New for June at EDSITEment
Shelley NiTuama | June 15, 2010
As you can see from our home page
, EDSITEment has a number of cool offerings to engage teachers and students as school wraps up and summer weather beckons...
Our monthly feature highlights National Zoo and Aquarium Month. Preserving America’s Wildlife touts June as a good time to explore the local zoo and aquarium as well as visit the websites of America’s great zoos and aquariums. Many of them have excellent educational resources—photographs, videos, facts, lesson plans, activities, and sound so real your dog will growl. EDSITEment also features art and artists who have drawn attention to the need for protecting America’s vanishing wilderness and wildlife.
June is also National Outdoors month, so we thought we would refresh our Frank Lloyd Wright spotlight on his union of architecture and nature, Fallingwater. Featured in the Picturing America collection, Fallingwater hovers over a thirty-foot waterfall with cantilevered decks extending it into the surrounding forest that make it seem a part of its natural site. You can find out more about Fallingwater in the Picturing America Educators Resource Book.
Another offering refreshed with a new podcast and bibliography is one of EDSITEment’s most popular curriculum units, It Came From Greek Mythology, where students are introduced to the riches of these ancient stories and their continuing influence. Join Rick Riordan and a curator from the Metropolitan Museum of Art as they discuss Greek mythology.
Finally, a couple of new offerings:
The themes of the new The Road to Santa Fe, A Virtual Excursion
unit are those being presented in the NEH Summer Institute for teachers, Contested Homelands: Knowledge, History, and Culture of Historic Santa Fe, a NEH-funded workshop for K–12 teachers directed by Rebecca M. Sánchez of the University of New Mexico. Come along with EDSITEment this summer and discover the multilayered heritage of the peoples who call New Mexico their homeland. This unit will take us through the terrain and annals of American history which characterize this remarkable landscape. Explore the history behind the oldest native and colonial habitations and roadways in our country experiencing the unique mix of cultures meeting the Pueblo people, the Spanish colonials, and travelling along the El Camino Real (the Royal Road to the Interior), which was the great catalyst for their interactions. There is also a new interactive tracing the route of the El Camino Real, the ancient road in use for 300 years (1585–1885) connecting Mexico City with Santa Fe, the capital of New Spain, with a companion worksheet of field notes to the locations.Twelve Angry Men: Trial by Jury As a Right and As a Political Institution
looks at how the popular play/movie teaches students how the jury system educates citizens about the law and legal process, helps them understand their duties as citizens, and, in the best case, improves their deliberations.
Shelley NiTuama is an EDSITEment Program Specialist for the National Endowment for the Humanities. She has an MLIS and ten years of professional experience in public and school libraries.
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