During her presentation, she spoke about climate, weather and had us do an amazing hands on activity which helped us understand the difficulties in forecasting weather that I will for sure be using with students this year. But what was most interesting to me was that, while reading Ingalls Wilder’s novel “The long winter”, she wondered if the winter really was that bad. And so, she sought out the people and resources necessary to find out. And what she found was that, it indeed was a bad winter, and that some of the descriptions and events from the story were documented in real life. For example, there were records to show that a farmer in the area the Ingalls family lived had sold his wheat crop, and this could have been the same crop that, in “The long winter”, saves the town from starvation.
Further, Barbara questioned the use of narrative to help inform the general public about weather. A question she asks in her dissertation is “Is such a narrative an effective way to reach audiences both to generate weather and climate literacy and to communicate about complex or highly emotional topics in a manner that reaches a range of audiences?” Can we engage non-scientific people into the conversation about climate change by using narratives? This is a fascinating concept to me! Can we use narrative in our classrooms to help our students think outside the box or to have them pose questions that will lead into inquiry projects? I am now looking into starting a list of francophone books that could be used by our teachers for this purpose. ( If you have any suggestions, please let me know!) Also, here is the link if you want to find out more and read Barbara Mayes Boustead’s dissertation, The Hard Winter of 1880–1881: Climatological Context and Communication via a Laura Ingalls Wilder Narrative. She addresses this topic in the 5th section, from page 155.
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