Friday, March 28, 2008

Mendenhall Glacier

Gile, Ron. (2007). The Mendenhall Glacier, Alaska. Outdoor photographer: favorite places. Available at: http://www.outdoorphotographer.com/content/2007/nov/fp_alaska.shtml

This article caught my eye, because I visited the Mendenhall Glacier over the summer. We were on a tight schedule, so I didn’t have time to take in a lot of the information while I was there, but this article gave some interesting facts and things I wish I knew while I was there. The glacier is part of the Juneau Ice Field (something I did know--Juneau is the capital of Alaska). The Mendenhall Glacier Visitor’s Center was built in 1962. The article mentions how quickly the weather can change and to bring waterproof gear--this was something we found out first hand. Even though it was early June, it was quite chilly, especially since it was an overcast and rainy day. The guide assured us that it was good that it was a cloudy day, because it made the ice appear to be blue instead of white. We visited too early in the summer to see the brown bears and salmon, but we did see a few bald eagles. The best time of year to visit the glacier is at midsummer, both because of the wildlife and the colors of the glacier (the snow from the previous winter has had time to melt, thus showing the true colors of the glacier).

The reason I am sharing this article with you, is because we could use it with our basal reading story Fishing Bears. I think the kids would enjoy seeing more pictures of the Alaskan brown bear’s habitat and we could do a lot of comparing and contrasting with the Alaskan environment versus our own OR photos of the glacier in different weather (for example, compare my photo vs. the one in the article). This type of picture would also be a terrific story starter. I would be happy to share more pictures and information with you if you are interested OR you can visit the glacier’s website at: http://www.fs.fed.us/r10/tongass/districts/mendenhall/


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2 comments:

Jenn Swaisgood said...

Sabrina,
I'm back from my vacation so I'm going to post my comments today from your last week blog posts.

I love your idea of using images to go along with a story you are reading with you class. Like you mentioned, there are so many activities you can do, such as comparing and contrasting differnet aspects of the picture (the environment). I do this a lot with the stories my students read in their literature book. I like to do some sort of intro. activity to get their minds working. For instance, we read a story about the Yukon Gold Rush and dogsledding. As an intro. activity, my students did a different activity at different group spots in the room. One group looked at pics of the Yukon territory during the gold rush and wrote about what they could infer from the pics. Another group read and partcipated in an interactive website on dogsledding. The next group looked at and labeled a map of the Yukon trail. It was very fun and got them much more interested in the story.

Great picture!

Jenn

March 31, 2008 at 9:29 AM
Annette said...

Sabrina,
Using a picture like this could be a great 'hook' for the intro to your story.
I could see this picture being used in activities like Jenn suggested...so kids could get familiar with the background of the picture before going into the Unit of Study.
Pictures like this can give students background knowledge before entering into the story so they are a bit more educated about things that might happen in the story.
For something like Jenn suggested, a neat idea might be to end the activity with a carousel. If you haven't heard of it, it's pretty basic. The students learn about a topic and create some type of presentation (notes on chart paper, post pictures, whatever you have them do) and the students rotate in a circle to the different groups to find out what the other groups did. It's just a quick way to share information with all students.
Annette

April 5, 2008 at 11:32 AM

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