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.