Tricotomania and more

We have just returned from our trip to Vimy and Ypres. We learned lots. It was very moving. In Flanders Fields Museum is well worth it. It is very well organized with lots of detail and depth for those who want it and a good variety of information (battles, behind the lines, causes of war, etc.). The most moving thing was this poem, in a section with a display of gas masks. It was both printed on the wall and part of an audio loop that included the (perhaps more famous) McCrae poem and something else that doesn’t stick in my mind. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about this but we are heading to Amsterdam tomorrow and I need to pack.

Wilfred Owen

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep.  Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod.  All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS!  Gas!  Quick, boys!– An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.–
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Or, in 21st century vernacular "War Sucks".

WTF?

Sesame Street not suitable for children

A brief extract:

Cookie Monster
is the number one problem, not because he is a monster, but because he
eats cookies (encourages obesity), and when his addiction takes a
special stranglehold, the plate (might hurt). His alter ego, Alistair
Cookie, used to smoke a pipe before eating it, which, Sesame Street
producer Carol-Lynn Parente explained to the New York Times, "modelled
the wrong behaviour", and so Alistair was, tragically, dropped, and he
now probably munches down on pipes in bitterness in illegal pipe dens.

I may need a category called something like "what is the world coming to?"

I’ve been googling to see if I can find anything to support my desire to introduce some chemistry into that plant unit. Finding the right key words is always the trick. "plant science" didn’t help. Nor did "ecology experiments". (and what is with those science fair projects. It is impossible to tell what anyone is learning from that other than how to put together a "product" that meets the specifications? Sorry, digression.)

"Photosynthesis + chemistry" did the trick. The first page on the list gives me a bit more detail than I want, but contains the stuff I do need (like the chemical equation). I now need to go read some of his other pages. And I think I need some of those chemical models we used in college organic chem. I bet kids love those. And it’ll make it so much easier to see how you rearrange those C, H, and O atoms into new molecules.

…

OOH, I’m liking it already. Some of you may find the tone off-putting, but I like it.

Like it or not, chemistry continues to sneak
itself into our beloved biology course.  This is because what distinguishes
living things from nonliving things is the presence of cells, and cells
are nothing but bags of chemicals with a multitude of chemical reactions
occurring inside them.  And furthermore, all the metabolic activities
in cells are being directed by a famous bunch of chemicals we refer to
as DNA.  Compounds, chemicals, chemical reactions … these are what
produce the structures & functions within the basic units of structure
& function for living things (cells).

Anyhoo … our topic right now, namely photosynthesis, is arguably one of the most important chemical reactions occurring on the planet.  Let’s see why.

And, though it’s not mentioned on the page, it gives an opportunity to explain the term "catalyst" because, if I am not mistaken, that is what chlorphyll is in this reaction.

(I’ve surfed around the site a bit, and it’s written by a high school biology and ecology teacher. Seems cool.)

On other parts of his site, he gives some basic biochemistry with useful details like what a carbohydrate looks like (C, H, O; ring shape) and what the structural equation is (so I can build it if I get one of those kits). And in the course of that, explains why you need to drink lots of water to digest food. (It’s implicit but it’s there.) I’m getting all excited. And I don’t think the wine is the major cause.

If this guy taught me biology in highschool, I wonder if I would have gone and asked special permission to take computer science instead of bio as my first year option in a chemistry degree? Or am I just older now?

On September 27th, I wrote:

This post about botany books is really inspiring. I see a book order in my future.

Today, I was thinking about teaching science and went back to have a look. While checking out the links, I also glanced at that "customers who bought this also bought…" link. I found some things that look very promising indeed.

The Botany Colouring Book, though it says it isn’t for children, looks like a very interesting approach to teaching about plant biology and classification. The table of contents looks very thorough. I don’t think we’d do the whole thing, but I suspect that selected topics could be covered quite nicely and the detailed colouring pages might really help cement learning. Tigger really likes to draw or something while I read to her, so this might be a good companion to something that I could read aloud to her. It seems to include things like black bread mold in the section on fungi. I suspect that there are all kinds of interesting home experiments that could be done.

I also found Practical Science for Gardeners which seems to include information on chemistry as well as botany. I have been thinking that tying in some of our science education to gardening might be a good idea. Mat did some of this last year, having the children test soil samples and talking a bit about soil and its function in the garden. And given Theresa’s recommendation that we shouldn’t artificially separate the sciences because they inevitably turn up together, it seems to me that focusing on a topic like "garden plants" provides a structure that enables you to explore various aspects of biology and chemistry in a sensible way. I’m not sure this particular book is what I need for that. But it is one that addresses chemistry in the context of plants in any case.

Then I started surfing a bit to see if there were any experiments about plant chemistry. I’m going to have to look at this page again in more detail. And maybe look for some more. Right now, I should probably go to bed. But before I go, I’ll give you my rough outline for the plant study.

• Review of parts of plants
• Classification (using maybe the books recommended in that very first link)
• Cells (maybe with some use of a microscope)
• chemicals in soil and air
• Nutrition and growth — photosynthesis as chemical process
• death and decay — chemical processes; the role of other organisms

I think I am going crazy. Before we left (I think), while I was looking for something else, I came across a math book that was aimed at college level but said it would also be good to enrich high school and even primary math. The title was one of those nice ones (not a basic "college algebra" type) which might have had the word "shape" in it. It was a visual approach to teaching algebra and/or geometry. I have no idea why I didn’t do a tiny post to mark it down somewhere.

I do have a recollection of telling folks about it though. I’ve looked through the archives of the homeschooling creatively list but can’t seem to find it. Did I e-mail someone who reads here? Or does someone else remember me talking about this?

If so, could you e-mail me and let me know?

Thanks,

I got inspired yesterday. One of the things I like about the blogosphere. So I need to write one of those posts that may be not very coherent but will have some links in it so I can find it again when I need it.

Steph had a great post up about classification of mammals (which could easily be adapted for classification of any other group). And it was long enough that when I went to write a comment, I noticed some links about teaching science in her sidebar. This one, got me thinking about Chemistry. I think Theresa makes a good point that people put it off because they are scared of it. But I actually got 2 years into a chemistry degree, took physics options instead of biology (because I hated biology, how weird is that), and did really well. (I switched degree programs because I didn’t like it not because I wasn’t any good at it.) I don’t have the kind of attention to detail required for labs but I do know how to do them so I’m sure I could fake being that organized to teach it.

And I’m part of a small group of homeschooling families that has started a co-op. I’m committed to doing a 3 or 4 week session with the kids sometime in the spring. (We’ll have a meeting in January to sort out details like how many weeks and what each of us is going to teach when.) So that whole idea that we should introduce kids to chemistry when they are in elementary school, using the periodic table, seemed like a good idea. (These kids range from 6 - 12.)

This morning I remembered that Becky has posted about Chemistry a few times. So I went looking around on her site (those labels are great for searching but it would be even better if there was a list of them in the sidebar). This post has great book recommendations, particularly ones supporting her decision to do more hands-on, experiment based science with her kids. (It also talks about Physics.) And she links to a blog called Home Chemistry! How cool is that. Looks like a great blog and a great resource (though it makes me think I can’t accomplish anything in 3 weeks).

One advantage is that one of the moms did a session on the scientific method last year, with a couple of experiments. I know Tigger really liked it. There are a few new kids involved this year, but I think I could do a kind of recap of the method and move into something more clearly labeled as chemistry. The tricky part is finding ways to have more challenging stuff for the older girls (who have specifically asked for this). More to ponder. I won’t get into actually looking through books and things until we get home in early January (though I might see if there is anything useful hanging around at the cottage).

I wasn’t supposed to be here tonight. We had plans for a little trip to look at WWI sites, museums, monuments … These aren’t near the train lines so we thought we’d hire a car. There is no phone in the apartment so no phone book. No worries, thinks Mat, go online, find a few places, phone, book, etc.

Do car hire companies have phone numbers on their websites. No. They have online booking forms. So he books a car for Saturday morning from somewhere saying it is in downtown Brussels (there was even a link to a map). this morning he gets up, has breakfast and walks down there. Closed. And apparently not supposed to be there but out near Waterloo. WTF? He has a helpful chat with a couple of taxi drivers and goes to a Hertz place nearby. No cars. And they figure no one else in the city centre will have cars either though there might be some out at the airport.

By this time a trip out to the airport would put a significant dent in the planned schedule. The Hertz guy did say that Tuesday/Wednesday would work if we wanted to do that and game Mat his card. So we rescheduled. We’ve booked a car (by phone). They know we are going into France and approximately how far we are going. We phoned the B&B and rebooked that. So Tuesday morning, we set out for the Vimy memorial. There is a visitor centre and a trench and subway that you can visit. We plan to spend the better part of a day before heading to Ypres.

In Ypres, there is the In Flanders Fields Museum which looks very interesting. (Ypres was where McCrae wrote the poem, the text of which is on the museum site.) There is also the Menin Gate. And we figure the view on the drive might be worthwhile. On the way home we might try to go past the St. Julien Memorial, too.

We have read the books I found in August (about paragraph 5 of that linked post, after the WWII stuff). The combination is good. The one specifically on Vimy has a lot of battle strategy information, though well balanced with good information about the general horror (including quotes from soldier’s letters and diaries). The three books together give a good balance of pride in accomplishment with recognition of the horrible waste. And we talked a bit about why Vimy is historically significant (which really doesn’t have much to do with the war, but the broader question of Canadian nationhood).

So today, we went back to the Centre Belge de Bandes Dessinées, because Mat wanted to see it. Tigger and I looked at the Space exhibit which was excellent. She read all of the panels (which were mostly real history of the space race with some examples of comics of or about the period) by herself and was fascinated. I had to fill in some historical context about the Cold War, which I did pretty sketchily. The one problem with Gombrich’s "Little History" is that he wrote it in 1936. We need to have a bit of an overview of the post-WWII period, I think.

Then she and I went down to the library reading room and sat on cushions reading comic books while Mat did what he was doing in the bit we saw the other day. He really enjoyed it and even bought comics for himself in the bookshop. We spent more money, I’m afraid. Our comics spending is higher than expected.

I think tomorrow might involve a walk and some Art Nouveau buildings.

Willa had a very interesting post the other day about the role of testing in the homeschool. I do not have any reporting requirements so have never been forced to think about this very much. On top of which I tend towards unschooling and tests hadn’t really come onto my radar, even if the odd workbook has. So Willa’s thoughts on the subject were thought provoking for me. I encourage you to go and read what she has to say. (I also found it very helpful to read the linked posts on her other blog outlining exactly what she did with her 11 year old. And how she recorded it.) The way she talks about it will encourage you to ask your own questions and maybe think about what you are doing in new ways.

It isn’t like testing and assessment are completely new to me. I did spend several years working as a university professor during which time I had to assess my students. I entered that profession at a time when UK universities were beginning to provide some training in teaching and had the opportunity to think about assessment in that context. I think Willa’s post helped me work out how to link that experience to my current adventure.

I know most of you think we are on holiday, but 3 months is an awfully long “holiday”. And Mat is working. So we are doing some “school” things with a perhaps larger than usual complement of museum trips amongst our activities. I have discussed earlier that Tigger actually likes math workbooks (as long as she doesn’t have to do the chapters in order, or do every problem on the page) so we have a grade 7 math workbook that we purchased at our local bookstore (Spectrum, I think; we just looked at what was available and she picked the one she liked best). The chapters in this one start with a Pre-test, then have a page on each element, then finish with a post-test. (I can’t find a post in which I actually told you that. Maybe I posted it on a list. Darn. Anyway, it’s true though surprising and frustrating in that "just when I’d figured out what works" way that kids can be frustrating.)

She decided to work on the whole numbers chapter recently and had done a few of the lessons. I decided that this might be a good topic to try doing the post-test properly – the whole thing in one session. The topic is one that she has mastered but the problems are not so easy as to be boring. I was a bit worried about the length, but thought it was worth a try.

We discussed my proposal the other day. I pointed out that I was pretty sure that she had mastered this material. I checked that she agreed with this assessment and my assessment that it wasn’t too easy. I said that the main purpose of doing the test was to practice concentration, working on something for a longer period of time, and making sure she was paying attention to details and accuracy. She wasn’t happy about it but agreed that it would be fine to do this. I gave her a couple of days so that she would get used to the idea.

We did the test this morning. I wrote down the time started and time finished so that I would have a better sense of how long it takes her to do one of these and how long is a reasonable length for her. I allowed her to have her multiplication table, as I have long since decided that memorizing math facts is not a priority. She worked very well. When she started to get too fidgety (about half way down the front page), I suggested that she might want to turn over and do the word problems next. She did and then came back to the rest of the questions on the front. There were 36 items (of which 6 were word problems). She took 1 hour and 24 minutes to complete the test including at least 2 attempts to renegotiate (not long) and a bit of fidgeting and drawing shoes in the margins. She got 30 problems right. Those she got wrong were mainly due to forgetting to add in the digit carried. These usually happened at the point where she was losing concentration (right before she flipped over to the word problems, and right at the end of the test). Interestingly, switching to word problems fixed the concentration problem.

Overall, I think this test was a bit too long. But she did fine over an hour (with that change of type of problem in the middle). So in future, I think I would design the test to take about 1 hour and have a mix of types of problems. After I had checked her answers, we went through the mistakes and reworked 3 problems that seemed way off. We discussed the issues I had highlighted before the test – concentration, attention to detail, working on something for an extended period. I told her all the things I’ve said above.

I think this discussion was very useful. It helped her see what I saw in the test, including that I agreed that it was too long. We talked about maybe doing tests again, though not frequently, and that I would make sure that the length was more like 1 hour. Given that she has been less than enthusiastic about doing anything she thinks will take more than 10 minutes, her agreement to the 1-hour was quite a step. She did see that she was okay for most of this test.

In general, my objection to so much of the testing that happens in schools is that it is designed as a means of assessing the efficacy of schools or assessing progress towards population level goals (e.g. x% of the population of 6 year olds should be able to read to y level). This kind of testing often ends up focusing on things that are easy to test and easy to grade in large numbers. When linked to funding for schools and education, it often leads to schools teaching kids to pass tests. In addition, the goals may or may not be suited to individual children and the test happens at a fixed time that is not in any way associated with the readiness of the child to be assessed on the work.

Assessment of individual children to determine to what extent they are meeting the educational objectives set is another thing altogether. Here assessment works in the service of learning. In larger group settings it enables teachers to identify what has been learned when this might be difficult organically. In institutional settings it enables the assessment of learning to be audited by others or demonstrated to be fair between different children. But, as Willa points out in her post and in the comments, assessment can also provide an opportunity for children (or students of any age) to collect their knowledge and order it in particular ways. It can offer an opportunity for selection of appropriate material from the stock of knowledge and the construction of arguments, supported by evidence, that engage with a particular question. It is interesting (and perhaps not widely known to Americans) that writing essays is central to the mode of instruction at Oxford and Cambridge. Weekly essays, then discussed with the tutor, do not count towards the final mark or degree result (which is entirely based on examinations).

I’m not convinced that the Oxbridge methods are very effective. However, they indicate that writing essays (and perhaps other forms of assessment) might have purposes beyond merely assessing the learning of the student. And it is to explore this that I decided to give Tigger the math test. I articulated my goals not in terms of assessing the math (though I knew it would do that, too) but in terms of skills of concentration, stick-with-it-ness, and attention to detail. Because education isn’t just about the content…

Today, Tigger and I took the train to Brugge. We had some tips from Debbie about what to see and spent an enjoyable day. Brugge is basically one of those towns that is all about wandering around looking at buildings, and little alleyways, and canals and stuff. It has more than its fair share of souvenir shops (including standard, mainly lace, and chocolate). But it is a nice place to wander around looking at buildings, etc. especially when the sun comes out as it did today.

Historically, Brugge was a Hanseatic city, like Lubeck, and important in the wool trade. It was also an important centre of lace production. There is a group trying to keep the traditional bobbin lace techniques alive and they run a museum along with classes and workshops which are open to the rest of us to watch. The demonstrations (actually workshops for folks doing lace) are in the afternoon so we organized our selves to get there then. Wednesdays there is also a young people’s workshop so we say both older women (some of them must be over 80, and I noticed at least one "in memoriam" notice on the table where they all sign in) and a group of girls about 8 - 13 years old. Everyone was working and chatting. Some of the older women were doing fiendishly complicated things involving an awful lot of bobbins at a good pace. One was doing something very tiny and intricate that required a magnifying glass to see properly.

I didn’t take any photos of the women at work, but I did take one of the beautiful wooden statue of a lacemaker in the courtyard outside the museum. It is a bit hard to see (click to make bigger) but she is working on bobbin lace. There are some bobbins hanging down in front of her hands there.

In the morning, we took the Live and Let Learn family advice and went to watch them make hard candy at Zucchero. I know that website is in Flemish but click through and look at the photos. Do you see those little words written inside the candy? that candy is maybe 1 cm across. And we watched them make something very similar. With little words. It took about an hour but it was very very cool. Not to mention tasty. The shop is well organized, with a nice big corner window through which you can see the action and plexi-glass inside (like the have along the boards at the hockey rink) so you can ogle without danger of contaminating the candy.

Those two stops plus a bit of wandering around looking at buildings, alleyways and canals filled the day. We got the train back to Brussels to find dinner almost ready.

Today we went to the Centre Belge de la Bande Dessiné. The Belgians are very into comics and have been for a long time. While Tin Tin is probably the best known, there are a lot of other comics and have been since the 1930s. The museum presents a good overview.

To begin, there is a brief overview of all of the people involved in producing a comic and some information about the various stages. This includes some displays of comics in interim stages which is quite interesting.

The main exhibition is divided into two parts. On one floor there is an overview of Belgian comics and comic artists from the 1930s to the 1960s. The displays are mainly organized by artist, with examples of their work and a brief biography. But there is also information about how comics were published. Tin Tin apparently started out as a strip in a magazine for catholic catechists (is that the right word? Children preparing for confirmation anyway.). These were monthly if I recall and the other catholic magazines then published work from other artists. Later the daily newspapers picked up comics and then specific magazines for children were launched, including Spirou, a magazine still in production today. (That page has lots of Flash.)

The second floor covers the period from 1960 to 1990 and the major shifts that occured in that period. It begins with a magazine called Pilote, which started out as a magazine for slightly older kids who had grown out of Spirou but then grew with its audience to address an adult audience. It closed in 1989 but seemed very important for many artists. The exhibition then covered some of the main shifts that occured during this period — artistic styles, content, etc. All in all very interesting with a good range of samples demonstrating the variety of work out there.

In addition, there was a temporary exhibition about space which combined some of the history of space exploration with how the topic has been treated in comic books. We didn’t really look at that particular exhibition but it looked well done (and had funding from the European Space Agency).

The centre also has a research library, the use of which is included in the price of admission or can be paid for separately. And a bookstore. Although it has some material in English (and Spanish), this is very limited (almost entirely Tin Tin and Asterix in the English section). The main stock is in French and Flemish. It is organized by publisher which is a bit difficult for those of us new to the genre but probably works well for those already familiar with comics. Certainly one of the shops we went to in Paris was similarly organized. There is a separate section for "La Jeunesse" though Tigger found some suitable material on a different shelf. (I have found that staff are happy to guide you to suitable material.) The publishers seem to have imprints for young people (Jeunesse usually appears)
and Dupuis Jeunesse even has some with distinctive binding, in red for age 6+ and in
green for age 3+.

One thing I did see on the English shelf was a series by Michel Plessix (translated into English) of The Wind in the Willows (The link is to the French edition, but it gives you an idea.). The art in this is absolutely gorgeous and it would make a wonderful addition to anyone’s library. I am very tempted by another series of his, inspired by that project, called Le Vent dans les Sables. It didn’t seem to be translated. (There is an interview with Plessix here. It is in French but there are snippets of the artwork, too.)

I haven’t purchased that (yet) though because there is also a lot of other stuff we want. We are trying to be frugal, not least because books are heavy and take up space. And we are hoping that with a bit more information about what we want, we should be able to get things from our local French bookshop at home (even if we have to have them order it). We have bought several Melusine, one at a time because Tigger likes them and keeps wanting another to read right away. Another of those came home today.

We had bought a couple of one off publications yesterday. Rebecca by Gotting and Matje turned out to be a Canadian one. We also enjoyed Je suis pas petite!!! by Bruno Duhamel. Today, Tigger found a couple of different ones featuring foxes. Very different styles but both look interesting. We also got one edition of a series of detective novels with a girl heroine, Marion Duval, that look very interesting. And we got something for her cousin for Christmas. A few weeks ago, when we first discovered Melusine, we also bought Fennec by Lewis Trondheim and Joann. Joann’s illustrations are marvelous watercolours. And the story is funny. Trondheim seems to be very active and has a couple of bandes dessinés about bandes dessinés that are tempting, too.

All in all, we have been very pleased with what is on offer. Although there is much less available for children than for adults, the selection is good, and the balance is probably about the same as it is for regular books. There is also quite a bit of variety of style. Yes, there was some stuff clearly aimed at young girls that is too… pink and girly and not the sort of thing I think we need more of. But there was a reasonable choice of other stuff.

This doesn’t help many of my readers, most of whom don’t read French. I am actually quite happy that the selection in French is so good as this is one area where we haven’t been doing as much as I would like. Tigger speaks very good French and when she is with francophone children she is fine. But mostly she refuses to speak to us in French (even here, which is frustrating because it encourages folks to speak to us in English, which is not at all necessary) and hasn’t read anything in French in a while. But she is really enjoying the comics. And has even picked up a couple of novels. She and I have talked about it and she agrees that she should keep reading in French when we return home.

The other thing is that most of the comics we have bought are not particularly cheap. They are usually hard cover and printed in colour. The production quality is excellent. We had been reading Bone before we left homem which Tigger also really likes, and it is also a good quality publication that is priced as a book. If there is going to be a market for comics suitable for children in English, then parents have to be prepared to pay a reasonable price for them. But I’ll leave my thoughts on the comics market for a separate post.