Saratoga News
Education
Students take a 'Walk Through California'
By Emilie Doolittle
Fourth-graders dressed as Native Americans, Spanish conquistadors and Mexican vaqueros and señoritas stood outside the Foothill Elementary School library. With California Weekly Explorer Jason Sluyter they were ready to "Walk Through California" to delve into California politics, geography and history, but only in the most playful way.
When Sluyter said, "This whole thing is set up like a game," student Ashley Tanaka jumped up and down in the back of her line and classmate Jerame Kim let out a "whoop!" When Sluyter said, "I'm going to be looking for the straightest and quietest team," all four teams settled into four straight lines.
Sluyter led the four teams from Sandy Waite-Lopez's class into the room filled with the sounds of an orchestral march.
Each team gave a personalized cheer before Sluyter began his lecture about California. When he said the word "river," Nihar Agrawal ran to the front of the classroom and sat in the expert chair.
"Nihar, what is the definition of a river?" Sluyter asked.
"Well, Jason, a river is a stream of water flowing through the land," Nihar answered. Like his classmates, he used complete sentences, knowing that if he didn't Sluyter would spray supersonic sentence juice (water) on his head. Nihar won 45 points for the "Golden Geniuses" by giving the full definition of the expert word and answering Sluyter's follow-up question.
The students were assigned expert words the night before the presentation. They had to look up the definition of the word as well as the answer to the presenter's questions. To gain points for their teams, the students remained attentive throughout Sluyter's lecture in case he said their word.
California Weekly Explorer is a company that does "Walk Through" presentations with fourth- through sixth-grade students, emphasizing what they're learning in social sciences that year. The company was incorporated in California in October 1979 to improve students' learning of social studies.
The fourth-grade parents paid $15 for their children to participate in the presentation.
"If you present history in a very interesting way, it will become more interesting," said co-PTA president Vasanthi Arjavalingam, who sat through the presentation. "The way [Jason] presented it made it a lot more fun. The parents were amazed by how the kids were still listening to him after three hours, and even the parents learned so much just from listening to him."
Several times during the game, Sluyter said, "Time machine," and the students covered their eyes with one hand, their head with the other and leaned forward to protect their stomachs in order to have a safe ride in their imaginary transport. Psychedelic music played from the speakers at the front of the room and a recorded voice announced what year they were going back to. With the recorded voice, the class began counting down from 40 while Sluyter quickly selected a student to take to the center of the semicircle to be an historical figure from that year.
The first time the transport landed the students opened their eyes to see Native American Wishtoya from the Chumash tribe (played by their classmate Amanda Duong).
While the students time-traveled from 1500 to 1848 they met Junipero Serra from the California missions; watched Father Hidalgo wave the Mexican flag declaring independence from Spain; and saw men from the army of the United States capture Gen. Vallejo and declare "Republic California" in 1846. Then they watched James W. Marshall discover gold at John Sutter's mill in 1848.
To end the game, Sluyter had the students put together pieces of a 25-foot-long map of California. At each piece of the map he pointed out places of historical, geographic and physical interest where he left symbolic markers, such as a shell in Santa Barbara where the Chumas tribe lived. Later he tested the students on the landmarks.
The California Weekly Explorer presentation previewed what the students would learn in social studies this year. Waite-Lopez said, "The kids were all engaged and enthused. I think that they will remember a lot of what they learned because Jason made it fun."
The "Golden Genuises" ended up winning first place at the end of the game, although all of the teams got to take a certificate home.
"The most important part was that they learned and had fun while doing it," said Waite-Lopez.
