This week was much like every other with the general routine of going to class and then surviving the rest of the day. Our Monday "Active Learning" class was cancelled however we came together as a class later in the week to continue to design our BREXIT lesson. On Tuesday our tutor showed us the typically Dutch informality and flexibility by taking us outside for our class as it was probably the best day, weather wise, there has been in a while. And on Wednesday we continued to examine how the Dutch school system accommodates for SEN pupils and once again attempt to master some basic Dutch language.
When Thursday came along I had another visit to my placement school. This week we actually began our project rather than just having a discussion. I was surprised how much the pupils remembered and the seemed a lot more engaged and ready to take part this week. Nadja and I handed out the booklets we made previously with information about the English speaking cities they were going to be researching and presenting and in all the lessons were a success. I have noticed some similar strategies being used in the classrooms for management such as clap patterns and the teacher raising her hand for silence and attention. However I am still of the opinion that in terms of behaviour the teachers are a lot more relaxed. The pupils will often get out of their seats and the classroom is rarely quiet. But once we gave them their task they all got stuck in and their was never anyone off task.
On Friday Niamh and I made the short journey by train to Franeker for our "Places of Memory" excursion of the week. This time we were visiting the Eisinga Planetarium which is the oldest working planetarium in the world. Neither of us was quite sure what to expect when we arrived however we were very pleasantly surprised. Luckily there was an English explanation of what we were looking at otherwise we would have had no idea. The accurately moving model was built by Eise Eisinga, a wool carder, on the ceiling of this living room between the years 1774 and 1881. Intelligent and self-educated he wrote a mathematics textbook at age 15 and his first astronomy book at age 17. He actually decided to create the model as before he did uneducated locals feared that the planets would eventually collide and be destroyed and he wanted to put them all at ease.
He made the entire model by hand with only the help of his father as he trusted no one else, this included the carving and placement of 10,000 identical nails to act as teeth in his mechanism. The mechanism is kept on time by a pendulum and the cogs are moved by weights that have to be reset every 4 days. The entire model is still completely accurate today, except for a few missing planets that were not discovered at the time of construction, it can even tell the distance of the earth from the moon.
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| The large gold sphere represents the sun |
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| From the different dials you get different information such as zodiac sign |
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| The room was so small it was impossible to get the whole model in one image |
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| Part of the mechanism used to move the model |
"Astronomy, as nothing else can do, teachers men humility." - Arthur C. Clarke
It is incredible to see what a self-educated wool carder can produce with a lot of determination and passion.
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