Social Studies Does Not Always Rock

I'm getting a class set of laptops. That probably sounds like a weird thing to be complaining about, but consider the following things:

-A class set of laptops requires a laptop cart.

-The laptop cart was place in the middle of my classroom at the end of last week.

-There was no room for aforementioned laptop cart.

-Finding a place for the laptop cart required rearranging my entire classroom (probably long overdue, since the room's been basically the same since I came five years ago)

-I have several heavy shelves and bureaus in my classroom.

-I have no measurable upper body strength with which to move said heavy objects.

-The strapping boys in my student government class were thrilled (yeah right) to help me.

-The boys, whom I love dearly, have a tendency to be L-A-Z-Y.

-There is only one set of shelves in my classroom that is painstakingly organized.

-The boys dismissed the suggestions of their teacher (who is obviously dumb as dirt) to remove the books prior to relocating the shelves.





This was also the day before Parent-Teacher Conferences. Good thing I managed to find it in me to laugh and take a picture. :)

Social Studies Rocks: Mock Election

This is a message from your friendly neighborhood social studies teacher reminding you to vote in the upcoming election or any election that might be happening in your respective country/state/province/city/village. If the students of Shishmaref can vote, you can too.






The Shishmaref Mock Election was school-wide, but it was kind of sponsored by my older kids. We started by making posters to hang in the elementary school hallway.




The posters featured facts about each candidate and posters cut up from five months worth of news magazines. (Hey Shishmaref Library and fellow teachers! Thanks for letting me steal all of your magazines!) Since we get enough negative advertising in the actual media, I insisted that the posters all be positive, much to the disappointment of my students.





You may be noticing quite a few McCain posters. That's only because I made my kids draw names out of a basket. They were forced to make a poster for the candidate they drew. (It's not a secret: I'm mean.)





Otherwise, all of the posters would be like this (my kids are nutty for Obama). Notice the obligatory Biden mention. Ha! It's a nice representation of the percentage of real news coverage he gets. (Note to readers: do not interpret that as a Biden bash. It's simply commentary of his non-domination of campaign coverage.)




My big kids were the poll workers. When the other kids came in, they had to sign their names on the "voter rolls." If they hadn't filled out a registration form earlier in the week, they had to do that before they voted. (The second question on the mock registration form was: Are you at least five years old? Ha!)





The city let us borrow their voting booths and ballot boxes, which made things feel really official. The IRA let us borrow one of their buildings, so all of the kids got to leave school to come vote.

The tiniest kids had to stand on chairs to reach the voting booth. My big kids helped them fill out their ballots (anybody caught coercing an elementary student to vote for a certain candidate was threatened with the wrath of Angie).





The kiddos put their completed ballots in the ballot box.






My older kids voted too, but, let's face it,





they are straight up not as cute a the little guys, especially when the little guys have to stand on their tippy-toes to reach the box.

(Note to my students: I still heart you!)





We made stickers to give to all of the students that voted.





Some of my big kids decided it would be cool to put their stickers on their foreheads...





starting an epidemic of little kids who also put their stickers on their foreheads.





I have to admit, it was kinda cute.





Don't you just want to take this girl home? I do. Unfortunately, her mom and dad like her a lot too...




This little girl took things to the next level.





I let my big kids tally the votes. They learned what it was like to be an election judge (what if somebody circled Barack Obama and Sarah Palin?) and had to determine when to disqualify ballots. It's too bad we didn't have punch out ballots. Then I could have introduced them to the intricacies of chad. As you can see, we used the highly scientific method of tally marks.




We found this ballot when we were counting ballots. I laughed. This pretty much sums up the sentiment of most of my students.


When all the votes were counted the results were as follows:

House of Representatives: Don Young (Republican)

United States Senate: Ted Stevens (Republican)

President of the United States: John McCain (Republican)


My big kids were furious. They blamed the results on the elementary students and suggested that we do the vote without them next time. I tried to explain why it wouldn't be fair to disenfranchise over half of our school, but I don't think they bought into it. Maybe that's a lesson for next year...

Social Studies Rocks: Inupiaq Dictionary

Many of my social studies classes have been consumed by our most recent project: the Inupiaq Dictionary.

Several forces combined to make the Inupiaq Dictionary a reality:

-my desire to learn the local Inupiaq language

-my first year teaching Alaska Studies Levels 3-5

-Ginger, one of my teaching idols, showing me a cool project that a school in Marshall, Alaska did using the Yup'ik language



Ginger and I put our digital heads together and we came up with the Inupiaq Dictionary project.


Here's how it worked:




I sent my fourth hour class out into the village to take pictures with digital cameras.





Taking pictures of Eskimo food was pretty popular.





This was my favorite picture of the activity. (This is a caribou head f.y.i.) I love how the tongue is hanging out. I'm not sure if that's natural or if it's the result of high school boys combined with a digital camera.





Some of the pictures turned out to be pretty good quality. I was impressed.





Some were kind of silly. This is a bellybutton. The group who took this picture refuses to reveal who the bellybutton belongs to. I have my suspicions...



Once my little photographers had completed taking pictures, one of our bilingual instructors came in and taught the kids (and their teacher!) how to write and pronounce the Inupiaq words.





It was fascinating!!! I learned that my favorite picture is tuttum niaqua.

tuttum = caribou (possessive)
niaqua= head





My kids took a picture of this four-wheeler (referred to generically as "Honda" - think kleenex, sneakers, xerox, etc.) to be funny. Hondas are a recent addition to the Inupiaq way of life, so they thought that there would be no Inupiaq word. They were wrong.

Turns out that if there's no Inupiaq translation, you add a 'q' to the end of the word. Honda becomes hondaq.


Once we mastered the pronunciations, the kids recorded their voices saying the words. Then they added a page to our School District Wiki and uploaded their sound file, picture, etc.

Our school district wiki is powered by MediaWiki. Editing requires a very rudimentary knowledge of computer code. Now, I know some of my readers have been coding since birth (you know who you are...), but imagine trying to teach a crew of junior high and high school students how to code.


It was at times painful. Coding is an exact art. One missed slash, and your page looks like this. It took some time for the kids to get used to making everything perfect, but we persevered. Ginger and some other tech savvy teachers helped us implement a template, and that made things easier.

The kids who had the easiest time with the coding were the kids who are super into MySpace. All the time they spent tweaking their profiles came in handy. (Hey MySpace! Thanks for actually teaching my kids something!)



I made the above page. I'm quite proud of it. If you click here you can actually play the mp3 file and hear my very white voice pronouncing the word. One of my boys (who is quite skilled at speaking Inupiaq) said my pronunciation was perfect. I beamed. (He was probably just being nice, but I'll take what I can get.)

My fourth hour class was championriffic as we refined the process. Now a few other Social Studies classes in Shishmaref are contributing. Last week I flew to Unalakleet and helped teach students and teachers from other schools how to contribute. Next week Ginger and I will help teach an inservice workshop on the same subject. We're hoping the project continues to grow. Meanwhile, be prepared to learn a little Inupiaq...

Social Studies Rocks: Our Political Blog

I thought I'd take advantage of my status as supreme empress editor at VFN and put in a shameless plug for my Social Studies Class Blog.

My kiddos are evaluating election advertisements, speeches, propaganda, etc. They are very new to blogging, and they just made their first posts TODAY!

It would totally rock their world if they got some comments from far away places (pretty much everything is far away from Shishmaref...). So, do me a favor and stop by. Rack up their view count, ask them thought-provoking questions, watch the movies they embed. Feel free to also mention how outrageously outstanding their teacher is. :)

Social Studies Rocks: Burying Our Chicken Mummies

Because I have no children, pets, or cable TV, my social studies classes consume my life. So, I thought I would create a new feature here at VFN to share some of the fun things we do in class.

My apologies to anyone who is bored with the following post. I am only a teacher in an isolated place. I don't have a lot else to offer the blog world. :)

Last year my last hour social studies class did a unit on Ancient Egypt. The culminating project was mummifying chickens (okay, actually they were cornish game hens). They dehydrated the carcasses in salt, designed and constructed sarcophagai, oiled and spiced the dehydrated carcasses, wrapped the spiced hen bodies in athletic bandages, made amulets, and everything.

It was a very involved project. Someday I'll blog about it, but not right now (If you're absolutely dying for the details, you can go to our school district wiki page and check out the pictures here).

Unfortunately, by the time our chicken mummies were ready, it was winter, and the ground was too frozen for us to bury them. I promised the kids we would bury the chickens when I came back after the summer. Today I kept my promise.





They were totally engaged in the burial process by the time I caught up with them. (I'll admit it: I'm slow. I like to meander. And chat. And take pictures.)





The most efficient means of digging turned out to be jumping on the shovel.






One group chose a really tough spot to dig. I suggested that they move to an alternate location, but they ignored me because I am obviously an idiot that doesn't know anything.





They kept trying to break the ground...





and trying.





Some of the kids got bored while their classmates were busy trying to dig up Sarichef Island's most impossible piece of ground. They started throwing chunks of earth at each other.





Because I'm such a good teacher, I took pictures instead of stopping them.






Other kids picked blackberries. Notice that these are Alaskan blackberries, not the electric kind or the kind that look like black raspberries. I ate a couple of these berries. Then my kids pointed out that they wouldn't be ready for another couple of weeks. That explained the extremely bitter taste and the fact that I spit them out after chewing.






Here is a picture of the blackberries in their natural habitat. Notice that they don't grow on bushes of the traditional variety. They grow really close to the ground.





Finally, the kids decided that I was right (whouda thunk?) and they needed to switch locations. The chicken mummy was transported with the utmost care. (BTW, I majorly heart this kid. He is the cutest funniest little guy. He's the one that convinced me to coach cross country skiing last year. If he asked me for $100, and I happened to have a Benjamin Franklin in my pocket, I'd probably just give it to him. He's irresistible.)





I just have to show this sarcophagus off for a minute. Isn't it adorable? It's products like this that make me think I might not be a complete failure as a teacher. This sarcophagus was, obviously, created by a pair of girls. The boys thought they were done painting after about 2.3 seconds.




Eventually, the kids managed to dig some pretty respectable holes.






Then my little honeys put the mummies into the holes...




and buried them.





We had talked about the fact that the Ancient Egyptians built pyramids as tombs, so they made little sand pyramids on top of their buried mummies.





One group decided their mummy needed a weed instead of a pyramid. Don't ask me. I was just the white lady supervising them. (Incidentally, this was the same group that ignored my suggestions about proper burial locations.)






On our way back to school, we got a little distracted. We HAD to stop at the basketball hoop so that I could take pictures of the kids trying to dunk the ball.




This was lots of fun and made for some very cool shots. Unfortunately, it made us late getting back. When we got back to the school, the next class had already started. The principal had my sixth hour kids in the library, and I had to write tardy excuses for all of my chicken buriers. Oops.





I didn't get fired, which was cool. Plus, the kids and I had a lot of fun. Nobody got outrageously hurt. I only got sand in my mouth once. I pretty much consider this a very successful day of social studies.