Exit Slip: 10/7

 Today we wrote another sit-spot poem. For this one we took note of how our spot had changed since our last visit two weeks prior. For me the most noticeable difference was the temperature. The air was much cooler than last time. Dew that was cool last time became cold and uncomfortable when it seeped into my shoes. The poem I wrote is below:

The other major difference was the tractor. The tractor took up most of my attention when trying to write my poem. The sound of the tractor drowned out any other noises and the movement drew my eyes away from observing anything else. I tried to look past it, to ignore it and focus on everything else, but I couldn't. I should have instead focused on the tractor and wrote my poem about it. That day, the tractor encompassed my sit spot entirely. 

Afterwards we had a discussion and drew leaves with compasses and straight edges. Our discussion was fruitful. Sheldon brought up a good point about teaching climate change optimistically. The compass and straight edge activity was a good combination of geometry and nature. Looking at the leaves it was hard at first to see the geometric shapes within them. And when I did, I still couldn't translate it to the page directly. I tried at first to draw the edge of the leaf in two arcs. This approach looked similar but did not quite match the shape of the leaf. In a subsequent attempt I tried to use more arcs. If we were to continue I think I could use more and more smaller arcs until I successfully recreated the edge of the leaf. This method would be slow. It would take many iterations and tons of trial and error to recreate a shape that a leaf knows instinctively.