Humanities

Current Novel

The Humanities team kicked off the year with Linda Sue Park's novel, A Long Walk to Water.  The parallel stories of Salva and Nya, two, eleven year old Sudanese children, are intended to serve as an engagement piece to the theme of our first project of the year, Aqua Advocates.  This project is scheduled to culminate in a public exhibition on November 10th.  During its course, students will be learning about water and many of the barriers or challenges to clean water access that face human communities locally, nationally, and globally.  Understanding academic content in Science (the hydrological cycle, for example) and Geography will be stressed.  Academic skills such as close reading, note-taking, writing persuasive and expository essays and utilizing standard English conventions in the writing process will be taught through both explicit lessons on those skills and further emphasized throughout the project.  This project is complimented by the first unit in Science and the field trips undertaken during that unit.  We have also scheduled field trips to Bamberger Ranch and the Hill Country Ranch on October 25 and 26.