This blog is the culminating project of a six-week unit that I taught in my sixth grade English class at Catlin Gabel School in Portland, Oregon, between October and December, 2013. We have been studying how to read nonfiction, focusing on a host of interrelated environmental issues such as global warming, farming, hunger, topsoil loss, and water shortage. Students began the unit by reading a dystopian science fiction novel in small literature circle groups, for which they discussed the fall of these fictional worlds. In a parallel unit of study in social studies class, students looked at the rise and fall of the great city-states of Sumer, focusing on how the first human civilizations rose to prominence with writing, wheat, irrigation, and specialization of social roles. Students found that monocropping of first wheat and then barley, as the soil became choked with salt, led to the dissolution of the first great Mesopotamian cities. We then compared and contrasted the ecological catastrophes in our dystopian science fiction novels and in the ancient Middle East. Finally, in jigsaw reading groups, the students tackled several National Geographic articles on the aforementioned ecological issues, finding connections between seemingly disparate issues such as global warming, fracking, and extreme weather events. This blog is the final project, then, in our unit. Students have been asked to imagine themselves living in Portland in 2020, where they are the business, political, and scientific leaders who are developing solutions to the problems that buffet our world today. We wanted to end with hope and answers rather than wallow in hopelessness and befuddling questions. We hope this blog can inspire communication between our little Transition Town culture here at Catlin Gabel School and other Transition Towns across the world, from Totnes, to Boulder, to Portland.
--Carter Latendresse
English 6 & Garden Coordinator
Catlin Gabel School
Portland, Oregon
Wow!
ReplyDelete