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Our relatives often provide interesting stories. Roxie Munro's great-great grandfather gave her plenty of stuff for a great Minute. When you peek at Roxie's illustrations and read about her relative Lemuel, maybe you start to see from where some her talent originates! |
English/Language Arts
Explore where stories come from - writing journal seed ideas
Social Studies
Explore transportation growth
STEM
Explore Engineering
Art
Explore architecture as art
Explore where stories come from - writing journal seed ideas
- Personal stories, such as this one, often come from personal connections. Author Munro tells us that her motivation for discovering and writing about Lemuel Chenoweth came about because he was her great-great-grandfather and the stories had passed down through the generations. Have your students explore who some of their ancestors might be and use that knowledge to lead them to writing about a specific subject or person. Offer an alternate option for students who cannot access that kind of information, and have them choose a character from history and imagine they were related prior to doing research.
- Finding out where stories come from (authors’ motivation) is always interesting. Start sharing the dedications in books with your students. Read the “about the author” section that is almost always included on the back flap or following the end of a book. The more students see authors as real people, the more they can see themselves as authors.
Social Studies
Explore transportation growth
- The relationship between the development of transportation is inextricably tied to commerce and simple economics. This Minute allows for multiple levels of those kind of explorations and conversations in your classrooms. Why build a bridge? Why not simply develop a city on both sides of a river? Why is a bridge preferable to a ferry? Do you think the ferry continued to “ferry” passengers across the river even after the bridge was built? See if you can find out!
- Thinking about distant relatives always reminds me to teach students about the importance of primary sources. Now is the time to ask students if they have objects, letters or diaries from relatives past. Teaching history from artifacts and primary source documents is an invaluable skill for our students. For more assistance, check out the Library of Congress' Teaching With Primary Sources quarterly.
STEM
Explore Engineering
- What kind of engineers build bridges? Does it take more than one kind? How did this man with a third grade education manage to come up with a design that bested trained engineers? Do you think that could happen today?
- Author Munro mentions several different kinds of bridges - cable suspension, cantilevered structures, arched. Have your students check out the different possibilities for bridge construction and through experimentation, test the strength of the various kinds of bridges. If you have some bridges in your community, maybe it's time for a low-cost field trip! Challenge your students to build their own bridge models - and see if their bridge can "stand" the Chenoweth test!
Art
Explore architecture as art
- Artist Munro's illustrations of the story she tells are inspirational. the bridge is a piece of art. Have students explore structure as art. Take a look at Walker Evan's photographs of the Brooklyn bridge. Compare those to Joseph Stella's famous abstract painting of the bridge. Can you find other structures that illustrate the idea of architecture as art? Have students look at Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water, or Zaha Hadid's Bridge Pavilion in Zaragoza, Spain.
© Karen Sterling, 2017 - May be used for educational purposes without written permission
