Kids go exploring

During Fran Miller's first week of teaching first grade, she helped her students explore America.

She and her class at St. Teresa of Avila School in Albany were among the first participants in a project called "Shoeless & Bark," a take-off on Lewis and Clark, whose famous trek across western America occurred 200 years ago.

"Shoeless & Bark," a week-long unit, follows the three-year journey of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who returned with information describing the West.

Hands across U.S.

The project is being undertaken by hundreds of schools across the country. Backpacks containing books, handouts, worksheets, teacher outlines, hands-on project ideas and the project's namesakes -- two plush figures named Shoeless and Bark -- are mailed from school to school along with souvenirs and messages from previous schools.

Mrs. Miller said that the project "was well-prepared. They sent us all the materials that we needed."

The students learned about the expedition through stories and instruction about why the duo undertook the journey, their mapping and other techniques, Native American cultures, and the history of America.

One and two

At St. Teresa, the first- and second-graders came together to participate. Mrs. Miller and the second-grade teacher, Anne Marie Morrissey, team-taught the unit.

"The second-graders were able to help the first-graders," Mrs. Miller said. "We had to make accommodations for the first grade, because they can't do too much in the writing area; but they really did learn a lot. I was amazed at some of the answers they gave. They really enjoyed interacting, and it won't be the last time."

Mrs. Miller used the unit's themes of exploration, discovery and mapping to help her first-graders get acquainted with their new school. Like Lewis and Clark, they charted new territory by meeting teachers and staff, taking a tour of both school buildings, discovering where to go if they need help, and making a map of the campus.

Adventure

Mrs. Miller believes a sense of adventure and discovery helps students succeed in school.

"That's what first grade is -- it's all investigation," she said. "That's how they learn. The kids are always doing hands-on things in the classroom. The more you can get the children actively involved, the more they actually learn."

Much of the learning was done through story-telling, which Mrs. Miller believes is an effective way to teach history. During eight years as a fourth-grade teacher, she included historical fiction and narrative histories in the curriculum, calling the genre "one of the best things to come out of children's literature recently. It helps the children put themselves in the character's place and use their imagination. We all learn better when listening to a story."

Working together

Like Lewis and Clark, who explored in a partnership and as part of a larger expeditionary group, the students learned to rely on one another, a skill Mrs. Miller hopes the students will carry on as they tackle the rest of the year.

"We're all learning together," she said. "That's been the thing this year. It was good to start out with exploring, because it gave us the chance to explore our own surroundings."

And the class hasn't stopped with America. "I just got my hands out of clay," she said. "Today, we made a model of Antarctica."

(Other Catholic schools in the Albany Diocese scheduled to participate in the project include Christ the King, Westmere; St. James, Albany; St. Mary's, Hoosick Falls; St. Mary's, Waterford; St. Thomas, Delmar; and St. John the Evangelist, Schenectady.)

(1/27/05)