Integrating

The best moments in education come when you manage to make connections between different subject areas and teach different subjects in the same lesson. We did quite a bit of that today in room 19.

Our big activity today was again focusing on challenging environments. Deciding why is potentially dangerous about an environment, determining what resources may be available there, and figuring  out how to take advantage of those resource is the heart of all the stories in the “Surviving” unit of Open Court. Today’s scheduled art lesson had more to do with landscapes. The two ideas seemed perfectly matched for each other.

First the students selected an environment. They drew it in pencil, went over the lines in sharpie, and then used watercolors to paint it. Most were quite good, and some were absolutely outstanding.

After finishing their watercolors, the students wrote about their environments. They were asked to imagine what it would be like to be in that environment. What would they see? hear? smell? feel? They also wrote about the challenges a person might face in that environment and what they could do to survive. Most of the students are finishing the compositions as part of their homework tonight. I’m expecting that these will be as wonderful as their pictures.

We also watched the third installment of the Transcontinental Railroad documentary. The students are starting to get engrossed right now by the race between the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific, and they are outraged by the injustices that those two companies and the settlers they brought inflicted on the Plains Indians and the environment.

Homework:  (1) Finish the composition discussed above. (2) Do “Draw a Diagram,” Math, page 433. (3) Do the Review/Test and Cumulative Review, Math, pages 434-435.

Remember that we have performances tomorrow at 1:30 pm and at 6:30 pm. Students will have dinner provided for them courtesy of the Carlson family. Be sure to have white shirts for everybody, shorts for the girls, and blue jeans for the boys. As always, thanks to Joan Stewart Smith for serving as costumer par excellence!