Ahead But Behind

I'm in the midst of reading "Simon Bloom the Gravity Keeper." In it, the character becomes the "keeper" of the Teacher's Manuel for Physics. He essentially is able to control the physics of the world around him. At one point Simon asks his dad about the Theory of Relativity, to which his dad replies about how every object exists in time and space, but it is all relative (and continues onward).

That helped me put my teaching into context (somewhat). We're nowhere near where we were last year as far as content. I think by now we were entering into the colonies, and we haven't even compared specific explorers yet. That being said, I feel like we have actually covered more and practiced a wider variety of reading skills. I'm not sure that my level of instruction, or assessment, was where it is currently (not to mention the fact that it still needs to improve). While we are behind with respect to content, we are ahead with respect to our ability as readers. Some might see that negatively because of the vast amount that needs to be covered. That, of course, is all relative.

We'll likely do less with explorers the next 10 days. We have a text with a wide variety of information about 9 different explorers. From there we'll also branch out to find other points of view. We'll work on questioning, comparing/contrasting, and evaluating. The ultimate takeaway is the fact that explorers had a variety of impacts (effects) because of their exploring- and not all of them are good. For every discovery there is making native people slaves, or stealing their land. It is a far cry from the mixed interaction they experienced last year as part of the Oregon Trail ("we traded with the native people!").