 |
  |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
||||||
| Procedure | ||||||
| The actions of students and teachers and the interactions among and between students and teachers: | ||||||
|
 |
|
||||
Teacher preparation:
Select traditional library books about the Inuit people.
Initiate web searches to locate information and ideas for activities to extend learning. Preview CD-ROM programs. Determine subtopics for the main report and select an appropriate graphic organizer to use with the students.
Student actions:
To begin this unit of study students worked in small groups of three to four students to fill in a K-W-L chart of what they knew and what they wanted to learn about the Inuit people.
The CD-ROM program "My First Amazing World Explorer" from Dorling-Kindersley was used with groups of three to four students to locate the tundra area in which the Inuit people live. They were then able to transfer this knowledge to a traditional wall map and globe.
To introduce students to the lifestyle of the Inuit and how it is influenced by environmental and geographic factors, the CD-ROM program "Eyewitness Children’s Encyclopedia" from Dorling-Kindersley was used. This program includes video clips of an Inuit child and his family and how they live in the tundra. The students also viewed a video on the tundra region. The video included a segment on the Leo Ussak School (http://www.arctic.ca/LUS/) where we had sent our keypal messages.
Students then selected a subtopic to research for the composite report. Slips of paper with the subtopics written on them were placed in a paper bag and students chose at random. Students used a graphic organizer to collect the information by taking notes and then wrote a rough draft of their section. Students used trade books as well as information culled from the Internet by the teacher to research their topic.
The following is a list of subtopics and related activities that support the content understandings:
The Inuit People: This introductory section introduces the idea that the Inuit people are one of the world’s communities that has changed over time. During the classroom presentation, the students demonstrated their ability to locate the Inuit community on a globe after this section was read aloud. A circumpolar map was obtained through the website http://ellesmere.ccm.emr.ca/wwwnais/select/polar/english/html/epolar.html
The History of the Inuit: The research completed to write this section demonstrated the knowledge that the Inuit community has changed over time. Trade books as well as e-mail letters to schoolchildren in the Canadian Inuit community (Leo Ussak School: http://www.arctic.ca/LUS/) were used to complete this section. Additional background information was obtained at http://www.gov.nt.ca/kids/school/p-inuit.htm
Inuit Family Life & Clothing: In researching these topics the students expanded their understanding that the Inuit community, including family life, has changed over time as well as learning that environmental and geographic factors influence family life. Students made their own "mukluks" using paper bags and cotton balls to imitate animal skins. This activity was used to show them how the Inuit make use of the natural resources available to them to make articles of clothing.
Instructions were found at http://multimedia2.freac.fsu.edu/fga/academy/k1ak.htm which contains a unit of activities from the Florida Geographic Alliance’s Geography Academy for Teachers. We were also fortunate to have a donation from a local teacher of beadwork that she learned how to make from the Inuit people while she was visiting Alaska one summer.
Language: The purpose of this section was to help students learn that the Inuit language, Inuktitut, is different not only in how it sounds but also in how it looks. The students learned how the Inuit language developed over time and how the Inuit people did not write down their stories a hundred years ago. This helped them to understand how world communities and in particular the Inuit used oral histories to transmit their values, ideas, beliefs and traditions.
The research we did using Internet resources helped the students learn how to say familiar phrases in Inuktitut and how to write their own names using the Inuktitut alphabet. A web site was located that allowed us to download the Inuktitut font. During the classroom presentations, they taught their classmates how to say some of the phrases. If you go to http://www.arctic-travel.com/audio/index.html you can hear the sounds of the Inuktitut language as well as useful phrases and common words. There is also a listing of familiar phrases with phonetic pronunciations of the Inuktitut at http://www.arctic-travel.com/audio/phrases.html. The Inuktitut alphabet was included in the activity book the students created so that their classmates could learn how to write their own names in Inuktitut.
Land and Climate: The purpose of this section was to learn how the Inuit depend on and modify their physical environment in the tundra. They learned how the Inuit lifestyle is influenced by the tundra environment. They were so interested in how the Inuit children need to learn the difference between freshwater ice and saltwater ice that they developed their own science inquiry experiment.
This activity involved using string and pipe cleaners to form a base for crystals to resemble snowflakes. Two different solutions were made using borax and either freshwater or saltwater. The students predicted if they would be able to tell the difference between the two types of 'snowflakes'.
Animals of the Arctic & Hunting and Fishing: To research these sections of the report information was gathered from a variety of websites including a Canadian web site devoted to teaching the Inuit ways to keep them alive (http://www.learnnet.nt.ca/Inuuqatigiit/1/i.htm). The purpose of this section was to learn that the Inuit respect animals while depending on them to survive.
To further enhance their learning students worked on a Kid Pix slide show. Each student chose two animals and learned a belief, custom or tradition that the Inuit people hold for each animal and have passed down over time. They recorded themselves saying the phrase directly into the slide show. The slide show was incorporated into the classroom presentations by using a laptop with speakers and a lightware projector.
Transportation: The purpose of this section was to discover that the Inuit have developed different forms of transportation to move over frozen ground, and water that is free of ice.
Shelter: The purpose of this section was to learn how the Inuit develop and use natural resources in building their shelters. To enhance their understanding of the tundra and its environment a song that was found on the Internet about the Arctic tundra was learned by the students and they taught it to their classmates (http://multimedia2.freac.fsu.edu/fga/academy/k1ak.htm).
Recreation, Customs and Traditions: The purpose of the research done to complete these sections was to learn that the Inuit use legends, folk tales, and oral histories to transmit values, ideas, beliefs and traditions about their culture. They also learned that these beliefs and traditions are learned from others and differ from place to place throughout the tundra region.
The Leo Ussak School’s web site led the students to learning about the author Michael Kusugak This award-winning author got his start during an author’s day led by author Robert Munsch. He encouraged Michael Kusugak to write down the stories he had been telling orally that he had learned in his childhood as an Inuit. Through the web site http://www.Amazon.com the books were obtained and read aloud. Students then chose a book to be read orally in their classroom presentation. We were also fortunate that a teacher in the building had vacationed one summer in Alaska and brought back an Inuit yo-yo. The book was described at the Canadian web site for Inuit culture (http://www.arctic.ca/LUS/Inuit_Games.html).
Each student conferenced individually with the teacher to assist the student in revising the rough draft. The rough draft was also edited for capitalization and punctuation errors. Then using the CD-ROM program "Student Writing Center" from the Learning Company each student word-processed their sections. The spell-checking feature was demonstrated for each student. When each student had added his/her sections to complete, the text portions of the report graphics were added. Students practiced reading their portion aloud to gain confidence and fluency before the classroom presentations.
To complete the unit of study students helped to design a booklet of follow-up activities for their classmates using the computer programs "Crossword Companion" and "Teacher’s Helper Plus" from Visions Software as well as additional activities discovered on the Internet. Students helped to brainstorm a vocabulary list for the crossword puzzle and word search. The list of vocabulary words was divided into envelopes of increasing difficulty described as $1.00 words, $5.00 words and $10.00 words. Students took turns choosing words and adding them to the programs. Franklin Bookman Speaking FUNdamental Electronic dictionaries were used by the students to develop clues for the crossword puzzle.
 |