Preparing for the Eclipse at Bellows Fall Middle School

 

Understanding through Modeling the Eclipse

In just a few days,  most of the students in our Vermont schools will be experiencing an experience of a lifetime  - A Total Solar Eclipse!    A total solar eclipse is such  a rare experience that at  any given spot on the surface of the Earth, you would see  a total eclipse only once every 400 years. 

As an advocate of project based learning, I can't think of a better phenomena for creating project based learning around.   Just ask Umbraphile, David Baron,  or listen to his Ted Talk: You Owe It To Yourself to Experience a Total Solar Eclipse and you'll soon find yourself asking yourself all types of questions about this event, happening in our back yard on April 8! 

Amazing educator's all over Vermont, are turning towards the Real World Learning that this event provides as a way to engage students towards deep learning.   But don't be fooled into thinking that the deep learning possible is only in the science domain.  The moon completely blocking the face of the sun for 3 minutes  provides opportunities for learning in  Math, Literacy, Science, Art, Engineering, and more. 

This week, I was fortunate enough to interview 5th graders from Bellows Fall Middle School, who have been  using their makerspace to preparing for the eclipse.   

As I listened to them talk about how they searched for materials in their makerspace that could help them share their understanding of how a solar eclipse works,  dozens of inquiry questions came to mind ranging from (but not limited to): 

• How might we represent the size of the moon and the earth proportionately?
• How might we represent data we collected about cloud probability?
• How might we help our community stay safe during the eclipse?

Although,  hundreds of eclipse glasses are being distributed for free in just about every community around Vermont, Mrs. Redding did not pass on  the opportunity for active hands-on learning for her fifth grade students.  Not only did her students,  create viewers for themselves, they also created viewers for everyone in the school district's central office.  

They also shared the instructions with anyone who wanted to make their own, my making this video. 

What I found interesting are that both the model of the solar eclipse and the eclipse viewer were very simple ideas -- something you could do tomorrow in your classroom.  Yet both used hands on approaches that resulted in students deeper learning.  Even making the video helped students gain language arts proficiencies. 

Both were example of how Ms. Redding has leveraged integrating creating and making into their classroom. After attending Create Make Learn Summer Institute, Ms. Redding created a classroom makerspace. She regularly integrates makerspace challenges into her curriculum and constantly looks for opportunities to use materials and tools from her makerspace to make learning more engaging for her 5th grade students.  She  challenges her students to use the makerspace in a variety of ways like those in this padlet. 

Other times, she designs instructions that where students use  the makerspace to complete projects that directly align to a curricular unit.  But one things that comes across to these 5th graders, is that their teacher is a maker and an educator who understands how powerful hands-on experiences are in the learning process, and her classroom makerspace creates a learning space where students can more deeply engage with the learning.