Carter, Paul. This cabin was mounted on sleigh last winter to transport four children to and from school. A stove was kept inside to protect them from the severe cold. The children only missed one day of school the entire winter. Used to leave the house at 6:30 a.m. so as to get to school by 8:30 a.m. Beltrami Island reforestation project, Minnesota. 1936. Photograph. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017764131/.
Students will use their prior knowledge about school access in rural settings to evaluate the effectiveness of the invention depicted in the photograph. They will consider what barriers the invention helped kids overcome, what challenges they still faced, and the potential issues with it. Then, students will discuss how school buses provide a safer and more equitable solution. Students will reflect on how their school experiences would be different if they, like the kids in the picture, were unable to ride a bus to school. Finally, they will write thank-you letters to bus drivers.
Before school buses were available for rural students, they needed to find a creative way to go to school safely, especially in the winter, or else they would miss their chance at receiving an education. Motorized school buses helped address inequities in education access between country kids and town kids.
Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/history-school-bus-180980554/
- How have different methods of transportation, such as the sleigh cabin shown in the photo, changed life for kids who live in the country?
- What do you notice about the cabin?
- What about the sleigh cabin would make the journey to school better? How?
- What about the sleigh cabin could be potentially dangerous? How?
- Extension Questions:
- What problems do rural kids still have when trying to go to school?
- Imagine that our school district didn’t have school buses and/or drivers anymore. How would school be different for you and your classmates?
ELA Standard
3.2.2.1. Write routinely for a range of tasks, purposes, and audiences (e.g., personal interest, enjoyment, academic tasks).
Social Studies Standard
3.4.21.1. Explain how an invention of the past changed life at that time, as well as positive, negative, and unintended outcomes.
Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
- Hold a whole-class discussion to access prior knowledge. Display a photograph of a school bus on a country road. Ask students, Based on what you know about rural Minnesota, what would be difficult about going to school before there were school buses? Prompt students to explain their thinking. List student responses on the board.
- Project the photograph of the cabin.
- Have students respond to each of these questions via Think-Pair-Share:
- What problems from our list were solved by the invention of this cabin? How?
- Why might these kids still have a hard time getting to school? What problems weren’t solved? Explain.
- What are some new problems this invention might have created? Why?
- How might the invention of the school bus have solved those issues or the continued ones? What new challenges might have been created by it?
- Using a Google Form, if possible, have students complete a survey with these questions:
- How far do you live from the school?
- Within a mile
- 1–3 miles
- 3–7 miles
- 7–12 miles
- More than 12 miles
- How did you get to school today?
- Walked
- Biked
- Rode the bus
- Dropped off by a friend or relative
- Other
- How far do you live from the school?
- Share the results from the survey and ask students:
- How many people live too far from school to be able to walk?
- Based on the survey, how many people might not be able to go to school if there weren’t school buses?
- What would be the impact of so many kids not being able to go to school?
- Inform students that many rural schools are struggling to provide transportation because of a shortage of bus drivers and the rising costs of gas and buses.
- Have students reflect on how school buses break down barriers and also provide opportunities for field trips and other school activities.
- Have students write thank-you letters to bus drivers in the district.
- Review the elements of strong thank-you letters: salutation, body, closing, signature, expression of gratitude, and inclusion of specific examples.
- Share with students an example of a thank you letter written by a student and discuss its inclusion of the elements listed above.
- Have students Think-Pair-Share examples they might include in their letters.
- Have students write their letters with or without a template.
- Extension opportunities:
- Have students use Google Maps to find out exactly how far they live from their school.
- Outside during class, or in phys ed, time students to see how long it takes them to walk a mile. Then, have students calculate how long it would take them to walk to school if they lived 12 miles away, which is how far some rural kids used to have to walk to school.
- Have students learn about writing letters through literature with the Read-Write-Think lesson Who’s Got Mail: Using Literature to Promote Authentic Letter Writing.
Bain News Service. Country District School Wagon. Between c. 1910 and c. 1915. Photograph. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. https://www.loc.gov/item/2014690221/.