Curriculum Connections

Download The Great Mountain Study Guide

Key Learning Areas
Responsibility to Earth and Community; Aboriginal Peoples and Cultures; States of Matter: Ice, Snow, and Permafrost

Academic Standards
Pennsylvania Learning Standards for Early Childhood—Key Learning Area: Family-School-Community Partnerships

The Great Mountain is inspired by the Northern Plains aboriginal story Jumping Mouse. The story can also be found in the picture book The Story of Jumping Mouse: A Native American Legend, retold and illustrated by John Steptoe, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, c1984 [40]p.: ISBN 0688019021. There is a teacher’s guide based on the picture book, Novel Units, c1992 [30]p.: ISBN 1561373303. In it are several lessons for grades 1-2 and individual teachers have permission to reproduce as needed for use with their own students.

Pennsylvania Learning Standards for Early Childhood—Key Learning Area: Approaches to Learning AL1 Initiative and Curiosity; AL4 Flexibility, Risk Taking and Responsibility; AL 5 Imagination, Creativity and Invention

Pennsylvania Academic Standardsfor the Arts and Humanities—9.1 Production, Performance and Exhibition of Dance, Music, Theatre and Visual Arts; 9.2 Historical and Cultural Contexts

Pennsylvania Academic Standardsfor Geography—7.2 Physical Characteristics of Places and Regions; 7.4 The Interactions Between People and Places

Pennsylvania Academic Standardsfor Environment and Ecology—4.1 Watersheds and Wetlands; 4.6 Ecosystems and their Interactions;

These are some additional activity suggestions based on Red Sky Productions’ The Great Mountain, “Ask students to think about the process of change in their own community, and create an action plan with the purpose of ensuring the positive future of a local site.”

Visit http://www.greatsunflower.org/ for collecting data on bee pollination in yards, gardens, schools and parks. The Great Sunflower Project has been gathering information on pollinator service since 2008, and now has the largest single body of information about bee pollinator service in North America. Thanks to thousands of observers, they can determine where pollinator service is strong or weak compared to averages.

At http://uwarboretum.org/eps/research_act_classroom/rain_garden_curriculum.php is  a rain garden curriculum sampler for building a rain garden on your school grounds. To see a working rain garden visit the corner of Beaver and Allen Street in State College, PA, in front of and across from Schlow Library.

The National Groundwater Association has developed this lab for a classroom wetland model: http://www.ngwa.org/Fundamentals/teachers/Pages/Building-a-wetland-filter.aspx

Alan Sam, State College Borough’s environmental coordinator and arborist, spearheaded the transformation of the Westerly Parkway storm water detention basin, into a wetland education center http://www.statecollegepa.us/index.aspx?nid=1673; http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2012/06/27/westerly_parkway_revitalization.aspx

The Great Mountain is inspired by the Northern Plains aboriginal story Jumping Mouse. The story can also be found in the picture book The Story of Jumping Mouse, retold and illustrated by John Steptoe, 1984, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, ISBN 0-688-01902-1. A teacher’s guide published by Novel Units has several lessons for grades 1-2, ISBN 1-56137-330-3.  Individual teachers have permission to reproduce the blackline masters as needed for use with their students.