And May is here,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

and the gardens, back and front, are looking beautiful................the trees have baby leaves and super blossoms! YEAH! 

March is coming.............

 

and I'm still forgetting to blog......darn it!

I had a really interesting article on keeping a nature notebook sent to me this week, written by a former student of mine in UCD's teacher ed. program

It's really, really good, and I have permission to share with anyone who might be interested.

Just let me know and I'll forward it to you.

Blogging - again.....................just remembered I have a blogging post!!

 

January 2021

Just remembered I have a blog.................which I'll try to remeber to use more frequently.......

Look in on Learning

 

Wow! Isn't the internet just great?

This morning I had an email from an adult who was a youngster in a classroom I visited in the mid 60s. The school, Melton Sherard, in Melton Mowbray, England, was in the forefront of developing mixed age/mixed ability primary school classrooms after the 11+ examination was ended by Stewart Mason, Leicestershire's Director of Education in the early 1960s.

Mary Brown, the school's most eloquent Head, had this film made about what was going on in her school.

I was invited, after one of the school's teachers attended one of my science workshops at Foxton Field Study Center which I set up when I became an Advisory Teacher to help him expand his curriculu,.

The film has just been added to YouTube.   https://youu8.be/TSHZYwqAOZY

Take a look - it's really good!

ANTS

 I’m 78, a retired educator and living an enforced life-style because of the Corvid 19 virus.

I live in New Mexico, in a beautiful area called Eldorado, about 8 miles south of Santa Fe.

. An enthusiastic amateur naturalistI, I go for a 2 mile walk every morning, just as the morning sun lights up the beautiful  but very dry countryside - we’ve had just one day of what I call WET rain in the past three months. When I walk, my eyes are everywhere, looking at the dried grasses, the cacti, the cholla, the lively lizards, the occasional bird , and I’m always checking on the numerous ant hills that are in the middle of the path.. 

Ants fascinate me and I stand and watch the mass of activity over and around each ant colony…………..ants searching for food to take back to the queen who’s overseeing her huge family of up to 50,000 offspring

 I used to know a lot about how ants live, how the newly impregnated Queen makes a home (usually around August ), lays eggs that hatch into male workers (known as SLAVE ants that make the nest much, mjuch bigger, search for food and feed the next batch of eggs that are winged males and females), then eggs that hatch into winged males and females. I know that ants don’t like ants from other colonies.

In fact, I wrote a book on Ants for teachers way back in the late 1960s. 

I know about the process of trophylaxis, the way in which ants communicate with each other, how winged males and females leave the nest late in the summer, mate in mid flight, and, thus start a new colony.

But, now, as I stand and watch them scurrying around outside the nest, I’m fascinated by their individual strength. I see individuals carrying food bigger than themselves in their mouths. I see them pushing stuff much bigger than they are. This morning, I saw two ants, working as a team pushing a big seed towards the nest. How do they know when to help each other? Trophylaxis? Some kind of body language that sends the signal "I NEED HELP?

Dunno.......

Occasionally, I see a single big black beetle hovering around the entrance to an ant colony. Do they feed off ants? Don't know the answer to that either.............but I'll see one morning the answer to my question.

When I became a science teacher......................

 1963 Thank you,Tiger!

My teacher wake-up call!

Long ago, in September, 1963, I started my first teaching job. I was appointed as a science teacher at Trinity Fields. The school, like

all secondary modern schools of the time, was for students aged between 11 and 15, all of whom had failed the national 11+

examination, and thus seen to be undeserving of an academic education.

The day before school started, I was given my teaching responsibilities. I was Form Teacher for 1C, which meant I took the register

for attendance, school lunch and for dismissal at the end of the day.

After taking my class to morning school assembly, I was to teach the bottom classes in each of the four years (1C, 2C, 3C and 4C).

The Head of the Science Department gave me the textbook, pointing out the science topics I was to cover.

“Not to worry,” he said. “When they take the Leaving Test at 15, only mathematics, reading and writing are tested.”

The following day I began my teaching career. Well, teaching is perhaps too grand a word. It would be more honest to say that I

began to be paid for standing daily in front of loads of bored adolescents, opening a well-thumbed science textbook - then, scribbling

science words on the blackboard to be copied into science notebooks.

My science-teaching pattern was straightforward. The kids came in, I welcomed them, they took their seats, opened their science

journals, and I read from the science textbook. I then wrote the key science information on the board and the pupils, using their best

handwriting, copied my notes into their science journals.

Nothing to it, really.

What follows is the description of one significant thing that happened during my first, very challenging year with Class 3C.

Thirteen year-old Tiger always sat alone at the back of the science lab. As he was always looking for trouble (and he was really good

at finding it), he was, to put it mildly, a pain in the ***. Tiger made my science lessons a joke. School didn’t interest him and science

didn’t engage him. His dad had told him that he’d have a job with him as a bricklayer on the building sites when he was 15, so why

should he ‘do his best’ in school? What was the point of it all?

My monthly science topics certainly didn’t interest Tiger. Well, to be honest, they didn’t interest me very much, either. When I read

from the science textbook, Tiger would roll his eyes, run his fingers through his greasy hair, scratch his head, and interfere with

anyone sitting close to him. His science notebook was filled with dirty pictures and rude scribbles.

Occasionally, on his really bad days, Tiger shouted that he was fed up with school and very fed up with boring science.

Nothing I did in my science lessons made any connection to Tiger’s life experience or appealed to his sense of curiosity. The science

I read from the textbook was irrelevant to his world – especially, I suppose, the way I presented it. To be honest, the science didn’t

interest anyone in the class.

Most of the boys and girls did, though, sit politely through each lesson. They spent their time scribbling and drawing in their science

writing books, often whispering to each other. The boys, though, waited for Tiger to stir the pot.

The days, weeks and months dragged by.

In the first week of spring thank goodness, the miracle of miracles happened - a big, BIG change for the better came over my

teaching. Tiger, of all people, believe it or not, and a small garden spider were my divine inspirations.

Walking back from shopping at the Coop for the weekend food, I spotted the most beautiful orb-web spider sitting in her intricate silky

web in the black currant bush outside the steps leading to my flat. Surprised to see one so early in the year, I fetched a jar, popped

her inside, and took her upstairs, and made a proper spider home for her.

The spider reminded me of when I was a kid when my dad and I found some garden spiders in the back of our house. I kept two orthree of them in a jar tucked under the bed – quickly learning that you don’t keep spiders together as they eat each other. Looking after the survivor was really fascinating, though. Keeping her safe and well fed with flies and moths made me feel good, especiallywhen she deposited an egg sac for me on her silky web.

I took the spider to school the following Monday, put her in a large bell jar with a little soil, some greenery, a branch, and a couple of

Autumn

 

Trying to download some photos I took near Abiquiu Lake this morning. Amazingly beautiful!