Wickford Middle School, North Kingstown, RI- September 25th

41° 34' 04" N
71° 27' 37" W
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The EarthView team is excited to be visiting Wickford Middle School in North Kingstown, Rhode Island! This is our first visit to the school and only our second visit ever to a middle school in Rhode Island! We last visited Nicholas A. Ferri Middle School in Johnston on April 10th.

Since we are visiting for the first time we thought it would be fun to look up some interesting facts about North Kingstown!

Did you know that North Kingstown was first settled by Roger Williams in 1637 and later became a part of Kings Towne in 1674? The settlement of Kings Towne included the present day towns of North Kingstown, South Kingstown, Narragansett and Exeter. In 1722, Kings Towne was split giving way to North and South Kingstown.  Exeter remained a part of North Kingstown until 1742 when it broke from the western part of town.

Quonset Huts

Eva and her dad at the 2014
Quonset Air Show

North Kingstown is located in Washington County and is home to Quonset Point which formally housed the Quonset Point Naval Air Station. The air station was famous for creating the Quonset Hut during World War II. Today, Quonset Point is home to the Rhode Island Air National Guard. Every year in May the base puts on a wonderful air show that is free and open to the public. EarthView wrangler Eva has been to the air show for the past two years and highly recommends that you go at least once!

There are many other fun and historic points of interest in North Kingstown such as Devils Foot Rock, Smith's Castle and Casey Farm-the oldest operating farm in New England. North Kingstown is certainly an interesting place to visit!

We hope that the students of Wickford Middle School enjoy their visit with Earthview!

Braintree Leadership

Almost from the beginning of our program, the EarthView team has enjoyed visiting the two middle schools of Braintree, Massachusetts each year. By this time, close to 3,000 students at East Middle and South Middle have had the EarthView experience. Many parents and siblings have also participated in occasional Family Geography Nights.

We look forward to our visits because we know that we are playing a small part in a much bigger effort to develop geographically informed learners. This is reflected in both the obvious curiosity about the world that the students bring to the program and the understanding of geographic concepts and facts that they exhibit.

A pair of excellent geography teachers in each of the two schools are most responsible for these student successes in geography. We know that they in turn benefit from the leadership and support of the Braintree schools, especially from the tireless work of Dr. Gorman Lee, Director of Social Studies for the district and a leader in social-studies education at the state and national levels.

We opened the 2015-2016 EarthView season at the two schools, and were delighted that many of Braintree's educational leaders were able to join us, along with Mayor Joe Sullivan.

L-R: Dr. James Hayes-Bohanan, Bridgewater State University; Gorman Lee,  Director of Social Studies; Damon Rairie, Principal of South Middle School; Dr. Peter Kurzberk, Interim Superintendent of Schools; Lisa Heger, School Committee; Joe Sullivan; Mayor; Dr. Vernon Domingo; Bridgewater State University; Cyril Chafe, School Committee.

Not pictured are EarthView "Globe Lady" Rosalie Sokol, a veteran middle-school teacher who was inside the globe at the time of this photo, and Braintree's four remarkable World Geography teachers: Mark Henry and ____ of South Middle and ____ and ____ of East Middle.

South Middle School, Braintree- September 18th

38°41'50"N
03°53'44"W
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The EarthView team is happy to be back in Braintree for the second week in a row! While last week's visit brought us to East Middle School, today's visit brings us to South Middle. Our last visit to this school was on November 7th of last year and you can see our post from that visit here. 

If you have heard the news this week, on Wednesday September 16th, an 8.3 magnitude earthquake struck about 29 miles off the coast of Illapel, Chile at about 6:45pm local time (which would have been 5:45pm here in Massachusetts where we live). The earthquake has killed atleast 12 people and triggered a tsunami warning for places in the Pacific such as Hawaii and Japan. Luckily there were no tragedies due to tsunami wave activity. Only relatively small tsunami waves were seen off the coasts of Hawaii, Japan, California, Oregon and even Alaska. 

Epicenter of 8.3 magnitude earthquake in Chile 9/16/15

The United States Geological Society does a great job at explaining seismic activity and I highly recommend visiting their page on this past earthquake! We wonder if the seismograph at the Williams Intermediate School in Bridgewater that we wrote about back in May picked up any movements...

East Middle School, Braintree- September 11th

42°13'15"N 

70°59'23"W

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Welcome Back Earthlings!! 

We hope that you all have had a fun filled summer filled with laughter and traveling and spending time with family and friends. Over the summer the EarthView wranglers and professors traveled and spent some much needed quality time with friends and family. EarthView wrangler Eva traveled to York, Boothbay Harbor and Portland, Maine and she also traveled to North Conway, New Hampshire. Where did you travel to this summer? We would love to hear if you traveled to some exciting places, let us know below in the comment section! 

Although it was sad to see the summer come to a close, we are very excited to be back for this new school year filled with fun and lots of geographic learning opportunities!

Our first visit of this school year takes us to East Middle School in Braintree. We have visited this school numerous times and we will be visiting its counterpart, South Middle School in Braintree next week. The last time we visited East Middle was on Halloween last year and we had a great time, we hope that this visit is just as fun as the last one! The blog post for that visit included a coordinate game, if you would like to play the game, it can be found here. 

Our visit this week brings us on the somber 14th Anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, may we never forget the tragedy that occurred on this day and may we remember the lives of those who were lost that day and the first responders who have passed away since due to injuries and illnesses that they developed from the attacks.