Maps, Globes, and Stories

December 18, 2009

The Whole World in Their Hands

Our first grade students have recently been delighting in the exploits of Sam Krupnik, the main character in Lois Lowry’s book See You Around, Sam. After his mother bans his plastic vampire fangs from the house, Sam decides to run away to Alaska, where he can hang around with walruses, whose tusks seem very fang-like. Last week, after Mrs. Scholes had read a particularly Alaska-focused passage, some of the children asked where Alaska is. Mrs. Scholes immediately turned on the digital white board and opened a web-based atlas of North America to give the students a sense of the distance between Massachusetts (where Sam lives) and Alaska.

This teachable moment emphasizes a component of cultural literacy that is critical for children’s knowledge and familiarity with the world. In the same way that we expose children to written language and text to build their word recognition and reading abilities (known as “environmental print,”) we also present them with multiple opportunities to look at maps, globes, and atlases so that they can develop the visual and orientation skills to identify locations, understand the spatial relations between places, and build a sense of our global community.

Many of our classrooms feature maps of different areas of the world, some of which are displayed for specific lessons or units, while others remain as permanent elements of the visual array. A recent survey of the faculty produced a wonderful range of uses and types of maps: in one corner of fourth grade, a series of maps from Heifer International present information about the regions of the world where the charitable organization provides animals for families in need. In the world language classroom and in the hallway just outside that room, world maps highlight language centers. Mr. Sucich’s fifth grade classroom is full of maps, including a map of historic Boston, a direct connection to the geography and history lessons that punctuate the social studies curriculum. In 8th grade, Ms. Gerner’s room includes a satellite photo-mosaic of “the earth at night,” with lighted areas showing the regions of the world that are the most electrified.

After Mrs. Scholes showed the children where Alaska is, she left the image on the white board. Later in the morning, a small group of children became engrossed in the map, counting the number of hand spans between Boston and Alaska, and exclaiming over the places they touched along the way. Just as environmental print surrounds children and provides them with constant experience with the forms of written language, maps and geographic images give them the same basic vocabulary for visual representations of locations. Although they may not pore over the rivers and political boundaries of the maps every day, the shapes and positions of these places become familiar over time, and they can be quite engaging.

Building a Colony

December 11, 2009

Our Town

As part of their study of life in colonial North America, the 5th grade class is in the process of assembling a model village complete with houses, a town green, and public buildings. Each edifice in the three-dimensional display conforms to an accurate scale model, has been colored to match the hues that would have been used at the time, and includes details such as chimneys, porches, and sheds. Even more engaging than the technical and visual appeal of the village is the elaborate story that ties all the elements together. The paper houses were built by students to represent the homes of fictional colonists, and every colonist has a full biography. Earlier in the unit, Mr. Sucich presented a list of occupations that would have been practiced by the citzens of an 18th century New England town. Following the lesson, each student chose one of the professions as the basis for an alter-ego. The children investigated their jobs, learned about the possible daily activities of their characters, and began creating identities.

The town includes booksellers, blacksmiths, glassworkers, tavern owners, wigmakers, and other artisans and tradespeople. The housing styles vary to show the relative income of the inhabitants as well as the variation in architecture that would have existed at the time. Many of the homes include trade signs to indicate the work of their residents. Mr. Sucich noted that as the children expanded their biographies, they established connections with others. Neighborhoods and affinity groups have emerged as the town has grown. One student approached Mr. Sucich with a question about whether or not there would have been Jewish members in communities such as this one; upon finding out was that there were indeed Jews and people of other religions in the colonies, a few children decided to build their homes near one another and create their own congregation. This spontaneous choice ties in directly with the lessons the children have learned about why people chose to leave England and pursue religious freedom in North America.

Other housing locations were determined based on geography or natural resources: the blacksmith’s house is near the water, for example. The meeting house and other communal buildings will be centrally located along the town green and will be made by students whose houses are finished. As the town comes together and as the stories are completed, the students are literally building their knowledge of the details of colonial life as well as the ways in which a community grows and develops.

Homes and Habitats

Citizens of the World


Students in Pre-kindergarten and 3rd grade have been thinking about natural habitats and caring for the world in ways both large and small. The investigations in these two classrooms emerged from very different learning goals, but they share a number of elements that illustrate the ways in which curriculum and skills build from year to year in our school.

In Pre-K, the children have been studying sculpture as an art form. They spent an exciting day at the DeCordova Museum’s outdoor sculpture park, where they had the opportunity to see a collection of large works of art made from a wide variety of materials. At school, they watched part of a film about the artwork of Andy Goldsworthy, who makes beautiful creations from natural materials. Before Thanksgiving, the class read A House for Hermit Crab by Eric Carle. In the story, Hermit Crab has outgrown his home and must find a larger place to live. The shell he chooses is the right fit, but it is quite austere. Fortunately, Hermit Crab’s friends and neighbors provide colorful decoration, protection and adornment for the new home. After reading the book, the teachers presented the children with Styrofoam bowls and decorating items to build their own houses for Hermit Crab. Sitting around the classroom tables, the children built doors, balconies, and windows. They shared ideas, elaborated on their designs and, as Mrs. Zamore said, “learned about real things through fantasy.”

At the other end of the school, our third graders are immersed in a study of biomes—ecologically similar regions of the world characterized by climate, soil type, animals and plants. Each student chose one biome for a research project that involved note-taking, oral presentation, and teaching a lesson to the rest of the class. For one component of the unit, the children composed riddles and challenged their classmates to figure out which biome was being described. The students also created “biomes in a box” using shoeboxes to construct three-dimensional representations of their biomes, including at least three plants and three animals, as well as other details to illustrate the scenes. Just as their younger counterparts had done, these students helped each other with design concepts (multi-story rainforests and animals with moving parts were admired and adapted in several models), and made use of a variety of materials to show what they had learned. Ms. Twarog described this unit as a wonderful opportunity to emphasize the concept of global citizenship, and of our responsibility to care for and understand the diversity of plant and animal life on the planet. From his home in the marine biome, Hermit Crab can feel comforted by the stewardship of our students.