Week of October 5: viewing, note-sharing, and writing

In 2 installments, we watched a Nova documentary on Inca building techniques. The learning goals included: recognizing that ancient people did amazing things with natural materials in a challenging environment, that archaeologists do a lot of hands-on work to test their theories while making a clear distinction between could have been done this way and was definitely done this way, that the Incas created a vast and highly organized empire on the western side of South America that included 14,000 miles of roads through steep mountain terrain, and that the arrival of Europeans destroyed that empire and enslaved its people. Our students often assume that effective engineering and problem-solving require high-end tools and materials, so a video such as this one can help them see that human societies have done quite well for many thousands of years with whatever they had. Another important understanding is that there was a lot going on in the Americas before the Europeans arrived.

The first section of the Nova was about the ways the Incas shaped, transported, and used massive blocks of stone for buildings, monumental structures, and some things whose purpose is unclear. The second section showed modern villagers building a rope bridge across a river in a steep valley, using traditional techniques to create ropes made from grass. The bridge was built by the entire community and took only 3 days to construct. Students recognized that the Incas’ creation of heavy cables from thin ropes was very similar to the cable-making techniques they saw in a video about the Brooklyn Bridge.

When students went into the main classroom at the end of the video, we asked them to talk about the video in small groups and record notes that showed what they now knew about Inca masonry (a new word for most) and bridge construction. We explained that we were going to ask them to choose one of those topics and, using their notes, write a paragraph that contained the information they had learned and any personal observations. We discussed the function and importance of a good topic sentence. They were offered a couple of examples that they could use but were also encouraged to create their own. They were given a handout that reviewed the directions and asked to complete it (as homework) by the next morning. Most of the paragraphs that we received were well-organized, accurate, and appropriately detailed.

Fluency, elaboration, and organization of writing are skills we work on throughout the year. This kind of pre-writing work (gathering information, making it into notes) generally leads to a better result than just starting at the top of the blank page and hoping for the best. We’ll be working with several different planning procedures and tools, including the list-based note-taking that we used here and also hand-drawn and software-created graphical maps.

We had our second sandwich sale on Friday. The record-keeping and delivery were done without a single error by the students, although I must report that there was one mistake . . . made by me. The communication and teamwork were impressive. (Next time, I’ll get the kids to check my work.)

IMG_5330

IMG_5328

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *