The Wayward Blogger

I have not kept up blogging as I should. In a flurry of weekly preparation it was the element of my AIM work that suffered, and I am making a renewed effort to blog every week, even if it is short.

My last blog was in the last weeks of October, and I will do an entry or two to catch up on our progress.

My amazing team of teachers dove head first into our History Timeline work. we covered :

1. Native Americans

• We analyzed images of Native people and learned details about their homes and daily lives in different regions of North America.
• We then focused in on Menomonie, who was here, why our town has it's name, and re-enacted the steps to gather wild rice (Menomin)
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• We also looked at how Native groups told and recorded stories, creating "Buffalo" story skins

 I think this was a successful way to incorporate theater in the sense that Storytelling, in all of its forms is not only integral to theater, the way we preserve, interpret, and hand down our culture is often through storytelling.

I think a good way to have taken this exercise further would have been to have the children sit in small circles and then tell their stories out loud. Perhaps even pair off and see if they could tell the story on their partners blanket using the key they were given.


2. Vikings

• We followed the same outline for the Vikings, again learning about their home lives, as well as their stories, and how they recorded them:



Rune Stone and Rune guide



• We also talked about what their Viking name would be, their first name, then their fathers first name followed by son or dottir.  This was great and the kids were really excited to share their new names - their Viking self! 
• We also learned a ton about Viking long ships, what that journey would be like, why they looked the way they did, and how it would feel to travel on that ship: We used the "North Star" activity for the students to understand how following the stars helped the Vikings (and other travelers) stay on track. The teacher picks 5 students to be the Stars. they quietly decide which of them is the North Star. All of the seated students are the Vikings on their ship.The close their eyes, and the stars spread across the room. Then, the Vikings "Wake up" look around and memorize where the stars are. They then "Fall back asleep". Then, all of the stars move, except the North Star. When the Vikings wake back up, they need to point to the North Star, the Star that stays constant. 
• I also told a few folktales from the Viking era - again looking at how Storytelling is a way that many cultures keep their traditions alive - Through Oral History.



One student loving the story of the Chicken Troll!

3. Explorers were next on our timeline.

• We came up with a number of questions for the students to think about :
• What does it mean to explore? Why do people explore? How do they travel? What do they explore? Where do they explore?
• We then studied a map and profiled a few explorers and the countries they were from, and where they traveled to. 
• We then broke them into groups of three with informational packets, they would study one country and its trade goods, learn to say "Hello" in their language, create a flag, and then we were going to create the globe in the classroom, and the kids would trade "Around the world" with the other countries. 

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Negotiation for Saffron from India!

• I think this was fairly successful - managing all of the groups around the room was a challenge, I think that there may be a way to have each country come up to the front of the room to present about themselves, and establish trade I would be interested in looking at the elements of this that the teachers liked the most, and figuring out how to make it really work. It was fun to have them "Sail" across the room with their flags, and try to negotiate for the goods they wanted. They also were picking up the greetings of the different countries - which helped them form an identity and affinity with their assigned country.