Learning About Wilderness Survival
Mrs. Nicoliello's 6th grade literature classes just finished their unit on survival and learned what exactly humans need to survive out in the wild.
We began the school year discussing our summer reading book, Hatchet. This is the story of a boy who is stranded in the middle of the Canadian wilderness when the plane he is traveling on makes an emergency crash landing. All he has to help him survive is his hatchet, himself, and his surroundings. We also read three other similar stories about characters who find themselves in situations where they have to figure out how to survive. With each story we categorized the survival needs that are important to people: water, food, shelter, tools/weapons, clothing, warmth, companionship, and the most important need-hope.
Before I introduced those needs, we discussed what they think is important to survival. Most of them chose their technology and money. After our discussions about what really is important, they realized that technology is nice, but not an absolute necessity.
The survival unit also provided them with real life applications as we witnessed back at the start of the pandemic when people were hoarding toilet paper and Lysol. While those things are nice, are they really what we need? It gave them some perspective about what really is important in life. We discovered that it is most important to have hope which is connected to our faith.
That's an important lesson for all of us.
Please note this hatchet was only handled by this one student for photography purposes and under the direct supervision of Mrs. Nicoliello.
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Despite the mask wearing, the students' personalities shined through today as they enjoyed their free dress day and smiled for the camera. It was nice to see many of the remote learning students also join us for picture day. Just a reminder, new this year, the picture retake day is scheduled for December 15th from 4 -7 p.m. at the Grynn and Barrett Enfield studio.
Finally, the Walk-a-thon! Great stories, great pictures, great videos!! Thank you for embracing the idea and being so creative in how you executed it. We're still working through reviewing the submissions. We're also counting money. It's dribbling in...we really need it to pour in...we have a way to go to $21,000...
