IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

Some of my favorite learning that occurs during the school year, is learning that flows out of projects.

We are getting deeper into our shark project this week! Today, after reading part of a book entitled, 100 Things You Should Know About Sharks, we entered into a mathematical discussion about length. In the book, we read that a whale shark is forty feet long. After reading, we talked about how long forty feet really is. One student proposed that we connect the pipes (a building material in our room) to make them forty feet long, so that we can see how long the whale shark is. Kids got right to work connecting the pipes, but soon realized that we had some more learning to do. Here are some of the comments and questions I heard:

“How will we know when it’s forty feet long.”

“It’s too long! I counted that we’ve used 122 pipes.” (Each pipe is about 1-2 inches long)

“How long is a foot?”

“It won’t fit inside! We have to go outside to the hallway.”

As is often true in life, we didn’t solve this problem or answer all of these questions before the day was through. And I feel very ok with that. Real learning occurs at a slow and natural pace. We’ll keep working on our pipes tomorrow and see waht learning comes from another day of exploration with sharks!

Aidan connects pips to try and see how long 40 feet is.

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