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
- 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)
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.
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
--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.
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