How Do I Love Thee? Modeling

For this assignment I had trouble figuring out which direction I was meant to go in.  My content area being poetry, I thought about how modeling applied.  I considered how a poem could be expressed as a model.  I chose the poem Messy Room, by Shel Siverstein because of the visual nature of it.  I made a diorama of the “messy room” described in the poem. 

Messy Room 

by Shel Silverstein

Whosever room this is should be ashamed!
His underwear is hanging on the lamp.
His raincoat is there in the overstuffed chair,
And the chair is becoming quite mucky and damp.
His workbook is wedged in the window,
His sweater's been thrown on the floor.
His scarf and one ski are beneath the TV,
And his pants have been carelessly hung on the door.
His books are all jammed in the closet,
His vest has been left in the hall.
A lizard named Ed is asleep in his bed,
And his smelly old sock has been stuck to the wall.
Whosever room this is should be ashamed!
Donald or Robert or Willie or--
Huh? You say it's mine? Oh, dear,
I knew it looked familiar!

Although it is two-dimensional in picture form, it is three-dimensional as it sits on my dining room table.  I like the idea of asking students to create three-dimensional interpretations of a poem.  This one of course lent itself to a very literal translation.  Others might be more abstract and require more interpretation.  I also decided to create a life-size version of this poem.  Again it is represented in two-dimensions here, but from my angle was much more!    

I then thought that perhaps I should have looked at it from a teaching standpoint.  How could I model poetry and make it more visual.  I decided to look at some different poetry patterns and create models for them.  This is what I came up with.

          These models allow students to create their own poetry based on a specific pattern.  Having these models to refer to will help students to remember each pattern.  They make poetry visual, but in a completely different way.

What's the Big Idea? Dimensional Thinking and Modeling

The chapter on dimensional thinking talked about many ways to think about dimension that I had not thought about before.  One example is the way that shadows behave under different conditions.  A single object can have an infinite number of differently shaped shadows depending on its position, the position and type of light, and the material from which it is made.  I was thinking back to the first zoom in from this course for which we zoomed in on an object and asked others to figure out what it was.  Perhaps students could capture several shadows of an object with the same goal in mind.  Similarly, what would different objects look like when sliced into layers.  Two different layers of the same food or toy may look like completely different objects. 

I sometimes forget in the routine of the day to stop and look at the concepts I am teaching from other angles.  Sometimes, especially in math, zooming in on a concept and really breaking it down into its simplest form can do a lot to help students see what is really going on.  Zooming out on the other hand, for instance in social studies, can help us to see how events in one part of the world relate to those in going on in others.  The events that were shaping Michigan history in the 1760’s and 1770’s were certainly affected by the events taking place in the colonies at that time.  To teach Michigan history without zooming out to capture the big picture would leave out large pieces of the puzzle.

            The chapter on modeling discussed the importance of model building over simply sketching or designing something using computers.  The act of physically creating a model allows a person to adapt and make changes when they are met with unforeseen challenges.  Models give us the feeling of being there and allow us to control a situation, or find out aspects of the situation we can’t control and give us clues as to why.  Even those who we consider to be original and innovative thinkers confess that they looked to people who came before them for a place to begin.  While their end product was something we hadn’t seen before, they used models created by previous artists and academics as inspiration.  Building models teaches us how to use imaging, analogizing, and dimensional thinking skills which will help us to create and explore in our occupations and our hobbies.

In the classroom models are imperative for teaching about things that we cannot show students in person due to size, distance, or practicality.  A functional model can help us show students how the heart pumps blood through the body.  A physical model can show us what the inside of our ear looks like.  Models also serve to help students to imitate a process such as poetry or multiplication.  They can observe us writing a haiku or working through a division problem and then use our model to try it for themselves.  As mentioned in the chapter, “Precise models represent precise thinking.”

Zoom In! Modeling

It is ridiculous how much fun I had doing this!

How Do I Love Thee?

My content area is poetry, but for this project I thought I would explore a song that has always sounded like  poetry to me.  I listened to it and tried to physically create some of the images that I see when I hear this song. 

The song is Verdi Cries.  

It was written by Natalie Merchant and performed by 10,000 Maniacs on the album In My Tribe.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4pE9-_gL88

What's the Big Idea? Embodied Thinking

          There are many things we can do without thinking.  Some of those things we can do because we have done them so many times that they have become automatic.  We rely on muscle memory to perform the task.  An example of this is brushing our teeth.  We weren’t born knowing how to do it, we didn’t need to know.  As toddlers, however, we were taught to do it first by observing and having others do it for us.  Then we began to try for ourselves, crudely at first, but by the time our milk teeth began to fall out we had a good enough grasp of the task to be able to protect our new adult ones.  As adults we barely give it any thought at all.  It’s routine.  Other movements we just feel.  I don’t dance with my husband terribly often.  We go to a wedding or some other formal event about once a year these days.  Still, nobody had to teach me how to dance with him.  It just works- it always has, from the first time.  If I were to dance with someone else it may not come so easily, but because I have known my husband since he was thirteen years old, a lot of things just come naturally from knowing who he is and who we are together.

Sometimes it is the process and not the final product that the artist is trying to convey.  The sculptors discussed in the chapter revealed that it was a very physical experience to create a piece.  They referred not simply to the act of adding to or removing from their medium, but the way they had to use their bodies in order to feel what it was they were trying to express.  Dance is a physical experience already, but when I am learning new choreography and my instructor asks if we want to try it with the music or without, my response is always with.  The steps don’t fully come together for me until I feel how they interact with the music.  I can know the steps, but it is the music that will tell me how to perform them.

I had not thought of empathizing in such a physical way before reading this chapter.  I always described empathizing as seeing a situation from someone else’s point of view.  I hadn’t considered that it also means imagining what it is like to actually be someone else.  This year my son has a boy in his class who is new to the school and who has some learning disabilities.  Some of his behaviors have made it difficult for him to make friends with the other students.  We have had many conversations about what it would feel like to come to a new school and how important it is that he has at least one friend, even if it is challenging sometimes.  I was in the room last week for their Halloween party and got to observe him a bit and noticed some of his ticks.  Over the weekend I had my kids try to perform classroom tasks while imitating some of the involuntary body movements that this student goes through.  They tried to read while bobbing their heads and tried to write while their arms were jerking.  We talked at length about how frustrating that would be and why putting that much effort into tasks that everyone else seems to do so easily might make someone act out.    My kids had many other examples of struggles that students go through and how it may affect their school experience.  

Toward the end of the chapter the authors point out that part of empathizing is thinking about what a person (or atom) wants.  My son who is concerned that this boy doesn’t complete his assignments because he doesn’t want to realized that it may not be that he doesn’t want to.  Perhaps he just wants to be able to do it as easily as other students can.

Poetry is rarely a physical experience for the reader.  The author of a poem, however, may have to live an experience as the sculptors in the chapter did in order to write about it authentically.  In order to express an experience in words you must first know exactly how it feels.  I like the idea of having my students write a poem about an animal.  In order to do that I would like them to have an experience similar to the one I had for the Zoom In assignment for this module.  I would like the students to “be” that animal for a bit and make some observations about what they see and feel.  I think this will bring a lot of useful information to our poetry unit. 

Zoom In! Animal Insticts

In honor of Halloween I decided to become a spider.

I traveled from the drainpipe to the doorway...

and managed to find my way inside.

I took refuge in the coat closet...

but got too brave.

and finally met my match.

(In reality my husband does not condone actually smashing spiders.  

We are a catch and release family, but that picture wasn't as interesting.)

How Do I Love Thee? Abstracting

          My content area is poetry, so this module has been poetry overload!  When I think about what poetry really is, I would have to say that it is, at its essence, a way to express an idea.  What else shares this function?  What else expresses an idea known only to the author, but open to the interpretation of the person who reads it?  A painting can also reveal the feelings of the artist.  Like a poem a painting doesn’t reveal all that the artist was feeling.  Some of the emotions put into the artwork will never be known to the observer.  There will also be feelings that people will get from a poem or a painting that the artist never intended.  The understanding is in the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hands, and mind of the beholder.

Haiku:

The piece is revealed

What is veiled between the lines?

We may never know.