The Rookery

Today in the Herons we marked the passing of Benoit Madelbrot, "the father of fractals."  Fractals are beautiful both artistically and mathematically and can be appreciated by even the most novice of mathematicians.  Most simply, a fractal is created when an action is repeated on a smaller and smaller scale.  The Herons instantly saw the connection to the algorithms we've been using in our maze work.  I briefly explained the algorithm to create a sierpinski triangle (see image to the right) and a koch's snowflake.  I was amazed by the work they did in just the few minutes before recess.  I'll take a shot with the flip tomorrow (but some of you may have been treated to samples tonight already.)

On the grecian front, I was not prepared by the insanely enthusiastic reception our first lesson about Ancient Greece would receive.  We situated Greece on the globe and talked briefly about its geography, sketching maps in our blue books.  I also roughly mapped out the time frame we would be studying (which included a good conversation about "common era" and "before common era".)  Then I gave them a copy of the greek alphabet and we tried our hand at transliteration.  "How could they not have a "V?!"  "My name ends with a "y" … it makes an "ee" sound.  Where's that?"  "Wait, if they don't have all of our sounds, do they have some that we don't have?"  I polled the class on whether they wanted to live in Sparta or Athens — almost all felt they needed a lot more information before they made such an important decision.  (More on role play later.)

Finally, a bit of a disclaimer.  This is the first time I will be teaching a unit on Ancient Greece (indeed, I very rarely get to teach a unit for a second time…)  One of my favorite things about my job is the opportunity to learn new things so frequently.  Of course, I don't always learn them perfectly.  If you notice something inaccurate in what your child is sharing with you, PLEASE let me know.  I know I'm making some mistakes but it would be paralyzing to try to learn everything perfectly before we began.  For example, tomorrow when we talk about word roots, I'll share with the students that I had remembered "spect" and "port" as Greek roots and hadn't double checked my memory before I wrote them on the homework sheet.  In the course of doing additional research, I found out they are primarily Latin roots.  I hope that this "confession" will illustrate to the Herons that research is a journey and a process of refinement.  It's also an awful lot of fun.