Exit Slip: October 7

 During the sit spot exercise I reflected on what had changed from last time. I noted the following differences:

• The evergreen trees stayed evergreen, not much change. These are the stable constants in the environment
• In the colder weather the sap on the trees changed colour from something translucent to something opaque. The viscosity also changed. It became more maleable almost like clay, while before it was more runny like pancake syrup.
• The industrial sounds dominated the soundscape today. I noted tractors, airplanes, and garbage trucks in the background as I laid in my spot. 

One other thing I took advantage of in the garden was the outdoor wifi. I have recently been thinking about how to use the seek by inaturalist app in the class. Some ideas I have are

• Asking students to look for certain biology curricular concepts (if teaching junior science) (ie. an axseual reproducer, a sexual reproducer, etc...)
• Having them pick challenges to complete (ie, niche roles - find a producer, consumer, decomposer, keystone species, etc...)
• Have them look for certain traits ie. arachnids with 6 legs etc... or what is common among all insects? most insects?
• understanding the categories/ levels of life eg. kingdom, species, genus, etc...

I thought about this more as I explored the app in the garden:

It is worth nothing that a school garden might be a good spot for outdoor wifi which the app requires for many features.

Finally we did the leaf exercise. I immediately became fascinated by Marlaina's task of bisecting everything. We dubbed her the "Bisection Queen" because she was bisecting lines, angle, circles... you name it. I love watching her approximate an angle on a leaf and draw it by bisecting 90 degrees n number of times until she came close. For example for a 45 degree angle she bisected the 90 degree angle once. for a 60 degree angle she bisected the 90 degree to get a 45 then bisected the 45 so that she had an angle of 45+22.5 = 67.5 degrees. This was fascinating to watch. I learned about learning, planning how to attack a problem, and geometry. I was using my inner teacher bird as I thought about how if I was my own teacher I might observe that me 'the student' was not trying the task for myself simply watching her but in reality my observation of her was teaching me so much that I wouldn't have gotten simply by doing the task for myself.

**I will leave the choice to post her work (finished product) up to Marlaina... I highly recommend seeing her blog, she produced a fascinating result that showed her numerous bisections.**