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Photo courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service |
Elders in the Classroom
The Alaska Seas and Rivers curriculum has designed the units of instruction to address the Alaska Standards for several ways. The units encourage students and teachers to engage in the local context of the content offered, organize and invite the community into the classroom to share in students' learning, and utilize local elders knowledge and expertise whenever possible. It is important for students to know that the traditional knowledge of their community is important and significant. If you are new to teaching in Alaska, the following resources may be helpful as you plan for involving elders in your classroom and/or field investigations.
Using Elders in the Classroom by Roby Littlefield includes information and suggestions for involving and working with elders in the classoom.
Educator Guidelines for Respecting Cultural Knowledge
Educator and School Guidelines for Nurturing Culturally-Healthy Youth
Scientists and Resource Guests in the Classroom
Guest speakers are a positive addition to the classroom. In a recent report of a study, What Good Is a Scientist in the Classroom? Participant Outcomes and Program Design Features for a Short-Duration Science Outreach Intervention in K–12 Classrooms by Laursen, etal. 2006, it was determined that students showed gains in the following three areas as a result of including scientists in the classroom:
- Enhanced Interest and Engagement
- New Views of Science and Scientists
- Understanding of Science and its Relevance
The report also showed gains in skills and understanding for teachers.
It must be kept in mind that not all scientists are in the teaching profession, but they can share their knowledge, experience, expertise, and research with students. Teachers can help make the experience positive for all involved. Here are some tips to consider:
- Contact a local college or university if there is one nearby. Local Fish and Game, Fish and Wildlife, marine offices, or other agency offices are also good places to contact for guests. Don’t forget to ask parents if they have knowledge and experience they might like to share!
- Once you find a possible guest, make contact with them to find out their area of expertise. It is helpful to explain what age(s) students they will be working with, and what types of content they have already been introduced to. A general overview of skills and abilities will help the speaker as they plan for their visit. It is a good idea to give a definite time period, so things don’t last too long and risk losing the students attention.
- Find out if there is a need for any special equipment, such as an overhead projector, multimedia projector, DVD or VCR player, etc.
- If the scientist or guest seems nervous or inexperienced when you initially speak with them, you might share the publication, Sharing Science with Children: A Survival Guide for Scientists and Engineers with them.
- Be sure to prepare your students for the visitor by explaining who they are, where they work, what they do, and why they will be visiting the classroom. Behavior expectations may also be reviewed.
Celebrating Alaska Seas and Rivers in Your School and Community
The Alaska Sea and Rivers Curriculum is part of a celebration! For many teachers and their students, it is the highlight of the year – a time of delight and awe, intrigue and excitement. Marine and freshwater environments are a natural connecting theme that can translate classroom science, mathematics, language, history, social studies, art, and music into the crash of a wave, the scuttle of a crab, the drift of a kayak, the bark of a seal, the taste of smoked salmon, the scent of a riverbank.
The lives of all Alaskans are often touched by the water: literally, aesthetically, productively. The sheer immensity of the Alaska coastline is phenomenal. It stretches and twists, pounds and lies placid along two oceans and three seas for 6,640 miles – more than half that of all the contiguous United States. Islands, inlets, bays, fjords, and delta regions add another 28,000 miles of saltwater shoreline for a total of 34,460 miles – a distance almost equal to twice the circumference of the earth. Alaska’s continental shelf covers more than 830,000 square miles, more than 75 percent of the U.S. total. Most of the fish caught in the U.S. come from Alaskan waters. The majority of Alaska’s population lives near the coastline or waters that are connected to the sea, and many careers and livelihoods are sea-related. Much of Alaska’s culture is so closely interlaced with the sea that in many cases the sea is Alaska culture.
One of the best aspects of Alaska Sea and Rivers can be the opportunity for students, teachers and community residents to works together in celebrating the aquatic environment. The whole school can be decorated; one class can inspire another; older students can do programs for younger ones and vice versa; community members can help with field trips and speakers. An air of excitement can pervade halls and classrooms!
Start preparing in the fall for a school-wide spring celebration. Propose the celebration to your whole school, and enlist teachers, parents, and other community members for a Seas and Rivers committee. But, if you need to, don’t hesitate to try it on your own or with just a few other teachers. By the following year, when they’ve had a chance to see what you’ve done, others will be ready to join in the celebration.
• Brainstorm Seas and Rivers ideas with other teachers and parents. List names of parents and local resource people who can help make your celebration a success. You’ll find most people pleased to be asked and more than happy to help.
• Involve your bilingual staff as you identify such community resources as speakers and guest teachers (fishermen, net menders, Coast Guard personnel, boat captains, elders, artists, and musicians), storytellers, and field trip sites (beaches, wetlands, lake and river shores, harbors, canneries, seafood markets, salmon spawning streams, marshes, hatcheries, and museums.
• One or more parents or teacher can be appointed to coordinate speaker schedules, movies, and field trip transportation, and to generate school district support.
• Contact your chamber of commerce, village council/borough government, and other community groups, inviting them to sponsor complementary events such as festivals, seafood dinners, slide shows, and speakers.
• If your school is inland, consider exchanges with a coastal school. Send a selection of items found on your field trips, a class story, or photos. Perhaps they can send you fish stories, pieces of net, floats, seaweed, beach sand. Try to acquire a saltwater aquarium for your school.
• Field trips and other Seas and Rivers activities make good news features. Consider contacting your local newspaper, television or radio station. Reporters often enjoy going to the beach as much as students do! Provide as much information as possible to all community media.
• Decorate the whole school. Create an underwater world in an alcove, stairwell, classroom, or hallway. Hang colored tissue paper beneath fluorescent lights to act as a filter; hang art projects and seaweed streamers from the ceiling; make murals; ask students to bring water treasures from home such as nets, floats, shells and driftwood. Also:
o Make paper waves from construction paper and tape to window shades. Tape water birds, boats and planes above the waves, and water animals below them. When the shades are drawn, it’s low tide !
o Have the class cut jellyfish shapes from coarse sandpaper. Color the sandpaper heavily. Place a sheet of white paper over each sandpaper jellyfish and iron over it to make a jellyfish impression.
o Make sea stars. Cover a piece of paper with red finger paint. When the paint has dried, draw and cut out the outline of a sea star. Using a sponge and orange tempera paint, give the sea star a mottled look. Brush tempera on a dried sea star. Sometimes one can be found freshly dead at the beach (but don’t kill any just for an art project!) Cover it with a sheet of newsprint. Holding the paper in place, gently rub over the sea star to transfer its image.
o Make water paintings, using powdered tempera paint, sand and diluted glue. Clean the sand and mix with paint powder (not too much). Keep the colored sand in baby-food jars. Spread glue on paper with a paintbrush and sprinkle sand over the wet glue. Students can make original designs or use ones that have been photocopied. Frame and hang these.
o Make a “water letter mural". Attach a long piece of paper to the wall. Have students use a black marker or crayon to outline an aquatic plant or animal; then color the drawings and label with the first letter of their creatures’ names. When finished, students should notify the teacher so that the animals’ full names can be added.
o Make crabs out of construction paper circles folded in half.
o Cut out butcher paper to make life-sized seals and large fish, paint them and stuff them with crumpled paper.
o Make life-sized whale shapes using large sheets of paper taped together.
• Make a river environment in the hallway, connecting to the sea.
• Have an underwater circus, play, or puppet show. Ask students to each pick an animal. Make sea animal hand puppets out of paper bags, with features cut out of construction paper and glued on. Have students plan appropriate acts involving their animal. Practice and then do a program for parents and other classes.
• Have things for children to do during the celebration. Make a puppet area where younger children can play with sea and/or river creature puppets. Create a “hallway scavenger hunt” for older children.
• Have a “read down the hall” activity with riddles and flip books posted for children to read, guess, and check.
• Hold a scientific conference or poster session for the whole school, letting children share the research they did in their lessons, or pick a service-oriented topic that the whole school can get involved in. “How can we protect our beaches?” “How can we clean up our beaches?”
• Let children be ambassadors for seas and rivers and lead hallway field trips or other activities.
Please post your additional ideas for Alaska Sea and River celebrations on the Forum area of the website. Post pictures from your school’s celebration!
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Partnerships
