Native Americans and their Biomes Part II

After creating a landscape depicting the biome where their Native Tribe lived, children were given a Native American myth or legend to read and study. Each child was challenged to retell the story to their peers using all the skills ably demonstrated by gifted storyteller, Vanessa Johnson. Some of skills the children identified when Vanessa shared some oral stories were: She showed enthusiasm, used voices of different people, used the audience to interest and involve the audience, used eye contact and spoke loudly. The children took this assignment seriously and enjoyed the retelling of some fascinating stories. Some of the books children studied were the Abenaki tale: How two feathers were changed from the loneliness and the Inuit tale "Kayakatuk" and Coyote Makes a Man - Native American Story from the Great Plains.

As children fine tuned their text describing the language, culture, beliefs and way of life of their tribe, we collected one more time to synthesize the information we had amassed over three months of study.

Flying Airplanes!

How do airplanes fly? That is a question that our younger students (K-2) explored during Investigations. They made paper airplanes and tested them to see how far they could fly. Then they modified their planes to see if they could get them to fly farther. They compared their recorded distances to draw their conclusions.

Civil War Class

The oldest group of students finished up their in depth study of the Civil War. After learning about the local abolitionist movement and underground railroad here in Syracuse at the Onondaga Historical Association, the students analyzed the causes of the war from both the north and souths perspective. They read and interpreted the inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. To better understand what life was like during the war, they read and analyzed primary source letters from women, children, nurses, and confederate, union and black soldiers. As a home project with their families they interpreted the Gettysburg Address and put it into their own words. In small groups, they studied the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. Each student researched and presented about a Civil War Heroine. To summarize and round out the unit they watched the Freedom: A History of Us videos A Fatal Contradiction and A War to End Slavery where they had remarkable discussions sharing their ideas and feelings about freedom, contradiction, the emancipation proclamation, reconstruction, Gettysburg, how students learn about the Civil War in the south, law and equality.