SOCIAL STUDIES
At Escola Americana do Rio de Janeiro (EARJ) I taught science using the TCI curriculum that the school subscribes to. The benefit of this curriculum is that it is well thought-out and it covers a scope and sequence for Kinder to 10th grade. However, it is primarily USA-centered and many topics were unrelated to my class of diverse students from all over the world. I used the themes and materials from TCI, but I do my best to refocus the topics on a global and local perspective. For example, in the TCI 3rd grade curriculum there was a geography unit that describes city and state boundaries in the USA as well as national landmarks and landforms. I taught my students this content, but we also learned about the cites, states, landmarks, and landforms in Brazil. Together, we investigated what some of the most well-known places are in the country that we live. My students were better able to understand the concept of political boundaries this way.
Another example of how I have extended the curriculum beyond the textbook is through a service-learning project I did with my third grade students. We used the TCI unit on community leadership to think about ways that we could be leaders in our community. The students brainstormed and voted to decide that they wanted to learn about food accessibility and sustainability in Rio de Janeiro. We spent a few weeks learning about where food comes from and who has access to what kinds of food. After realizing that many of the residents in the nearby favela, Rochina, did not have access to fresh fruits and vegetables on a daily basis, the students decided to do something about it. They planted their own vegetable garden at our school with the end goal of providing the healthy food options to school maintenance workers. Getting students to think outside the classroom walls not only helped them apply their knowledge, but it educated them about events and issues going on in the world. As a teacher, it is important to me that I use the diversity of the students and our international setting as a means to teach students about being global citizens.
If you would like to learn more about this project please click below and it will take you to a website that shows the whole journey of our service-learning project.
Student work from our serivce-learning project where we learned about food sustainability and accessibility through the creation of a community garden.