Jackpot!

The best education book I've read in a long time! Unleashing Your Language Wizards by John T. Crow. I've revamped LA for the next few weeks based on what I've learned. He builds on Jeff Anderson and includes brain-based techniques for teaching grammar, punctuation, and rhetoric.
His viewpoint is that students already have a lot of grammar, punctuation, and rhetoric that they know and our job as teachers is to help students build on that knowledge.
When I get back to Ecuador I'm going to have grammar week, punctuation week, and rhetoric week along with some free-writing and some express edits! Fun.

It's Happening!

They're pulling it out of their hats. Yabba-dabba-doo! Most of them are getting the culture connections--finally. I forced them to meet for 12 minutes without touching a computer and this was a good strategy. They were much better organized when they started work today.

Thursday is Culture Walk Through the Continents which includes components from 2nd -5th, art, music, and Spanish class.

Back to the SS Inquiry Blues

I don't know if I took the learning and thinking out of my student's hands, but I ended up making a chart--with a lot of student input that compared country cultures, beginnings, development, and values and trying to help them connect some of the dots between those things and sports, yodeling, and urban games.

For example, the US, as a settler nation imported yodeling from Europe and Africa and those immigrants kept yodeling alive as a tie to their home culture. At the same time, yodeling became part of the American culture through country music and cowboy music. It was used in a uniquely American way.

Do you think I did too much of the thinking for them?

I've Got the Social Studies Inquiry Unit Blues

I'm so frustrated! My 5th grade class is working on collaborative inquiry projects about culture. The four groups they've formed are answering the following questions:

• How do sports affect culture in Canada, the United States, and Mexico?
• How do games develop in urban cultures? (Double-dutch, stickball, etc.)
• How has yodeling affected the US culture?
• How did the mass-produced automobile affect the culture in the United States?

So far, so good...but how can I get them making connections between facts and culture? I'm totally stuck. They're researching topics and I want them to think bigger. Are 5th graders able to do this? We have conversations like, "Can I explain the rules of basketball?" "How does that relate to culture?" "Can I write about the best football players?" "How does that relate to culture?" They can't seem to make the application.

I'm using Comprehension and Collaboration as a resource, which is a great book, but I can't seem to get them beyond report mode and into thinking mode.