Tag Archives: Teaching

March 1, 2013 · 10:38 am

This Week in the Classroom: Pantographs

My school spends a lot of time, energy and financial resources on project-based learning.  In my experience, teachers use project-based learning as a catch-all term for anything from make-it-take-it projects which last twenty minutes to inquiry-driven, rubric-graded, long-term explorations.  Calling the former project-based learning is lazy and misdirection.  Creating incredible experiences for students with the latter definition is exhausting and rewarding.  Most of the time, a teacher must follow a middle course.  This is one of those projects.

We started off by designing and building pantographs.  If you don’t know anything about pantographs – check out the video below.  Also check out http://www.peter.com.au/articles/pantograph.html for instructions on how to build a professional-quality pantograph.  This site contains a java applet which allows students to digitally explore a pantograph’s mechanics before use.  I’ve included a Sketch Up model in my section of the 3D Warehouse.

Afterwards, my student’s worked through a number of percentage problems based on their pantograph’s working results.  I don’t include a lot of variety in the type of problems, but you can modify the problem sets to reflect your curriculum needs.  If this series of projects interest you, feel free to use them in your own classroom.

Make it safe & keep the rubberside down this week.

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December 27, 2012 · 10:30 am

This Week in the Classroom: Rulers & Frames

Applied Math Made Easy, a hands-on, application-heavy curriculum designed by a pair of teachers from Wisconsin, has a number of great math labs and activities.  Using worksheets to convey directions and learning, the curriculum utilizes a conversationalist tone and “interactive reading” (their term, not mine) to let students learn middle school to high school level mathematics – about a 9th to 10th grade range.  I’ve co-taught with teachers who’ve used this curriculum and I can say this:  it works.  Incredibly well, when your students can read, understand and follow instructions at a high school level.

I don’t teach those kids.

So here’s what I do:  I take a look at the lab and find a focal point.   For example, reading rulers.  The act of reading a ruler supports numerous mathematical standards and the act of building a ruler provides a concrete experience for the student.  In this activity, students use 3/8″ lengths of pine to create thick “rulers” – they split the ruler into sixteenths using string.  They can then label each division they make – so along the way, the see how a whole can be split into parts and further into more parts.  Number sense, division, and differentiated learning all in one.  I had some successes, and some near successes.

A near miss. This student can split his work into eights, but loses his way splitting things into sixteenths. In context of his neurological differences, this is consistent with his mathematical competency - somewhere between third and fifth grade.

A near miss. This student can split his work into eights, but loses his way splitting things into sixteenths. In context of his neurological differences, this is consistent with his mathematical competency – somewhere between third and fifth grade.

After building these rulers, we built picture frames.  Again, an exercise in measurement and utilizing fractions.  In between the ruler project and these frames, my students spent a lot of time manipulating common fractions – into decimals, adding fractions with like denominators, measurement and more measurement, both in real world situations and abstract number problems.  Eventually, we built these pieces.

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My guys improved tremendously.  All read their rulers correctly, to the eighth.  They  were less successful with their calculations, getting about 1/2 to 3/4 of the problems correct.  Way better than their 12.5% to 25% they answered correctly in the pre-unit activities.  Next project: the try square for our interactive display at Houston’s Mini Maker Faire.

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Make it safe & keep the rubberside down this weekend.  In the shop, I have a new apprentice – my youngest brother-in-law is spending his holiday break building frames with me.  Seems you can take the woodshop away from the teacher, but you can’t move the teacher from the woodshop.

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November 14, 2012 · 5:05 pm

This Week In the Shop: One Block Projects – Book Ends

A little while ago, I ran a book review on One Block of Wood.  I recently made a pair of bookends using Ms. Tolstrup’s plans out of salvaged pine and live oak.  Hope you enjoy the looksee.  Read a good book this week. Especially books on pirates!

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Make it safe & keep the rubberside down.

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November 1, 2012 · 8:00 am

Come Build the Simple Tea Box @ TX/RX Labs Dec. 1st

The good folks at TX/RX Labs invited me back for another weekend of teaching woodworking.  This year, I’ve asked to build some Christmas gifts. We are building the Simple Tea Box – and I’m sending one to the winner of my “First to 30″ likes raffle on WoodshopCowboy’s Facebook Page.

So like WoodshopCowboy on Facebook, sign up of for a class at TX/RX Labs…

…and make it safe & keep the rubberside down.

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September 17, 2012 · 11:21 pm

Why I Do This: Monday Nights

Why I do this is a continuing series of education..er…ahhh…editorials.  If you don’t like ‘em, check out my projects!  I do a lot of woodworking here, but I do more teaching in real-life.  Teaching, whether a reader on these blogs, or at TX/RX labs, or at my work, is what I really love.  I’m a self-proclaimed I-might-be-ok-at-some-point woodworker.  I’m a wicked good teacher.  Once in a while, I’ve got to say my piece about the craft of teaching.

Just helped put my children to bed. Nothing special, really. Probably the same thing your doing, probably the same thing any number of parents do. Nothing really special there. Maybe your catching the premier of that show with a monkey. Or a mob doctor. Hell, it’s Monday, so maybe your catching the game. Nothin’ special there either.

But, it is Monday, so I’m putting grades together, planning lessons and building curriculum. I’ve got a stack of e-mails to catch up on. Including a few from my students asking for help. I’ll answer those first, my boss, god love him, can wait. See, I’m a teacher so when my duties with my own kids are completed, I go back to work for yours.

And there’s nothing special there either. Your kid’s teachers are doing the same, because that’s what your kid, and listen up, here’s the important part, and every other kid deserve.

And I really ain’t asking for much. I ain’t asking for a lot of money. I ain’t worried about the hours, because I already volunteer to teach summer school. I already run after-school clubs, after-school tutoring and stay after-school to plan.  Early in my career, I took a $10k pay cut in order to teach after-school and get my Master’s at the same time.  I sacrifice because I love the work and I love the purpose.

But I would like, just once, to see my profession described in the media as engaging and rewarding, challenging and necessary instead of lazy and incompetent. I’d like to see, just once, when someone asks, “Why do they strike?” for someone other than me say “Because it’s an American worker’s right” instead of “greed”. And I’d like it, when I introduce myself to my wife’s colleagues, all the bright-suited and cubicled bunch of ‘em, for them to give me the same respect I give them: I don’t tell you how to run a business, so don’t tell me how I should “educate” kids. You make the widgets, bud.

I make men and women and the sunshine in your day when they come home laughing saying “Daddy, Mommy, guess what I LEARNED today!!!”
That’s what I make.  That’s what I do.  It’s why I do this.
Make it safe, keep the rubber-side down this week.

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August 6, 2012 · 9:20 pm

Why I Do This: Invest in Teaching and the Return on Adventure

I think we need a new measurement for tracking the success of our maker ventures, a new yardstick. I propose “Return on Adventure”

via MAKE | Maximizing Your ROA (Return on Adventure).

There’s been much discussion of the value, in dollars and sense, of a good teacher,

via What is a Good Teacher Worth? – NYTimes.com.

I’m a builder of things.  As a child, I built models and dioramas and train sets and miniatures.  In college I built poetry and plays, papers and rhymes.  I built a piss-poor set of ethics also, but that’s a different post.  Now, I build furniture at  home and students in  my classroom.

I don’t do any of these things because they are good monetary investments.  I can make more money as an engineer than a teacher, I can buy better furniture than what I can make (though the difference grows smaller every day). Shakespeare’s a better writer than I’ll ever be.  I’m no Mitch Albom and I won’t sell schlock.  I can even buy those minis painted.  The ROI (return on investment) of my time in teaching, in creation, in living, seems to so little.

Back to the classroom.  Project-based learning doesn’t always translate into standardized, multiple choice test answers, the currency of our American educational system.  There’s no box which represents critical thinking skills, no box for the slow sweet confidence which comes with being able to use tools well, no box to check for smiling, no box to check if a student becomes a more competent, ethical, compassionate human being.  At times, project-based learning looks like it provides a lower ROI in a multiple-choice test.  Why even attempt it?  Just drill-and-kill.  It’ll get you there cheaper.

Which is probably another, different blog and/or post.  I’m a lucky teacher.  I can preach and practice, practice and preach what I love: project-based learning makes a difference in student’s lives, not only because it is an effective teaching practice, but because it provides something more than a simple ROI.  Project-based curriculum creates learners, not widgets.  Project-based learning gives high ROA.

ROA: Return on Adventure.

Make it safe & keep the rubberside down this weekend.

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July 18, 2012 · 9:40 pm

This Week in the Classroom: Block Printing & Stamps

As my students have become more competent with tools in the past few years (and cripes, does it feel weird to say years…) I’ve gotten the chance to think:  what would be really cool to do next?  What would be just flat out awesome?

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Here’s my answer:  wood & lino prints designed by the student, for the students work.  My summer crew churned out about 30 different wood projects and many pieces deserved something special.  In the third week, I took the plunge and bought $80 worth of tools.  We spent the next few weeks cutting as many designs as we could and experimenting with the results.

Search block printing at www.instructables.com for how-to guides.

Make it safe & keep the rubber side down this week.

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July 4, 2012 · 1:11 pm

This Week in the Classroom: Swingin’ Chalkboard Signs

Here’s a few shots of a project build I did a few months ago.  The challenge was to build a recycling container from completely recycled materials.  I picked up some nice crepe myrtle branches and immediately saw a V shaped stand with a small basket to collect recyclable goods.

To bad we never did finish it.  We got all the way to the crossbeam.  Spring break came with all the lassitude of a wilted Texas flower in August.  We never stood a chance.

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Eventually, I snookered a student into repainting an old cabinet door into a chalkboard sign.  Then I parked that sucker in front of the toolshed.  I used crepe myrtle cut-offs, a some 2x12s, some brown paint, plywood and a few pulled screws.

Make it safe & keep the rubberside down this weekend.

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July 2, 2012 · 8:41 pm

This Week in the Classroom: The Conversation Bench

Students with autism, people with neurological disorders and people with two eyes and ears and a brain often need a place to talk.  For my students with autism, the act of conversation can be harrowing, heartwrenching and terrifying.  On a good day.  My students often must master sitting in one place, labeling the world with words and comprehending the speech of others.  Once this is done, maybe they can open themselves to the vulnerability, the hurt, the anguish and the ecstasy of  a conversation.  I’m known as a loquaciousness guy, but make no bones about it.  A true conversation with those I love – my wife, my sons, my brothers, my father or oh, god, my mother – fills me with terror.  I must face the person in the mirror, flaws and all.  And my partner will witness it.  I go through my life in a series of small talks, in terror of the moment it all falls down and I must converse with the ones I love.  I can only imagine the world my students bravely navigate in everyday.

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And I, the onery cuss I am, conceived and helped build them a bench to have those conversations.  This is the conversation bench.  I can’t take credit for the design.  These types of benches were popular in Victorian times.  A particular student of mine — the student with a wrench in his pocket, a messy shock of brown hair, a mass of freckles, snotty nose and the gleaming eye of one who knows so much but needs just as much — helped in every step of the process.  He picked out the busted up chairs, broke them apart, screwed the mess together and sanded like a demon.  I finished it myself because I used oil-based finishes.  The student decided to hold a contest – he made clay coins and hid them around the schoolhouse.  When found, they have been turned in for the reward.

The reward is a conversation – a real, honest-to-self, conversation.  On politics, baseball, Airsoft guns, video games, NASCAR or whatever.  Just a conversation.  A reward, a terrifying reward, for a job well done.

Make it safe & keep the rubber side down.  Have a nice conversation this week.

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June 29, 2012 · 12:10 pm

This Week in the Classroom: Boomerangs and Chalkboard Slates

Two projects really took off this summer – chalkboard slates and boomerangs.  The boomerangs, of course, took off a little bit more.

Back in the fall I built a bike barn.  It’s more of a third-world shanty, but it housed the bikes and kept them sort of organized.  Either way, I picked up a large number of cedar shingles as a roofing material.  Time got away from me – I never roofed the barn.  Instead, I used the shingles to create these cool little chalkboard slates.  I used an exterior paint as primer, then covered them in green chalkboard paint.  A couple of decorative touches later…

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My second big project has been an exploration of flight using boomerangs.  The summer program is themed around continents.  I got stuck with Australia.  Hence, boomerangs.  Here’s a flight test of our third or fourth iteration of salvaged plywood boomerangs.  Pick up the pattern here.

Make it safe & keep the rubber side down this weekend.

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