English
Sharing the Planet is my preferred unit of inquiry since my background is in Peace and Conflict Management Studies.
The Central Idea we revised was “Caring for resources help to promote sustainability”, and one of the concepts we studied was responsibility. I enjoyed this unit because it gives students an opportunity to learn about different types of conflict related to natural resources, religious and ethnic encounters; all of them linked to territorial disputes. In this way, students get a chance to connect with and reflect on local and global issues and how they affect them. Most importantly, they are able to create an action plan to try and resolve one of these problems.
We started this unit by listening to Dr. Seuss’s “Butter Battles” audio book, and the fight between the “Yooks” and “Zooks”. Dr. Seuss does a remarkable job at depicting territorial conflict between two differing parties due to a variance in perspectives.
What makes this story so powerful is that students get a chance to connect it to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and even allude to arms race in the world. While listening to the book we paused it and asked questions to reflect on what was happening between the two groups, and also to touch on new vocabulary words as well as words that rhymed. Finally, I stopped it before it ended for them to make a prediction. They drew the three main scenes as well as create a final ending before we finished reading the book.
To conclude, we watched the short 20-minute movie, and they got to present on the solution they came up with to resolve the conflict between the “Zooks” and “Yooks”. Presentations are the key to this activity since we looked at paths to peace. We looked at how many different ways can the conflict between “Zooks” and “Yooks” be resolved. Using critical thinking and problem solving skills, students got to practically analyze a conflict that connects to those in our world.
Ginette Saloma
5th grade English Teacher
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