Thursday, May 05, 2005

Country Life

Today we began our final Open Court unit, "Country Life". I particularly like this unit because it really allows the students to think about urban and rural life, past and present. We began today by starting to create our Concept/Question board. The children understood that there were lots of farms and therefore animals in the country, but were a little unclear about anything else. Our unit will help, I think, to broaden this understanding.

We started reading and discussing the first selection, "Ox-Cart Man", a poem by Donald Hall. (I have a particular fondness for this poem, and I developed a lesson plan for the Education Devision of the LA County Music Center based on it. We will be following this lesson plan in its broadest outlines, though I'm making some changes.) The poem helps students see the rhythm of life for a family on a farm in New Hampshire in the 1850's. I admit another bias here: the poet was one of my professors at the University of Michigan back in the 1970's.

The selections which follow help students see country life today. "I am the Heartland" is a paen to the agricultural sector. It provides students with the opportunity to see that urban and rural life are intertwined, even though it has a political undertone which sometimes makes me wonder if it was not commissioned by Archer-Daniels-Midland. There is an informative selection on dairy farming called "Cows in the Parlor".

There are a couple of selections about the Amish. These probably cause the students to assume that there are a lot more Amish farming families than there really are, but they find the life of the Amish interesting. Neither really explains the religious motivations of the Amish, so I try to provide a succinct and objective introduction to Anabaptist movement to place these in context. They usually look a little blankly at me when I do this, but I feel like I need to explain that the Amish are not doing this just to look cute.

There is a long and hard to read selection to the problem of urban sprawl called "Whatever Happened to the Baxter Place?". This is an important one for me because my sister is a professor of urban planning at Michigan State University and stopping urban sprawl is one of her professional and personal passions. I've got to figure out a way this year to make this selection for lively to the students.

The unit ends with a big question and a little answer. The question is, "Which is better, rural or urban life?" Unfortunately, the only thing that McGraw Hill seemed able to find to address this question was the tedious old Aesop fable about the "Country Mouse and the City Mouse". I suppose that student's cultural literacy would not be complete without knowing this, but it seems like a trite answer. We'll do better in class.

Homework: The students have had a heavy load lately, and they're getting a night off. Unless they have some classwork to finish, they should have a free evening. Enjoy!

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