Dear Families, It’s been great to get back from spring break and into the classroom with the students! In this letter I will be spending most of the time outlining our final unit of the year. (Amazing that it has come so quickly!)
Unit of Inquiry:
How We Share The Planet
Central Idea: How a society manages resources affects the world around them. Lines of Inquiry: 1) The relationship between land and people 2) Ripple effects of resource management 3) The rights and responsibilities of a society in managing finite resources I am tremendously excited about this unit for its potential in teaching the next stewards of our planet, our children, solutions to global environmental problems by acting on a local scale. Taking inspiration from environmental science, Transition movements, permaculture, sustainable design and good economic practice, this unit will not only teach our children about some of the challenges we face in managing our resources, but also will involve them in a direct, hands-‐on campaign that will change the face of Mackintosh Academy.
Through this unit, the students will identify what resources we bring in and use as a campus (our “ins”) and what our waste stream looks like (our “outs”). The class will then identify a problem that we can solve and will work towards implementing a school-‐wide program to solve that problem. In my mind a great issue for them to tackle is our trash waste stream. It is my hope that most of the class will be excited to design and implement a school-‐wide composting and recycling program to help cut down on the amount of garbage we create on our campus.
Through designing this program, the students will be exposed to studies in economics, biology, research, teamwork, mathematics, public speaking, community education and carpentry. It is a truly interdisciplinary unit! By focusing our lens of instruction to our campus, the students will have a scale that they can easily grasp, work with and improve while also being able to scale up solutions to a local, national and international level. Our Keystone trip also falls during this unit and we are focusing our instruction up there on our third line of inquiry. The students will be studying the rights and responsibilities we have in Colorado for managing the water from the Colorado River. How do we use this water for
our own means while also preserving it for the many communities downstream as well? This unit will also be a great place to involve you, our parent community as well. There will hopefully be many opportunities to come help with sign making, pamphlet writing and getting dirty! I would like to start by inviting you on Friday, April 26th for our community garden day. We will be seeding the courtyard pollinator garden and will also need help in creating some new paths, moving benches and maybe even creating some interpretive signs to post in that space. More information to come.
I am looking forward to sharing this spring with you and your family, have a wonderful day, Jim Important Dates: April 15-‐19: Stanford Testing April 18th: Mackintosh Variety show April 19th: Early dismissal, staff professional development April 26th: Community Gardening Day April 29-‐May 1st: Class trip to Keystone Science Center