October 2010 – Page 4 – Montessori Muddle

Learning to work in a group

Woolley says she was surprised to find that neither the average intelligence of the group members nor the intelligence of the smartest member played much of a role in the overall group intelligence. Social sensitivity – measured using a test in which participants had to identify another person’s feelings by looking at photographs of their eyes – was by far the most important factor. – from Frankel (2010), Social sensitivity trumps IQ in group intelligence.

I’ve been thinking that it would make sense to have specific lessons on how to work in a group. Montessori students do a lot of group work and should be quite practiced at it by the time they get to middle school. In an increasing complex and interrelated world the ability to work in diverse, interdisciplinary groups is increasingly important, which makes it pertinent to consider and adapt to research on group intelligence.

The key research finding from this recent paper is that the “intelligence” of a group depends most on the sensitivity of members to the feelings of others, which is called social sensitivity. Individual intelligence of group members have little if any impact on the effectiveness of the group. Good social sensitivity of group members allowed everyone to contribute to the benefit of the group.

Apparently, women tend to be more socially sensitive. If this research holds up then we’ll have to consider how to teach social sensitivity to everyone. We already try to teach students how to behave and interact in a group; letting everyone have a chance to speak, for example, is another sign of good group intelligence. But to become more socially sensitive, students need to become more aware of others’ feelings. It’s something we already try to convey, and most of our students are aware if it, yet I can’t help but think that they might benefit from a full, Montessori, three-part-lesson on how to work in a group.

The lesson would probably fit best into the orientation cycle when we talk about community building, or maybe I can tie it into the Personal World curriculum next cycle. There are differences between small group dynamics and large community interactions that may make separation of these two topics important.

NPR also had a good story on the research paper mentioned above:

Mushrooms, in detail

beautifv — Image from World of Technology: Beautiful Shrooms.

Sometimes beauty is in the details. The World of Technology blog has a wonderful collection of close-up images of mushrooms. One of my students is working on an Independent Research Project on the fungi on our nature trail. Hopefully this might help spark the imagination.

We have fish!

While we were working on the needs of living things a couple weeks ago, we acquired two fish; goldfish, fifteen cents apiece.

It was supposed to only be a mental exercise. If you put a water plant, Egeria densa in this case, in an enclosed jar and left it in the sunlight, the plant should use the carbon dioxide in the water to produce oxygen during photosynthesis. A similar jar kept in the dark would produce carbon dioxide and use oxygen as the plant respired.

Bromothymol_blue_colors — Bromothymol Blue pH indicator dye in an acidic, neutral, and alkaline solution (left to right). Image and caption from Wikipedia.

That was the practical part. Students measure the pH of the water before and after a day in the light and dark. The pH of the jar in the dark should go down as the added carbon dioxide makes the water slightly more acidic. Bromthymol blue solution in the water changes color very nicely within the pH range of this experiment, but, in a pinch, you can also use the pH color strips that are sold for testing aquarium water.

My students did the experiment, made their observations and came to conclusions. Then the lab activity asked them to think about what would happen if you put a fish into each of the jars, to see if students are able to extrapolate based on a well rounded knowledge of respiration and photosynthesis.

My students did the mental experiment, but the next day our two fish turned up, uninvited at least by me.

I’d anticipated something like this so I’d picked up a small fish tank at a yard sale over the summer. I’m not opposed to keeping animals in the classroom, as long as I don’t have to take care of them. Fortunately, since we’re studying life, keeping organisms and attending their needs is something the kids are learning and there is no better way to learn that via practice.

Our fish are surviving. The students have added some gravel and structures to provide habitat. The waterplants, still in there to provide oxygen, seem to be thriving despite some browsing by the goldfish.

One of the few rules is that anything added to the tank should have some purpose to help support the needs of the fish. I’m also encouraging the students to think of ways of maintaining conditions in the tank which would minimize their work. Hopefully some filter feeders, maybe small clams, and similar organisms will turn up and we can talk about ecology. I may have to nudge them in that direction though.

I’m not sure what the fish’s names are as there seems to be some controversy among the students. With a little luck they’ll survive until we start comparing religions. Two years ago we had a frog who passed away at just the right time for us to have to figure out what religion he/she was so we could perform last rites.

And no, I did not kill the frog.

Right hand “man”

Lunch on Wednesdays follows our main block of Student Run Business time. It’s after they’ve delivered pizza, prep-ed for a week of bread, completed finance and its reports, prepared and processed order forms, and sorted out the plants.

Over the last couple weeks I’ve started having my students discuss the business over lunch (including finance reports presentations) and it’s turning into a regular board meeting.

Today they started assigning seating.

We usually sit around two long tables set end to end, with the main supervisor on one end and myself at the other. Today the main supervisor started laying out plates and positions. Pizza supervisor to his right, bread to his right, finances one down from bread and sales across from finances. Everyone else could find their own spot.

I was a little surprised at this unprompted expression of hierarchy. Pizza is our most involved part of the business and the core of the the enterprise so its supervisor, P., has a very important post. She was placed on the right hand of the main supervisor!

I asked the main supervisor why he did it. He said, “I don’t know.” I even had to explain the meaning of the term, ‘right hand “man”‘.

It ended up with the supervisors at one table and everyone else (and myself) at the other.

Except for the plants supervisor. Plants have been going slowly, lately, including some seedling failures. The plant supervisor sat all the way down the table, next to me.

…

I can feel it in my bones that there are some interesting lessons in all this. From organizational structure to non-verbal communication.

But since we’re dealing with positions around a table, and we’ve been talking about the importance of place in geography, the best context to discuss this right now might just be one of the importance of geography and place in the interactions among people.