Day 165
For one year, 365 days, this blog will address the Common Core Standards from the perspective of creating an alternate, ambient learning environment for math. Ambient is defined as “existing or present on all sides, an all-encompassing atmosphere.” And ambient music is defined as: “Quiet and relaxing with melodies that repeat many times.
Why ambient? A math teaching style that’s whole and all encompassing, with themes that repeat many times through the years, is most likely to be effective and successful. Another fun post today. Building the new website continues to take so much time and effort there’s less energy for anything else. Having fun with the blog is less taxing than writing about the Common Core! And needless to say, it’s more enjoyable.
Today’s post will feature a youtube from the City School of Los Angeles and several Waldorf Grade 2 Pinterest pages. The youtube is a wonderful example of a movement exercise using concentration, coordination, and cooperation, and then a song played with flutes and sung in a basic round. Both of these examples are “pointless” in the sense that there is no apparent immediate goal or structured lesson plan, certainly these activities are not teaching to any possible test! Instead, they feature movement and music, two essential ingredients that have been short-changed in the Common Core classroom.
The Pinterest pages and posts are colorful and lively, again seemingly random compared to the “rigor” of the Common Core agenda. Compare yesterday’s example of the second grade morning workbook with the focused, body-integrated activity at the City School. Or with the many beautiful examples of art and color-infused work and activities on the Pinterest pages.
The morning workbook is a good example of the workplace ethic, nose-to-the-grindstone mentality that has dominated classroom education since its beginnings (surprisingly not all that long ago). We need to let the children raise their faces and breathe. A post I shared on Facebook today featured a cartoon of a boy being dropped off at school, saying: “You can make my body go to school, but my soul will be running around under the sprinkler.”
Enjoy. Knowledge ensues in an environment dedicated to imaginative, creative knowing, where student and teacher alike surrender to the ensuing of knowledge as a worthy goal. Tune in tomorrow to continue with the Common Core ELA standards and their ambient counterparts.
City School of Los Angeles:
#mce_temp_url#
Pinterest pages:
#mce_temp_url#
#mce_temp_url#
