In our planning sessions for this year’s summer project in a public middle school in Angers, Collége Jean Vilar, the school’s director of the special education program (which goes by the French acronym S.E.G.P.A. ), Stéphane Serru, requested that my students and I offer a demonstration.
lesson. He requested that we bring with us age-appropriate materials so that French middle school students could not only learn the concepts, but also learn English. Additionally, the classroom teachers and he wanted to learn the ways “things are done” in a typical American classroom.
I’m not certain that the learning activities we brought with us are representative of a typical American classroom, but they represent the sorts of learning events we demonstrate for the pre-service teachers in the School of Educationat St. Eds.
Moreover, the activities we brought with us that align closely with
Contemporary Understandings of Learning. Central to the types of learning events we try to model for them is active engagements with conceptual knowledge through the use of language. This does not merely involve “hands-on” activities, but “minds-on” experiences.
To target the geometrical concepts of translation, reflection, and transition, St. Edward’s students Felicia Stevens, Adam King, and I introduced the French students to a game called the “Four Toothpick Game.” The game has two rules:
- Each “toothpick” must touch the end of at least one other toothpick
- Each toothpick must be placed end-to-end or so that they can make a “squared” corner.
I then presented the students with this challenge: “How many different arrangements of 4 toothpicks can you make.”
Through trial and error, and some frustration (which is a good thing!!), the students discovered that there are 16 different possible arrangements. They recorded these different arrangements on cards, creating a set of game cards that we will now use to continue exploring the translation, reflection, and rotation. We will be doing this next week!
Comments are closed.