I have found it relatively easy to incorporate global learning and perspectives in the Language Arts classroom, at least partly because I characterize myself as a frustrated Social Studies teacher. After last year I may have to add frustrated Science teacher as well! Nearly everywhere I turned, unexpected connections abounded. Here's an example of one of my rabbit holes (a productive one, though!):
In one of our class novels, The View from Saturday by E.L. Konigsburg, a character rescues a clutch of baby sea turtles and releases them in the Sargasso Sea. With a little research, I discovered that Grand Cayman has both a turtle sanctuary and a treasured island dish made, of course, with sea turtles. After a poll and discussion on eating endangered species for cultural reasons, I moved on to Sargassum, the seaweed that protects the young turtles. It turns out it has become a menace for tourists on Caribbean, Mexican and even Florida beaches and is actually making it harder for the baby turtles to get to the water after they hatch. Why the explosion in "good" seaweed? Deforestation in the Amazon. 11-year-olds actually read a lengthy New York Times article about the deforestation and the Climate Summit because THEY CONNECTED.
You've been warned: global learning connections can be addicting!
My unit is based on Padma Venkatraman's powerful novel The Bridge Home. It focuses on the situations faced by homeless children in Chennai, India. Although they struggle to survive in a world that views them as either prey or invisible, they bond and use their creativity to form a new family. Since one of the characters, Rukku, is a differently-abled child, I decided to pair our "glocal" issues of homeless children and teens with ways to help children like Rukku both here in WNC and in India.
I would love to tell you how well the unit plan went, but you'll have to wait for an update. Many thanks to my local chapter of Delta Kappa Gamma who provided me with a grant to buy the books in January; however, my book vendor's shipping dates resulted in the book set arriving the week after school was out in June!
I'm going to try again Fall 2022, but my class still made lemonade with lemons. I used parts of the unit to develop a research unit that still allowed students to learn more about India while using some of the digital tools mentioned earlier in the website.
Please feel free to check out my Unit Plan and visit later this fall to see how well the Sixth Graders and I did with our action-based fundraiser to help homeless kids locally and in South Asia.
Due to the length of the plan, please visit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GGnaU9X9QlhqVSD9fgDRiNmg5rqjso-9AojqdgNgJl4/edit?usp=sharing OR click in the upper right-hand corner of the document below to view it in its entirety.