also found it really nice to take some time to focus on the simply beauty of Penn State. Walking through tree-lined paths and noticing small signs noting historical moments was something that she hadn't taken the time to do since she first started at Penn State two years ago! Her favorite picture that she took during the journey was a photo of the library from halfway down the mall. Because of where she lives and where her class have been, Audrey has only walked up the Library Mall a few times. Taking the time to really look at it from this direction allowed her to see and appreciate the beauty of that location. Audrey very much enjoyed this class and being able to go through this journey with her group!

blog 2 (may 30)

The librarian teaching us about maps!

On Wednesday, our class made a trip to the maps library where a librarian talked to us about many different kids of maps, and different things that maps can measure. We really liked the cartograms, especially the contiguous cartogram that showed the number of billionaires in each state because it made the information almost shocking to see, and the map took a distorted, but geographic, shape of the United States. Another interesting thing we learned was that many times Alaska and Hawaii are left out of certain maps because they are not attached physically to the rest of the United States. Through the librarian's PowerPoint presentation, there were so many ideas that came to mind of ways to incorporate maps and geography in an interesting and fun way in our future classrooms. Some ideas our class discussed were having students map out the school building, making up a map of an imaginary world, and mapping out where all the students in the class live. We also learned that maps can be an awesome way to discuss different cultures which is an important part every student's learning.

Team LASH exploring maps with the librarian!

After the presentation, we moved on the to actual maps room where there are around 450,000 maps! The maps room was so cool because we were able to be hands-on and explore maps and globes from many places and time periods. As a group, we talked to the librarian about maps of State College, specifically the quarry, and the time period that it appeared. Looking through maps of the same place over many years was such a new and exciting experience, and seeing things on the maps change over time was a really cool way to learn!

Out of curiosity, Hali wanted to explore on her own maps of her home town. She found where the maps of the counties in Pennsylvania were and she actually found maps of her county! She wanted to specifically find her town, but we ran out of time, but the next time she go to the maps library, she'll know where to start! Looking at maps was definitely a very different, but interesting, way to form knowledge. When looking at just one map, we can see a lot of things, but by comparing two or more maps together, that's when we can really see change, and explore why those changes have happened.
While Hali was exploring the maps, Sam look at the various globes the maps library has. She thought it was really cool that there were globes of other planets and the moon. The most interesting globe, in Sam's opinion, was the topography globe. It was exciting to get the feel the ocean floor and the mountains around the world. We think that this globe would be great to have a in a classroom. It could be used in a lot of different ways. For example, if the students are learning about creatures the dwell on the ocean floor, they could feel the part of the globe where those creatures live and get an idea of what it feels like to live down there. Having globes in the classroom is a useful tool to help the students visualize where in the world they are talking about in class.

"Rules and Suggestion for Christian Families"
Audrey found this hilarious!

After we were finished with the maps at the library, we went back to our classroom to use the knowledge and ideas gained  from the maps library to make our own board games! Once we got our game, which was a very funny and interesting game for Christians, we started talking as a group of what we wanted to do. Our board had four main circles, so we decided on having four main locations in Penn State to be "tourist" locations, where the players (Nittany Lions) will have to visit and pick up popular items from each location. We named our game "Lion's Roar Tour"! Going to the maps library helped us develop our game because we learned that maps do not necessarily have to be geographically accurate. Also, as we learned about cartograms, the main/most popular places in cartograms are shown as the largest, so we used this skill to pick out the four popular places in Penn State for our game board. We split up some of the work to do on our own time so that when we come back to class on Monday, we'll have some things prepared. 

Our game board! It will not look like
 this once we're done with it!

Something that really impressed us was how well our group worked together when creating this game. Right when we got our board, our ideas started flowing and we built off of everyone's ideas. What got our ideas flowing was when Hali suggested "it could be like a treasure hunt" and we could "collect a certain amount of items" and Audrey filled in saying "yeah, they could be Penn State things." Pretty soon, we had an overall idea of what we wanted our game to be and how we were going to structure it.We started designing and creating the game right away and Sam commented how "efficient" we were being. In chapter 10 of Katz, we read about beginning a project, and how the more we learn about the topic, the more advanced our project becomes. In our class, we feel that the more we learn about maps, or the Nittany Lion, the more we are able to use that knowledge in our projects and our ideas are able to be expanded. We are so excited to explore more through the field trips, activities, and projects in this class, and for our group to continue to work well together! 

LASH Documentation- May 21, 2012

Laura and Sam looking up books
on the CAT Database.

     Today the class went to the education section of the Paterno Library and we were set to find eight printed resources that were about lions, specifically mountain lions. Our group decided to first go to the computers and search the CAT Database, . On the advanced search we looked up the subject of "lions" under the material of "juvenile books". This search yielded many options but we saw two books that we were interested in trying to find. Hali wrote down the two identification numbers for these books and Audrey went to find them. She found the first one in the "Juvenile Fiction" section of the library, but the second had already been taken by another group. Upon returning to the group, they searched the subject of "lions" again, but this time under the material of "books". This gave an even bigger result list but we decided on one that seemed informative and fitting for our purpose. Upon searching for this one book, we found an entire grouping in "Juvenile Nonfiction" that included research-type books about lions. So we grabbed five that were under the subject of lions, mountain lions, and wild cats. Hali then had the idea to look for a book that gave instructions on how to draw lions. So we went to the "Instructional" section of the library and looked through the titles to try to find one that would apply. Hali found a puppet book that included pages explaining how to make a lion puppet, with an accompanying activity.

Audrey finding lion books on the shelves.

     
      While Hali and Audrey looked through "Juvenile Fiction" and "Juvenile Nonfiction," Sam and Laura tried to find books about lions and mountain lions in other sections of the library. They searched books, map, multimedia, newspapers, and many other, but had a lot of trouble finding something that seemed useful in a classroom. Eventually they searched in the juvenile books section to see if they could find anything that Hali and Audrey missed. They found one book that was released by ZooBooks about lions. Laura and Sam found a librarian to help them find the book. Once he taught them how to use the call number to find a book, they discovered that it had already been taken by another group. Luckily, Hali and Audrey had found enough resources already.

      The next part of the assignment was to narrow our books down to three that could be used in an elementary aged classroom setting, so our group took our books and sat at a table to determine which ones we would like to keep. We were at first overwhelmed because all of our books seemed very informative and useful in a classroom. We knew that we wanted to keep the picture book that we had grabbed "Christian, the hugging lion" because it was very appropriate for children and different from the other books we had. Then we decided to just take pictures of the puppet book pages that had to do with making the lion puppet so that we wouldn't have to hold onto the entire book.

Kris talking to our group about how to
narrow down our choices.

       After talking with Kris we decided to also keep a book that gave factual information about lions in a story format, a research type book with real pictures, and the picture book. The story formatted book was great because the children could look at the drawn pictures and the book could be read to the entire class. The research book was a good choice because even if the children were too young to read the information, the pictures would be a great learning tool. Another book that Kris took for the entire class was one on mountain lions, that included fictional stories and really great classroom activities. All of these books could be used in multiple age groups and for many different types of activities.

     After all of the groups picked out the books we returned to our classroom and discussed what we found out about the library and lions during our search. Then we thought of words that we would associate with lions from our prior knowledge and the research we had done today. Some of the words were furry, predators, majestic, and hungry. Then Kris had us act out some of the words that we had come up with, both individually and in our groups. When Kris called out "majestic", all of the groups got into poses and she chose one that she thought was very representative of the word. We then all added ourselves in some way to this original pose until everyone was involved. Afterwards we discussed how this process helped us to understand the word and how it enhanced our learning.

Four of the books we chose.