Project with architecture

Another transversal project that I found very interesting to do in the school is a project related with architecture.

To begin, students could do a survey asking their partner and teacher what they think that must be repair or change in the school building. In this way, they work linguistic contents. Then, they have to make a study about these surveys, working directly statistics concepts.

Then, they will create an architecture project based in the needs of the people in the school. To do it, they have to make a plan of the area that they are going to change, measuring it and capture it in the map. Then, they will do a budget, working in this way the magnitud of money too.

Finally, the could do a mock-up of the project, to work their creativity and manual abilities too, connecting with art subjects too.

Project with cooking

A project about cooking is a perfect resource to work in a transversal way a lot of fields of mathematics and other subjects, including the measure. 

The main idea is to build a kitchen manage by the students. So, each course or class will have a role in this kitchen.

For example, the youngest, could be the responsible of the decoration of the kitchen or the ones that have to keep the accounts of the fruit. In this two charges, they have to measure. For example, in a geometric way to do the decoration, or, in the other case, they have to count the money that they spend in fruit. 

Others students will have the role of the cleaners, other group could do the purchases and another one could do the pamphlet of the menu. Again, these groups have to take into account some magnitudes to do their job. 

Finally, the group that is directly related with the measure field, is the one that have the role of the cookers. They have to know a measure the quantity of ingredients that they need to cook. In addition, some magnitudes like density or time could be learned while they are cooking. 

Sport and measure

In relation to the previous entry, I found very interesting to work different magnitudes with children connecting them with some sports.

In the dance world, like I have just explain, you have to take into account a lot of measures, like the weight, the longitude or the distance. So, in the same way, you have to do it with different sports.

So, I think that a didactic application for it could be to purpose students to do a study of their favourite sport, looking for all the measures that they have to know when they practice it. For example, their body, the distances in the court, distance with the other players, measures of the balls or other complements, times on the match...

This could be a good way to introduce magnitud like longitude, space, area, volume, mass, weight or time, at the same time that they are learning about something that they like and doing a transverse learning with the physical education subject.

Dance and measure

As I said at the beginning, I'm a dancer too. So I usually like to relate my knowledge with it. In this case, I found a lot of issues that join measure and dance together.

Firstly, the most important thing when you are dancing, is the knowledge of your own body, in order to control it. For it, you should know how much you weight and how tall are you. Besides, you must know the differences ans equivalences between the different parts of your body, with the purpose of controlling the balance and the strength. So, the measure of the body is so important when you are dancing, not only because of "the numbers", but the meaning and the sense of the measure in the body.

 

On the other hand, is important to know how is the space where you are dancing with two different purposes: firstly, you are measuring the distance every moment in the stage, you have to know where is the centre and how is the area. In addition, you have to take into account the distance with your partners and the stenography. In the second hand, you have to measure the stenography to create it and to create the choreography.

Money: day to day

Children have to manage with money since they are very youngest, so, the best way to introduce them in this social magnitude is relating it with their daily live. Because of this, I would like to write this entry to expose some examples of different projects that we can carry out with our students in the school. 

In the second cycle, for example, a good project to do in the school could be to create a supermarket in the playground manage by the students. They could sell things that they create or establish a system to buy second hand things and resell it later. To do this, they could invent a new currency, so, in this way, we would be sure that they are acting with responsibility. In addition, to invent a new currency, they have to know their own very well.

In the third cycle, I believe that we could work the money doing a simulation of a trip planning. They have to take into account a lot of outlay and calculations, like the transport, the lodging, the visits, the food, etc. So, with this project, besides they learn to manage with money, they will learn to look for information and to select it. Finally, if somo project is very "realistic", the prize could be to make this trip like a final course trip.

 

Time: resources to measure it

I  have decided  to talk about the resources to measure the time because I believe that is very important that students get to know and understand it very well.

So, I think that a good way to explain the magnitude of time is to use a lot of different resources to measure the same thing.

On the first hand, its important to remember that we can talk about a lot of concepts when we talk about time. We can measure seconds, minutes and hours, but we can measure days, weeks, months and years too. So, we can work a lot of things with all these concepts.

Talking about the resources to measure them. We shouldn't forget mention the calendar or the clock (analogical or digital). But we have a lot of different tools that can helps us to teach these concepts. For example, we have the hourglass, with which we can teach the pass of the tiempo in a visual way.

In addition, we have the solar clock, that can helps us to make students have another vision of the time, directly related with the nature. So, they would see that the time its a "natural magnitude", that is not only an invent from the human.

Finally, we can work other concepts related with the time, like velocity, using a cronometre to measure it.

APPs in the School

In this entry, I would like to talk about the use of Apps in class and its application in different projects. Being these a useful resource to approach students to new concepts and knowledge in a interesting ans funny way for them.

On the one hand, I want to introduce an App that is used to measure distances, height and width of objects. It is called "Smart Measure" and is available with Android an iOS operating system. I want to focus in its use to measure distances and height, and how we can apply this in our classroom.

I remember that in my student period I had to measure the height of the principal build of my school. I found this so interesting that I still can remember it. So, I think that we can use this App to create an activity related to this one. For example, we can make students to do a map of the school, using this App to measure the distances and heights of the build of the school.

In the other hand, I would like to say that there are lots of Apps to measure things that we can't imagine, and I think that these ones are the most interesting from students. For example, I found so attractive an App to measure the noise, "Decibel X", because we can do a consciousness-raising project in which students hace to measure the noise in the different spaces of school, so, in this way, they would know where they should talk louder.