Monarch
Flew, Students Walked
Who Got to Mexico First?
I'm
Jo Zimmel, the physical education teacher at Garlough Elementary Magnet
School in St. Paul, MN.
When we released monarchs to fly south the students started wearing pedometers during their school day. At the end of each day they recorded their steps. At the end of the week they added them up. We combined all of the students steps and recorded mileage.
The distance is 1,836 miles from St. Paul, Minnesota, USA to the monarch's winter home near Angangueo, Michoacan, Mexico.
Who got to Mexico first, the students or the butterflies? What do you think?
Read about our project and find out!
Materials
Pedometers
(1 per student), calculators, "responsibility book"
Before the migration
One week prior to the start students were reminded in their Physical Education
classes about use of pedometer: how to put on, how to read the numbers,
how to put it away in the box, etc.
Each 4th grade class has pedometers for each student, so there was a possibility of 50 pedometers every school day. I wore a pedometer each day and included my steps, too.
During the migration
Every day
Each morning of the week the students came into their classrooms and put
their pedometers on. They wore them the whole school day. When the day
was over they recorded their steps on the sheet in their "responsibility
book" and put the pedometers back in the box. (If you need more information
on how to organize pedometers I can send that later.)
Mondays:
On Monday the students used their calculators and added up the steps and
converted them into miles. The miles were then e-mailed to me and I did
the recording on our Journey south map. I also did morning announcements
to the whole school about where the 4th graders were and where the butterflies
were.
We are looking forward to doing it in spring to track the butterflies
coming home to the northern region.
| Our
Results On
week 6 the Garlough Elementary Magnet School kids made it to the
winter home of the monachs, ahead of the butterflies. Yeah!
Our start date was Monday, Sept 17. The students arrived Friday, Oct. 26. 2007. It took 6 weeks to arrive at our destination. (Next year we will start 1 week earlier.) |
How would the math work out in your school? Garlough Elementary had 51 people wearing pedometers. It took 6 weeks (30 school days) to log 1,836 miles. That's 61.2 miles per day, or 1.2 miles per person. |
Our
Journey South Map |
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Here are the 4th graders comments.
Question:
Should 4th graders do it again next year?
Answer: YES
Question:
Why?
Answers:
-
It was fun to compete with the butterflies.
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When we got behind the butterflies we wanted to win so we started moving more at recess.
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I paid a lot more attention to how the butterflies were migrating because I wanted to beat them.
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The butterflies were slowed up by weather. We were slowed up by not moving enough, some people loosing their pedometers, not remembering to put on our pedometers away and leaving them at home, not recording their steps before removing them, and having vacations.
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I am glad it was hot in Texas so we could get ahead.
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I had to think of games to exercise more at recess.
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Our teacher knew were having a hard time getting enough steps so as a class we all took a long hike over at the nature center.
Comments from Teachers
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Finding a time when we had everyone together was big problem.
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The math was difficult but became easier by the end.
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Real life application of addition is worth the time.
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Chart will be revised to make the math easier.
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Teachers thought is was well worth it.
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First time project has a few problems but all want to do it again.
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Was this math difficult for 4th graders? YES! The teachers decided it was worth the effort.
