Twenty Miles from Tomorrow: Examining the Past, Present and Future of the Lower Kuskokwim River Delta

Lauren McClanahan, Western Washington University

Summary

This project involves pairing pre-service teachers with students in the rural Alaskan village of Eek, located on the banks of the Eek River, a tributary of the Lower Kuskokwim River in Southwestern, Alaska. By creating effective writing prompts, the pre-service teachers hope to better understand how climate change is affecting the people of this region.

Used this activity? Share your experiences and modifications

Learning Goals

As a result of participation in this project, students (pre-service teachers) will be able to craft an effective writing prompt (or series of prompts) for rural Alaskan high school students. This prompt will examine the past, present and future (ecological and cultural) of the tundra of the Lower Kuskokwim River Delta. The writing outcomes will be twofold. First, the pre-service teachers will understand how to use a "less-is-more" approach to writing prompts. They will learn how to effectively and specifically prompt for the information desired. Second, the writing of the Alaskan high school students will be taken into account, as my pre-service teachers will be responding to this writing using an analytic scoring rubric. Achievement of these outcomes will be determined, in part, by the clarity of the prompts to their intended audience.

Context for Use

This assignment was part of a year-long, voluntary "practicum" offered to secondary education students in the Woodring College of Education at Western Washington University. While students did not receive course credit for their participation, the experience they gained can be placed on their resume, and will be valued by future employers.

Timeframe:The entire project took place over the course of one academic year. This particular activity took approximately a month to complete. A follow-up activity is planned.

Description and Teaching Materials

The Learning Activity

Set-up:
Our project started by first getting to know one-another through e-mail conversations and writing bio-poems. Next, students at both sites discussed why teaching was so important to them (the participants in Alaska are all members of the Future Teachers of Alaska club). Then, students discussed their favorite places, and why those places were so special. That "conversation" led to my students drafting writing prompts that asked the Alaskan students questions about climate change in their community.
The Activity:
What follows is the actual assignment as it was posted on our course Blackboard site:
Eek Assignment #6:
Climate Change Writing Prompts

For this assignment, Western students will practice creating writing prompts that will give us some insight into the idea of climate change, and what effects (if any) are being seen, now, today, by the Eek students and their families. For this assignment, I'd like the Western students to do two things:
  1. Design a prompt that will encourage your partner to write about what they know about climate change, and what, if any, actual effects they have witnessed; and,
  2. Design two or three interview questions that your partners can take home to their families to determine if they have noticed any changes in the environment that may be due to global warming.
Both the Eek students and the Western students should decide what this writing should "look" like. Would a more formal paper be appropriate? Or, do you want it to be more informal-more like a conversation, or a letter to a friend. Perhaps poetry could fit in somewhere? Photos? Feel free to get creative. What we don't want is for the Eek students to feel like they have a huge term paper to do!

I know this assignment is vague, but that's intentional. Send your idea(s) for prompts to us and we'll give you the go-ahead if we feel that it's good, or perhaps give you some suggestions to tweak it a bit. Remember, think about what you want to really know! Kids will answer only what you ask them to! Your question can be a single question, or have two or three "parts" to it-the choice is yours! Western students, you're the teachers!

Example of Student Work (Microsoft Word 30kB Nov3 11)

Teaching Notes and Tips

Overall, I have been pleased with how this project played out. Of course, I wish that the middle/high school students provided more information in their responses, but that has been a good lesson to my students—that secondary students will answer only what they are asked to answer. It is difficult to create an effective writing prompt, and with the follow-up activity (of asking some in-depth, follow-up questions), hopefully some of our lingering questions will be answered.

Part of our follow-up activity includes having the Alaskan students document climate change by taking digital photographs around their village and writing about what they see on a daily basis (a generous donation of a classroom set of digital cameras was recently given to us by Hewlett-Packard and Facing the Future).

This activity could take place with students in any location around the world. We happened to choose the village of Eek, Alaska, because they are seeing the effects of climate change right now, in the form of melting tundra and changes in the pattern of ice freeze/thaw.

The finished product was done not in Eek, Alaska, but rather in Kwigillingok, Alaska. We ended up creating an iMovie. Here is a link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4qPa2xIU4o

Assessment

Formal Assessment:

Pre-service teachers will use the 6-Trait Analytic Scoring Rubric (available at: http://www.nwrel.org/assessment/scoringpractice.php) to assess their partners' responses.

Informal Assessment:

Pre-service teachers will gauge their success based upon the success of their student partners. If their middle/high school partners understand and respond accordingly to the prompt, then the pre-service teachers will have been successful!

References and Resources

The only outside resource used for this activity is the 6-Trait Analytic Scoring Rubric (available at: http://www.nwrel.org/assessment/scoringpractice.php).