September 19, 2024 Exit Slip

Today in the garden, we did a variety of things: an activity on matching objects with colours at our sit spots, taking a mid-class break, weeding thistles in the garden, an activity where we used our bodies to make sense of the sun, and experimenting with a sundial art piece.

The most memorable part of today has to be the thistle clearing that happened after the break. My first pull wasn't the best (ended up tearing the stem instead of uprooting it), but I quickly figured out the right way to do it. Most of my time was spent behind the shed, where squashes were being grown and harvested -- with frequent visits from slugs. There, I gradually became more scared of the thorns because they kept stabbing through my glove. "What do they even need this many thorns for?" I shouted several times. 

Despite the thistles seeking nothing but my downfall and my aching legs, I figured out techniques to lessen the pain and deal with all types of thistles. I think there is an adaptiveness and ingenuity aspect to this task that can transfer well as soft skills for students; the thistles are not very nice plants to work with, and in my experience I had to slowly caress upwards to get a painless grip, then angle the plant slightly, and pull. This activity also promoted physical and outdoor activity, and very importantly teamwork and collaboration. While many of us were pulling thistles, someone else was going back and forth with the wheelbarrow to help us dispose any thistles that we were hanging onto. Again, these are more so non-cognitive aspects, but they would serve well to build camaraderie among the students to make group exercises more enjoyable and productive. There are also the added benefits of being in a garden that makes this stand out from any other teambuilding exercise, such as a connection to nature and community service. All in all, I ended up getting into thistle clearing a lot more than I expected, and was even feeling a bit lost when they were all cleared. Perhaps I can incorporate numerical exercises and a competition aspect to the thistle pulling process. One idea I can think of is splitting the students into teams, and giving points for various categories such as "longest thistle pulled" (measurement), "most thistles pulled" and "most complete thistle pulling" (percentages; other teams can inspect to see if any thistles remained). There could also be estimation exercises by predicting how many thistles to pull by counting the number in a small area and extrapolating, then having a category for "closest estimate".

On a different note, I also found it interesting when we played with the sundial, since it was created as an art project from students in a past year. It showed that with the right ideas, we can make connections with mathematical history and create a usable tool for future education. The nice part is that the sundial sheet was made by students, which shows that by giving students flexibility to explore their own ideas, they can synthesize results that even a teacher may not think about. As such, I could see even more merit in math art projects as ways to build more visuals and material for future learning; after all, visuals are a very important part of learning in general, and can even have benefits for students like ELLs who may struggle with a purely language-based delivery. These kinds of projects can also give students the chance to creatively engage with certain topics where visuals lend themselves more helpful; one example of such a project that I did in high school was making graphing calculator art on Desmos by applying all types of functions and setting domains and ranges.