Middle and High School … from a Montessori Point of View
Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me. –Tennyson (1842): Break, Break, Break via the Poetry Foundation. I feel as if I’ve been posting more poetry than normal. I know I’ve been reading a lot more. It’s a habit … Continue reading “Moving on”
The BBC has a fascinating article on the Finnish educational system; specifically, why it consistently ranks among the best in the world despite the lack of standardized testing. A couple things stand out to me as a Montessori educator. The first is the use of peer-teaching. There’s a broad mix of abilities in each class, … Continue reading “Finnish Schools and Montessori Education”
I have a great antipathy when my word processor tells me what to do, or, even worse, “corrects” my writing without my permission. So I avoid MS Word like the plague. OpenOffice is little better. Now I’ll admit that my writing is usually in great need of a good editor, but not looking over my … Continue reading “Writing should first focus on the text”
My students and I had a great chance to use the our recent geometry work when we figured out how long it would take to drain the new moat in front of the school. It’s not really a moat, it’s going to be a flower bed that will soak up some of the runoff that … Continue reading “It’s 10 PM and the Moat is Empty”
Since we’re working on geometry this cycle, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to think about how we could use geometry to think about how the strength of tsunamis decreases with distance from the source. Of course, we’ll have to do this using some intense simplification so we can actually apply the tools … Continue reading “Tsunami Geometry: Calculating the Height of a Tsunami using Basic Geometry”
People are made of flesh and blood and a miracle fibre called courage. — Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960 (quote via The Quote Garden.) The character of an individual, and even of a people, is best identified in periods of adversity. That was one of the things that came up when my students discussed … Continue reading “Character Amid the Ruins”
CNN has an informative interview on the explosion at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami. Footage of the explosion from the BBC: Nuclear disasters are so rare that they’re easy to forget about when we’re talking about the right mix of alternative (non-carbon based) energy sources for the future. Right … Continue reading “Nuclear Meltdown in Japan”
The magnitude 8.9 earthquake that devastated coastal areas in Japan shows up very clearly on the United States Geologic Survey’s recent earthquake page. Based on our studies of plate tectonics, we can see why Japan is so prone to earthquakes, and we can also see why the earthquake occurred exactly where it did. View Larger … Continue reading “Plate Tectonics and the Earthquake in Japan”