OCR Text |
Show School z and j Home 7 by Dr. Daryl J. McCarty W Executive Secretary Utah Education Association ' Do not be surprised, kind father, if you emerge from the bathroon and find your 11-year-old son staring intently at his wristwatch, clucking his tongue and shaking his head in disapproval. He may have just graduated from a new short course that is being introduced in-troduced in elementary schools across the state. It's a dry subject: Drought. This "unit" on water conservation con-servation is teaching fourth, fifth and sixth-grade students everything from making rain to computing the amount of water Dad used while taking that shower. The "textbook" for this course is prsented partly in comic strip form; but that's only half the story. This book is stuffed with projects aimed at making kids aware of something we adults know, but often forget to practice: You don't have to drench to quench. Students taking this course will learn how to read the home water meter, measure rainfall, how much water it takes to grow a bean plant, and figure how many gallons of water escape through the nozzle of your garden hose. The course encompasses such subjects as arithmetic (finding a leaky faucet and calculate its rate of water loss each day(; climatology (plotting (plot-ting the water needs for two cities using temperature graphs); science (distilling ocean water); social science (if City "A" on a map were settled set-tled 50 years before City "B", what effect would the development of C have on A's water supply?); language (a water use crossword puzzle); and even music (a song on page 29). It's a good example of making lessons significant. Beside all the water conservation con-servation material in the book, there's a message on the back cover from Governor Scott Matheson. He asks the students to relay their ideas on saving water to him via the teachers. Who knows? Youngsters are surprisingly bright, and maybe we adults will be helped through the coming dry spell by those who are wet behind the ears. Why not sit down and discuss this matter with your child? In learning, you'll help the drought situation. |