Читать книгу Objects to Learn about and Objects for Learning 2 - Группа авторов - Страница 25

Keeping the pupils in suspense throughout the project was not particularly easy. A variety of factors played a part in their assimilation of the process (their own interest toward the subject, their ability to conduct research and to produce a short relevant text, projection in the development of a tool over the long term whose limits were undefined: there was no maximum number of points of reference that could be proposed).

Thus, it was necessary to accept down time in the development of the tool, and the project had to be relaunched on a regular basis in a variety of ways, essentially in order to prompt the pupils to follow through on their initial suggestions and to produce the clue sentences that would lead to the correct answer. Table 1.6 shows different elements connected to these constraints. The 24 points of reference are the ones that were kept throughout the year, which were accepted by most of the class because they were considered “finished” by the pupils that had constructed them; in other words, the three clue sentences that made them usable had been written. The pupils’ level of investment was thus quite variable; several of them were content to suggest the names of points of reference without seeking to suggest the elements that would make it possible to define them. As shown in the last column of the table, three main sets can be seen: the September–October period, which was marked by the initial suggestion of “finding important places to know how to locate”; the November–December period, during which the idea was relaunched with a focus on travel enabled by a sabbatical year and an associated budget: “what are the places you would like to visit if you had a sabbatical year and the budget to pay for travel?”; and the January–February period, when the pupils were prompted to work in groups using recommended documents (atlas, maps, dictionaries, other works, etc.) to create new points of reference in class. The last relaunch also had the objective of showing the over-representation of locatable points of reference on the map of the world, while few were kept for the maps of Europe and France, thus initiating an attempt to rebalance from then on. There were no subsequent relaunches, as the end of the year was taken up with assessments.

Table 1.6. The retained points of reference and project relaunches

	Place	Type	Location	Initiating element by period
1	Tower of Pisa	Monument	Europe (Italy)	September/October: the ten key places
2	Eiffel Tower	Monument	France
3	Statue of Liberty	Monument	World (America)
4	Amazon forest	Nature	World (America)
5	Dumont d’Urville Station	Science	World (Antarctica)
6	Easter Island statues	Monument	World (America)
7	Capoeira	Culture	World (America)	November/December: sabbatical year
8	Kangaroo	Nature	World (Oceania)
9	Kiwi	Nature	World (Oceania)
10	Cliffs at Etretat	Nature	France
11	Burj Khalifa Tower	Monument	World (Asia)
12	Hollywood	Monument	World (America)
13	Villa Mandessi Bell	Monument	World (Africa)
14	Emperor penguin	Nature	World (Antarctica)	January/February: group work and in-class creation based on documents
15	Statue of Jean Bart (Dunkirk)	Monument France
16	Lascaux Caves	Monument	France
17	Corinth Canal	Transport	Europe (Greece)
18	Blue Mosque	Monument	Europe (Turkey)
19	Christ the King	Monument	Europe (Portugal)
20	Piton de la Fournaise volcano	Nature	World (Réunion)
21	Tokyo Tower	Monument	World (Asia)
22	Lindt chocolate	Gastronomy	Europe (Switzerland)
23	Giraffe	Nature	World (Africa)
24	Château de Pau	Monument	France

Finally, 14 points of reference that could be located on a map of the world were retained, with five locations on the map of Europe and five more on the map of France. The types of points of reference, if they did not seem important a priori to be able to locate, nevertheless showed that the pupils were very sensitive to the symbolism of monuments (13 out of 24) as well as to nature, particularly through animals, which are beloved by children (7 of the 24). The list retained for the world shows both major locations and gaps: America is over-represented through the United States and Brazil; the countries of Europe are essentially those that border France. Unlike a historical timeline (even if these can accommodate zooming in on a year, for example), the form of the tool was also constraining since it concerned spatial representation. The small card for the point of reference to be placed on the wall map could completely cover some small countries, hence their absence (even if it was still possible to imagine placing the small map of the point of reference on one of the edges of the wall map and connecting it with a line to its real location). Variations in scale also came into play in the image of Turkey, which is typically considered to be part of the Asian continent, but which was easier to place on the map of Europe because the country was larger in that representation. It should also be noted that five points of reference – numbers 11, 13, 15, 19 and 24 – were the result of personal travel experiences (vacations or family origins).

Next, while reading the clue sentences, we should stop to consider the pupils’ attempts to be sufficiently explicit in the clue linked to the location. For example, Figure 1.3 (dated September 24) shows that it is possible to mention just the city (“My creator gave me life in Paris”, for the Eiffel Tower – number 2) or to add precision to a regional subset (“It is located in Italy in the region of Tuscany”, for the Tower of Pisa – number 1). The arrow in the table indicating a potential inversion of clues 2 and 3 shows that the location clue did not necessarily have a “natural” location in position 1, 2 or 3. However, during the game, when a pupil knew all of the points of reference in the game, it was still possible to find the point of reference based on the first clue if the point of reference was the only one in the country/city. Sometimes, other details were necessary. To guess the Easter Island statues (number 6), it was useful to indicate the latitude “in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Chile”, which led the pupil to locate Chile. It was also necessary to pay attention to the cumulative aspect of the points of reference in the game. If the Statue of Liberty (number 3), initially the only point of reference in the United States, could be defined as “offered by France to the United States, specifically to New York City”, the addition of Hollywood (number 12) required adding the detail of being located “in Los Angeles, on the West Coast of the United States”. Thus, a pupil who could not locate New York City could, by eliminating Los Angeles on the West Coast, deduce that it was located on the East Coast. This invited use of the cardinal points for locating places. Finally, a comment can be added with regard to the zonal aspect of a point of reference. While a spatial point of reference naturally appears as a point (city in a country, building in a city), nothing prevents it from being a line (a river, for example) or an area. Here, the sprawl of the Amazon forest (number 4) over several states required it to be defined as “being home to a significant biodiversity”. In the same way, animal territories are not circumscribed by state borders, and so it was necessary to show that the country indicated was only an example among others for the image of the giraffe (number 23): “I am found in the African savanna; for example, in Kenya”.

Figure 1.3. Clue sentences. Translation: This leaning tower was built in 1173. It is located in Italy in the region of Tuscany. This monument measures 56 m. My nickname is "the iron lady". I am 32 m tall and I have 1665 steps. My creator gave me life in Paris

Finally, with regard to the skill of finding locations in space, which is only a part of the study of geography, this game complemented more traditional class sessions focusing on the study of documents that aimed to develop an analysis of the organization of space by humanity, which is the essence of the discipline. I also tried when possible to make the connection between the points of reference suggested by the pupils which I had already incorporated into the curriculum for the year. Thus, the strong presence of monuments, particularly towers (number 1 – Pisa, number 2 – Eiffel, number 11 – Burj Khalifa, number 21 – Tokyo) gave me the opportunity to address, from the very beginning of the year, the question of available urban space and the recourse to vertical building when there’s not enough space to spread out on the ground. The sequence allowed me to conduct a session on comparing the height of the world’s skyscrapers (including Burj Khalifa Tower) and those in France (including the Eiffel Tower), as well as a session on errors in architecture and territorial management, highlighting the technical errors that led to the Tower of Pisa’s leaning immediately after construction. While I thought about theme three for CM2, “Better living”, which I initially scheduled for the end of the year, this sequence pulled forward the initial questions about building tall buildings to the beginning of the year, which made it possible to connect the pupils’ thoughts and mine about finding locations and how they are organized. Other points of encounter could have occurred in a timelier manner. Theme one of CM2, “Traveling”, provided the opportunity to think about types of transportation (the use of rivers: number 17 – the Corinth Canal), migration following natural disasters (volcanism: number 20 – Piton de la Fournaise volcano) and the potential for migration caused by climate change (the measurement of climate at scientific stations: number 5 – Dumont d’Urville Station). It was not always possible to find a connection: variations in the ability to create these links constituted one of the explanations for the project running out of steam and for the subsequently necessary relaunches. This element was, nevertheless, indispensable for preventing the practice of learning points of reference from becoming one of “dry nomenclature”.