Antarctica New Orleans Writing Project

The BIG NEWS is that we have started a new project at the SVDP-ALC school. We call it the Antarctica New Orleans Writing Project. As you can read in an earlier blog post, I conduct a small class at our school usually twice per week on map reading or geography. This has been a very good opportunity for our students to learn basic map reading skills and also learn about places all over the world, depending on the maps we use.

Some months ago we started to use a National Geographic map I have of Antarctica, and the students were quite interested in the subject. I decided to try to communicate with someone in Antarctica and perhaps have our students ask questions about life there so they could learn more about other lands. This would also be a way to open the door to other related subjects like math (to understand the distances, compute temperature changes, etc.), history (perhaps discuss exploration), and writing skills (I wanted the students to either write essays about this project or actually communicate with people in Antarctica).

One thing led to another and after many weeks I came into contact with a communications specialist with the United States Antarctica Program (USAP) which is affiliated with the National Science Foundation (NSF) which runs the programs for the USA at our three bases in Antarctica -- Palmer, McMurdo, and South Pole Station. I had the original idea for this project back around Christmas time 2007, and now after a few months exciting things are happening.

As of this week we are in direct contact via email with several people in the USAP who work at South Pole Station (actually at the South Pole!), and we expect to be in contact with McMurdo soon. McMurdo is the USA's sea base on the Ross Ice. I have gathered questions from our students for our new Antarctica pen pals, and we will post stories and Q&A right here at our blog and also on the newsletter, website, and blog for Literacy*AmeriCorps New Orleans. The newsletter for Literacy*AmeriCorps New Orleans is called AmeriWord.

So, join us here for exciting updates from Antarctica and New Orleans concerning the Antarctica New Orleans Writing Project.

Thanks, Adrian McGrath, Blog Manager