Final Project

Essential Question: How can teachers use digital resources, community resources and effective teaching methods, integrating Alaska Native ways of knowing with Western scientific methods to create greater student interest in, and understanding of, the geosciences?

Objectives:

• Students will interview an elder as a class
• Students will create a digital movie talking about the current climate today using data and daily temperatures recordings
• Students will create a digital movie talking about what it was like years ago using elder interviews.
•  Students will describe weather and see if they can find indoor clues about what the weather's like;
• Students will discuss times when the weather has affected their plans;
• Students will look at a weather map and temperature listings and discuss the patterns they notice across the United States
• Students will record the daily temperature using the thermometer outside of the classroom

 Goals:

• Students will have a better understanding of how everything is connected.
• They will learn about their village through the eyes of elders and through exploration.
• Students will understand the difference between weather and climate.
• Students will begin to think about the differences between where they live and other parts of the world.

Rationale:  

This is a project that I would do with students in grades 4-6. This project would last for a week or longer. I created this project because I feel it is important to involve the community and elders into my classroom. Cultural connections are essential for children to make and something they should learn about in the earlier grades. My classroom has already created a digital movie this year and enjoyed every minute of it, hence why I think it would be interesting for students to do. Temperate and climate impact daily life here, so why not learn more about it.

Building background knowledge:

• First I think it would be important to define cultural connections, both what they are and why they are important. 
• We will talk about what they know about Quinhagak in general in relation to weather, subsistence living, cultural influences, etc

a.     What is the weather like? Climate?  (Discuss the difference between the two)

                                               i.  Climate change video

b.     When is a time weather impacted your plans?

c.      What do people do for a living?

d.     How does the weather impact where we live?

e.     What would happen if we sudden had to leave Quinhagak?

f.      How do we use resources around us to survive?

g.     What are the resources available in Quinhagak?

h.      What other villages have gone through climate situations?

                 1.Climate change in Newtok

                          2. Newtok article

 Use part of lesson plan from National Geographic website 

1.     Inform students that people all over the world are affected by the weather. Ask students to discuss some of the times when the weather has affected their activities or plans. For example, perhaps they've had to cancel a long-awaited excursion due to bad weather, or maybe they celebrated a winter holiday outdoors due to unseasonably warm weather.

2.     Have students look at the current map at the Weather Channel Web site to see what the weather is like in other parts of the country. Ask them to describe the symbols the map uses to show what the weather is like. Then discuss today's weather in Florida, New York, California, and Montana.

3.     Help students record the high temperatures, as seen on the Weather Channel map, for Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Kansas City, Houston, and Miami.

4.     Have a few students write the high temperatures on small pieces of construction paper. Use removable tape to place the papers onto the above cities on the class wall map.

5.     Ask students to look at the map and find where the temperatures are the highest and where they are lowest. If weather patterns are relatively normal today, they should notice that the colder temperatures occur farther north in the country.

The Interview:

1.     Before the interview, we will talk about the importance of interviewing and review interview procedures. Our students are familiar with interviewing elders because we did it previously this year.

2.     Students will use Garage Band on their computer to record the interview.

3.     Later the interview will be transcribed.

      After the interview:

1.     Students will use a variety of resources to create a story about the land years ago and the changes that have occurred. It would be helpful to break the class into two groups. One will focus on years ago, and one group will focus on the land now. Students will talk about implications with weather. They will use clips from the interview as well as interpret the elder interviews. Students can also incorporate Yupik stories from the past into the movie.

     Steps for creating an I-movie:

 1. First children create backgrounds. You need to take pictures or scan these photos to use for the movie. These examples are from a production we created for Thanksgiving.

2. Next you shoot the video using a green screen. If you do not have a green screen then you can just use green butcher paper.

3.  Next you import both the photos and movie clips.
4.  Use I-movie you can create a movie.

a.     NOTE: If anyone is interested in doing this you can contact me and I’ll explain in greater detail how to do this.

      Resources from the modules they could use:

     --La'ona Dewilde video--This video talks about interviewing Natives and would be useful to use in the classroom.

       --Alaska Native Ways of Knowing--This has many great websites for children to look at and great stories of native ways of living.

       --Spirit of Subsistence Living---Children can think about how subsistence living has changed from what it was once before to now.

      --Life on the Coast---Our village is on the coast, this would be interesting for students to see

    ---Subsistence life impacted by climate change

    --Inuit Observations-- This focuses on climate change that has taken place.

      --Alaskool website---This website has a section on culture and change. 

  

     Once the children complete the video we would share it with the community. I think it would be important to share it at a community meeting and maybe talk about if there was anything in the community we could do to help with climate change, pollution, or any other issue that came up while doing this project.

The last module

Explain:

This blog was jammed pack with new information for me to learn. Before this module I guess I never realized how important glaciers are and how much water they supply us with. I never realized how big they can be. One part of the module mentioned a glacier being the size of France! I also learned that three quarters of all fresh water on earth is frozen in glacier ice. WOW!

Before I began the module, I knew I needed some background knowledge. The first thing I did when starting this blog was use Google and look up terrestrial ice. I then used Wikipedia and looked up Glacier Bay.This website had many pictures and really helped me to learn about a place I was unfamiliar with.

I liked the Losing Permafrost in Alaska video because it was filled with new information for me.  I can’t believe that it cost 35 million dollars a year to fix damage due to permafrost. It is also mind blowing to think that the winter average has risen by four degrees.

During this video (Losing Permafrost in Alaska), I liked the native perspective that talked about how years ago people had to wear really warm winter gear, and now they don’t need that type of clothing. For someone who is new to this area, I always feel like I am freezing to death. I fear when people say it is only going to get colder. It is interesting to hear a native’s perspective about the climate change.

I’ll get back to the point where I mentioned I had no idea the importance of glaciers. I decided to google glaciers in Alaska which brought back a ton of results. Then I was interested in glaciers in Ohio (where I am from). I found the map of glaciers in Ohio to be interesting and spent quite a while looking at the information.

The video on climate change was particularly interesting. I didn’t really think about the differences between the two. It talked about how hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes are all weather events that happen when climate is predictable and stable. If the climate changes either up or down quickly, then this would disrupt life as we know it. I liked the quote “it has done it before, and is inevitable that it will happen again” This really made me think of all the research and hours that are spent trying to figure out when the climate change will occur.

 This video on Glaciers would be interesting to show students, because it shows the correlation between input and output and I felt this video was student friendly.

While talking to colleagues about this module, a friend mentioned the Spencer glacier located near Anchorage, Alaska. I then began to look it up.  It is so interesting that something so beautiful is so close to me. This is someplace I would like to visit before leaving Alaska.

Spencer glacier

Extend:

I will use the Alaskool website in my classroom. It is a very helpful website for in the classroom. I liked the profiles of the different regions in Alaska and think it would be different to look at the different regions and compare and contrast.

This module talked so much about the temperature and climate changing from year to year that I think it would be interesting to chart the information from the past 50 or so years and analyze the data.

Evaluate:

These resources are very helpful. They will come in handy when I think about the final project. Since climate change will impact where I live greatly, it is important to think about it. I know I mention it every week, but since temperature is an interest of my students, this module gave me many ideas of how to incorporate it into my teaching. 

Colleagues:

Carolyn’s blog

She found an interesting resource for teachers to use. I also liked her different ideas of how to incorporate all of this information into the classroom.

Alison’s blog

Alison mentioned the Alaskool.org website which I thought was very interesting. She also mentioned an experiment she might try. I also like how she talks about so many of the resources and how they are insightful.

Amy’s blog

Amy found the part on weather and climate to be interesting when thinking about the differences between the two. This was also something that I noted.

Ice Ice Baby

 frozen ice in Alaska

Explain:

 Cryosphere was a new term to me. It is very interesting since ice and frozen water are all around me here in Quinhagak. I really liked the article in the Anchorage Declaration that talked about how “everything is connected and mother earth is in a stage of climate crisis.” I felt this quote helped to put things more into perspective. I was able to see how climate change is a bigger issue then I had ever imagined.

This module confirmed the importance of both weather and climate. One example is freeze up. Freeze up is important because it allows people to travel and a way to get out of the village. In the winter, the rivers can become very dangerous as we need them to freeze up for transportation.  I can connect to this, because a fellow teacher in my village fell through the ice last week. They made it out safely, but I guess I never realized that this was such a big issue. When this happened at first I had no  idea how or why it could happened. 

 It made it clear to me how the weather and ice can control so much. The climate is important because it impacts animals, people, and the environment as a whole.

The Steve Maclean video was very interesting. He did a good job of talking about science and how beneficial it can be for students.  I think it would speak to students and they would see how beneficial it can be to chose an occupation that means a lot to them. 

Extend:

I am going to use these resources in my class when talking about temperature. My class is very interested in temperature. We got a thermometer put outside our window so that we may track the temperature each day. It would be interesting to look at the climate and compare it to years past.

Along with looking at temperatures, we also use the weather website to track the weather and talk about the numbers that we notice.  The experiments in this module will also be helpful when thinking about temperature. I am trying to integrate into math with creating bar graphs and comparing data.

The Albedo video on Teacher’s Domain  would also be interesting to show students because it is hands on. It would help to explain temperature and climate.

Evaluate:

These resources were relevant I felt. I felt this module was a bit easier for me to understand. Living close to the Bering Sea myself allowed me to connect to Steve Maclean’s video. I never realized how important one landform can be. When I do think about all the water that is around me here in Alaska though, it starts to make sense.

Colleagues:

K.M.’s blog  

I really liked the pictures that were used. Along with the pictures there was an excellent explanation of cryosphere and how that would be relevant in teaching. I got a lot of new ideas from this blog.

Cheryl’s blog 

She talked about the importance of exploring ice and snow with our students. She also mentioned a permafrost study she is involved in which is pretty interesting.

Kathy’s blog

There are many good points and relations to science. Kathy used much of the quotes from ICC I found to be interesting as well as talked about the importance of using interactive resources in the classroom.