With schools closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers do their best to keep students engaged while learning online. This article from Telluride News describes how one educator in Colorado, USA has adapted her school’s survival skills unit using the Theory of Multiple Intelligences. The unit is experiential and cross-curricular, encouraging students to use as many of their intelligences as possible with what she calls an “Adventure Survival Passport.”
Read the full article below to learn how the unit was inspired and what it entails.
TELLURIDE NEWS
April 29, 2020
Survivals skills with a twist: Fourth-graders participate in alternative survival skills project
By Bria Light
In the life of a Telluride fourth-grader, this time of year would normally find students learning to dress cuts and care for wounds, check for obstructions of an injured person’s airway, and assess the situation for danger before helping someone with an injury, among other skills. This program, which provides an opportunity for students to receive their Basic Aid Training under the instruction of local EMTs, is almost a rite of passage for fourth-graders, who each receive their very own first aid kit upon completion of the unit.
The program, which has been instilling basic first aid skills in local fourth-graders for years, normally brings in local EMTs and other emergency personnel such as police officers, firefighters and ski patrollers to convey practical skills, as well as demonstrate the wide range of options in emergency care professions.
“It seems to be developmentally appropriate to teach these survival skills at the fourth-grade level for a few reasons,” said Lisa Andrews, a local EMT who has been helping with the program for the past eight years. “Kids, especially local kids, are beginning to venture a bit farther from home and parents, and this course arms them with information and hands-on practice so that they know what to do if a problem arises. With basic skills of how to care for themselves and their pals, they are a bit safer when they head out on bikes, skis or hiking.”
This year, however, due to the COVID-19 pandemic forcing schools to transition to online learning platforms, things are different. Local EMTs and emergency personnel cannot come into the school in person and set up the usual five stations to teach aid skills, nor can students tour an ambulance. Nonetheless, local EMTs already had the first aid kits stocked and ready to give to each student, and fourth-grade teacher Sue Herir, who heads this year’s survival skills unit, did not want students to miss out on the tradition due to the pandemic.
“Fourth grade is typically such a great grade because they go on all these field trips and do all these interactive projects, and it’s become known that fourth grade is when you get your first aid kit,” Herir said. “So even though they won’t get to do the paramedic piece of it, I didn’t feel like these kids should miss out on it.”
Instead, she devised an alternative plan for students to get creative and learn about survival skills, using the format of an “adventure survival passport.” Each student must complete a reading, writing and math challenge related to survival skills or stories, and may then choose from optional tasks such as creating a backpacking checklist, making a list of edible and inedible foods found in their local environment, and creating a video lesson to teach the class a survival skill like fire-building or knot-tying. For the math component of the unit, students incorporate hands-on STEM skills by building a survival shelter for Ravioli, the fourth-grade math teacher’s dog.
“We wanted to incorporate a lot of cross-curricular activities, tying in science, Spanish, writing and other subjects,” said Herir, while also adding in fun options like creating a game of survival or writing a song based on the theme.
“I always love trying to include all the multiple intelligences, giving kids the opportunity to bring in their interests in music, or movement, or dance, or whatever,” she said of the process of creating the survival skills passport project. “This project gave me license to be able to give kids those options.”
For Andrews’ part, though the kids won’t be able to meet with emergency medical professionals this year, she and other EMTs are happy to be able “to continue the practice of giving each kid a very cool first aid kit upon completion of the course.”
“We have been told that kids like the first aid kits and many keep them for years, replenishing the supplies and supplementing them as well,” Andrews said.
With so much time out of the classroom and on the computer screen, teachers and students alike have had to adapt quickly to new ways of learning. So if you spot a kid outside in the woods building a dog-sized survival structure, rest assured that they are likely just doing their homework.