So many amazing discussions and discoveries today!  I hope your child is furthering their understandings by talking and researching with you at home.

We began the day with a scavenger hunt of the classroom to find all the electrical devices built into our space: outlets, switches, lights, technology ports, security, and safety, etc.  We observed structural blueprints and industry standards for diagrams and symbols in regard to home electrical wiring.  How can we use our knowledge of scale and proportion to create drawings and use symbols to observe electrical systems of the 6th floor of the Murray Hall?  What should the scale of our model drawings be? Can others read and make sense of such symbols and models if they are common or standardized?  Your child may be interested in creating a scale drawing of their own room to observe the outlets, light, and wiring circuitry design!

For the rest of the day and in small group stations, students worked together to find answers to many questions we had recorded in our learning.  How does electricity work? What materials are conductive and what materials act as an insulator? Who were some of the pioneers that worked with electricity, and how did they experiment to answer their own questions about electric?  How are circuits created?  Can I predict from a scale model drawing if a circuit is complete and will be productive in achieving specific results?  It was my delight when I heard, “This is hard”! This is heavy lifting in learning!

We have just begun to go back and observe some historical outages and we will continue our questioning.  How did this system function before the outage and what went wrong?  How can this be prevented in current or future grid designs?  When addressing access to services, how can we determine equity?  What are the issues and concerns for different stakeholders?

Looking forward to seeing everyone tomorrow!

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