We're coming to the end of the Journey North...a study about how to use photoperiod data to track down mystery locations throughout the world. Students have said this is "the best" and "I hate this project". Actually both comments delight me because they reveal, at least in my opinion, the depth of this study.
Students are used, at least in 6th grade, to knowing the answer off the top of their head. If they don't know, they just say something like...
"I don't get it." or "I need help".
To which I always reply, "What don't you get or "What do you need help with".
Usually the answer is "Everything". And as any teacher worth their salt would say..."I can't help you until you know a bit more about what you don't know. Or at least be able to tell me what you have tried and where you got stuck".
Students hate those kinds of answers. All to frequently they want you to give them the answer or they will badger you with so many questions that you will give in and just tell them what they ask you. This project has been like that.
It has been painful and has made me wonder why I chose to do this project again. It's my 5th year. Yet now that we are down to the end, my students love the project and are thrilled that we're about to find out if they have correctly deduced the location of these classrooms. They have used math, they've analyzed sunrise/sunset patterns, looked through atlases, had to discuss their reasoning and defend their evidence, and they've had to suffer through their teacher not knowing "the answer" or if they are on the right track.
It has been a wonderful experience (albeit I don't think they'll realize it for years to come) in using evidence and data to "prove" that your conclusion is reasonable and logical. They've ramped up their conversations with each other. It makes me laugh because they are both delighted when they get the same answer (because then they think they must be onto the right answer) or if one of the holdouts can prove their point better than the crowd and the crowd switches their thinking.
The SmartBoard has been invaluable during the Journey North. We save all of our thinking....I convert those thinking drafts into PDFs and upload them onto our class webpage. That helps the kids at night when they are working on a clue and they need to review what we came up with in class. I can also display anything we've done because I've saved everything in weekly folders. Lastly when someone is gone, sick or disorganized (read: they lost their notes or spiral)...the notes are downloadable off our class page. The SB has made a huge improvement over past years and I can't imagine how we did this without the SB Notebook software. (BTW..in the middle of Journey North they upgraded me to a different version of SB Notebook. That took a little adjustment, but we LOVE the table function and use it all the time to aggregate all 10 mystery locations)