Landscapes

In her book of short stories titled An Unspoken Hunger Terry Tempest Williams wrote that "Each of us harbors a homeland, a landscape we naturally comprehend.  By understanding the dependability of place, we anchor ourselves as trees."  This quote appears in a short story about the authors, who is a naturalist, first experience in the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.  She describes the connection of the Maasai people to the landscape..."the umbilical cord between man and earth has not been severed here."  The picture above is of my and some friends after climbing Mt. McGinnis.  Mountains for me are that umblilical cord.  They are the landscape the I naturally comprehend like Terry Tempest Williams described.

This week we were challenged to look at landscape.  Since I am teaching Earth Science, which just happens to be following the same content I decided to pose the following question to my classes,  what does landscape mean?  The responses I received varied from what you see outside the window, to the people that plant trees and shrubs.  This was a great reminder to me that we seldom all start on the same page.  So, we began by defining the word.

I have talked to my students about this class that I am taking and told them that I was going to be using some of what I learned with them.  So, after watching the various videos that were associated with this lesson I decided to challenge my students to answer the essential question for themselves:  How are landscapes formed and how, in turn, are cultures shaped by their landscape?  This will be the beginning of an on going  project.  This week we just began by defining land forms and discussing the various types including mountains, plains, and plateaus.  I then had the students do a fast write in their journals about how their lives are shaped by the landscape around them.  Most of them focused on the recreational opportunities that they have here in Juneau whether it is hiking, snowboarding, or fishing.  Hopefully I will be able to have them broaden their ideas to include the landscape affect how people make a living whether it is mining, tourism, commercial fishing, etc.  As I develop this unit over time I want them to move from how the landscape shapes their lives and the lives of others in our community today but to also look at it culturally not only here in Alaska but since I also teach US History I would like for them to be able to look at how landscape has shaped our history over time.

I have taught students about how land and its features is formed using various methods over the years  so the actual information for this module was not new.  I do want to share some other great resources though.  Here are a few of my favorite sites:

Berengia is a website for a museum that is in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory.  If you ever get the change to go it is great.
 www.berengia.com 

Explorelearning has many great simulations that can be used in the classroom.  There is one that has the students putting the plates together and looking at fossil evidence.  There are also others that look at volcanos, and many other topics.  The site is organized by subject, grade and by standards.
www.explorelearning.com

The United States Geologic Survey is a great resource.  you can get up to date information on earthquakes and volcanos as well as a wealth of other information.  There is a great map here that gives the location of the location or recent earthquakes and volcanos.  Then, there is a layer you can add that shows the location on the plates.  Great visuals!
www.usgs.gov

Middle school Science is a great place for all sorts of science ideas including catastrophic events such as earthquakes and volcanos. 
http://www.middleschoolscience.com/

 I really enjoyed watching the videos on teacher's domain.  I feel like they really helped me understand the connection between a person and the landscape.  Students love to make videos and with today's technology it is easy and almost everyone has access to a camera.  It  would be a great culminating project to have the students make their own videos of how the landscape is a part of their daily lives. 

This weeks assignments made me reflect on the Rose Urban Rural Exchange Program that I have taken part of over the years.  If you are unfamiliar with the program it allows classrooms to connect through a series of defined lessons that teaches one another about life in that place and then a group of students are chosen to go to the different site and report back about various aspect of life there.  I have had the opportunity to got to Tuntutuliak and Napakiak with students, as well as host students from the villages here in Juneau.

3 Colleagues

http://www.scienceinalaska.blogspot.com/

I chose Alicia's blog because I wanted to read a fresh perspective of someone who is new to the profession of teaching.  I also really appreciated her beginning quote:  The joy of the journey is in the ride.

http://www.scienceinalaska.blogspot.com/

I chose Cheryl's blog at first because of an interesting picture that I was trying to figure out.  She talked about our landscape being our tradition and what we are used to.  She also talked about being her first earthquake.  It reminded me of the first time I experienced one and made me chuckle.


http://danadair.blogspot.com/

I chose Dan's blog because he said he was from Colorado.  I really liked that he talked about bringing in other native american groups into his class.  In my blog I talked about wanting to do this in my American History class.