Sunday, June 27, 2010

The Last Day - Divide and Conquer


Today we realized we had one day to accomplish a lot.  Therefore, we split up and went to different places to get in as much as we could.  Mrs. Fish and Mrs. Martin went to tour Historic Harvard and the surrounding area.  Ms. Lightheart and Mrs. Barnes went to the Boston Zoo to see what they could find that would supplement our reading/science theme of endangered animals.  One of the greatest things about the Boston area is we can cover all the subjects we teach because there is so much to see here!

The Harvard Tour was awesome!  Students lead us around and told us of the famous people that had gone there, showed us where they lived, how they changed the world, and how you get into Harvard.  A few tidbits about this Ivy League School:

1.  Famous people that went there include:  President Obama, President George Bush, President JFK, VP Al Gore, actor Matt Damon, Bill Gates (neither Matt nor Bill graduated Harvard though), the list goes on and on.

2.  Usually the students in the top 10% of their graduating high school class are eligible to attend Harvard.  Of course they also have to take tests and receive good scores.  If a person's family makes less than 60,000 per year, they can go to Harvard for free (if they meet admission requirements)

3.  It was founded 16 years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth in 1636.

We took video of the tour and will show it to you in fall.  It is absolutely inspiring to hear the things the students who graduated this University have done for our country and are continuing to do.

At the zoo, we found several endangered species and got video for our school projects.  We also got several student resources books.  We can't thank Fund for Teachers enough for the opportunity to not only learn about the many areas we teach, but to get materials for our classrooms.  We have purchased student resource books, classroom games, artifacts, replicas, and hands on history kits.  We are so excited to make history come alive this next fall. 



Over the week we have taken about 1000 pictures and hours of video.  This summer we will be creating "virtual field trips" for the students using them.  We will also be reviewing our current lessons and  enriching them with the many things we have collected.  Stay tuned, because we aren't done blogging! :-)

No comments:

Post a Comment