Cultural Studies: Fall, Week 3

The World Around Us

with Maki, Carson, Koda, Lucy, Brooklyn

In our third week of the term we began to look at the world around us. In the illustrated autobiography, How I learned Geography, by Uri Shulevitz ISBN-13: 9780374334994, we saw the young life of the author--his struggles to find a new home and country after big-conflict(war), his families struggle to stave-off hunger, and his journey into the world of geography. While reading about Shulevitz’s family-struggle with hunger, Koda asked, “Why…don’t they have any?” His question brought forward a lot of other questions from our group: What is geography? What is hunger? Why do some families struggle with hunger?  What are countries?

We choose to spend a lot of time answering these questions. To figure out what geography is, we looked closely at some of the illustrations in our book, and found a modified world-map among the pictures. We compared it to our large classroom world-map and saw that they were very similar. We went on to talk about how the wide-array of subjects that are available to study—unpacking the meaning of cultural studies while comparing our subject to the others studied in our Ateliers program. To answer our questions around hunger we talked about the meanings of the word and how it can affect people. We learned about community and talked about idea of a world-community. We also thought about compassion and the need to help others.

Vocabulary: Geography, Near, Far, Compassion, Culture, Cultural-Studies, World, Continents, Community, and Earth.

Cultural Studies: Fall, Week 2

The World Around Us

Max, Jesse, Jackson, Neva, Rya

In our second week of the term, we explored the ideas of Here and There in the book: I know Here, by Laurel Croza and Matt James ISBN-13:978-0888999238. Wherein a small girl works through anxieties of an upcoming move by comparing and contrasting her local neighborhood to the new Toronto, Canada. We talked about the relative nature of perspective when thinking about the size of various places. While measuring various areas around our classroom, Max made an observation, “The shelves look smaller from way up!” 

Our book inspired us to take a close look a map of the United States and Canada—we marked the places that we have visited, as well as where we have family members. We learned about islands and how beaches are formed. We even had a student-led discussion on Hawaii!

Vocabulary: Here, There, Measurement, Country, Perspective, Compare, Contrast, and Island.

Cultural Studies: Fall, Week 1

The World Around Us

with Lucas, Sabine, Zooey, Peter, Issac R.

In our first week of the term, we explored the ideas of Here and There as well as Near and Far, under the umbrella-concept of Value. We looked at our bodies and specifically two systems within the body, the muscular and skeletal systems. We looked at a large diagram of the skeletal system, and wondered which parts were near-by one another and which ones were far-away. We made outlines of our bodies to see our own proportions. Lucas asked, “How do we know? …If it’s near or far away?”

We looked into Lucas’ question with the use of measuring tape in groups of two. One friend held the base while the other took the end to a desired location; both thought about and discussed the length of the tape. Is the length of the tape small, medium, or large? Sabine asked what the numbers on the tape were, and we had a wonderful conversation about inches and other units of measurement. We made a map of our classroom and labeled some of the areas with accurate measurements. We explored our local Portland Culture. We looked at art samples from a few local art galleries and talked about our experiences throughout the rose city. Zooey shared about her love of the Portland Timbers, then invited the class to build Jeld-Win stadium with her!

Vocabulary: Here, There, Near, Far, Small, Medium, Large, Inches, and Measurement.