Two book talks and a field trip

I only managed two book talks this week. It was a four-day week because of Monday’s observance of the New Year.

On Tuesday I book-talked The Glass Sentence by S. E. Grove.

I chose this as my first book-talk of the new year because of its ideas about time and  The Great Disruption, which we experienced with Snowmageddon.

On Wednesday, I book-talked Arabella of Mars by Davide Levine.

There were no book talks Thursday or Friday because each day half of our 6th graders went on a field trip to Mercy Corps.  Their international headquarters is in Portland and their mission, to

Alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by helping people build secure, productive and just communities

ties in nicely with our model UN unit, the book clubs we just finished, and our writing unit on teen activism.

We met in the Action Center, which you can drop in and visit Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.

The lobby has displays and information about the work they do around the world.

 

The kids learned about Mercy Corps and then were taken into a discussion where they had to think about how they use electricity and how certain aspects of life would be different without electricity. Then, they were actively engaged in trying to accomplish a series of tasks ( collect water & firewood, cook, go to school, etc) . Each group was assigned a country and, based on this, their tasks were easier or harder.  Friday’s “Haiti” group moaned loudly about how unfair the process was because other groups had advantages they didn’t. They were actively engaged and got the point of the simulation!