resources for educators
THE BIG & AWESOME BRIDGES OF PORTLAND & VANCOUVER
Studying Portland's bridges has been a part of the Portland Public School third grade social studies curriculum since the 1950's, and in classrooms around the region, the study of our local bridges is used to teach reading, writing, research skills, public presentation, science, math, estimation and engineering.
But in 128 years of bridge building across the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the Portland-Vancouver area, there has never a book for both adults and children on the subject until now. The Big and Awesome Bridges of Portland and Vancouver, sponsored by the Portland nonprofit PDX Bridge Festival, Inc. in cooperation with Portland Public Schools, and just published in late 2014, is the most up-to-date resource focusing on the 22 big river roadway and railroad bridges between Vancouver, Washington, and Oregon City.
But in 128 years of bridge building across the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the Portland-Vancouver area, there has never a book for both adults and children on the subject until now. The Big and Awesome Bridges of Portland and Vancouver, sponsored by the Portland nonprofit PDX Bridge Festival, Inc. in cooperation with Portland Public Schools, and just published in late 2014, is the most up-to-date resource focusing on the 22 big river roadway and railroad bridges between Vancouver, Washington, and Oregon City.
The book's authors, Sharon Wood Wortman and Ed Wortman--volunteers on the project who have written other books about bridges--worked with retired Portland Public School librarian Edith Fuller and a large team including teacher experts, graphic designers, math consultants, Spanish interpreters, financial supporters, and some 150 poets, artists, essayists, and photographers, of all ages. The result of this multi-layered community collaborative effort, which spanned five years from proposal to publication, is a regional resource built to last as long as a steel bridge.
Designed to be both beautiful and sturdy, and weighing in at three pounds, Big & Awesome is bound with a hard cover and with a specially reinforced spine. All 240 pages are printed full color on 100# paper, and filled with bridge profiles and elevation drawings; a bridge building guide and load testing curriculum; interviews with ironworkers, bridge operators, and engineers, among others; artwork, and poetry, and other riveting stuff.
To all friends, explorers, and celebrators of bridges: this is the book for you!
You can find a copy at Powell's books, while supplies last.
Designed to be both beautiful and sturdy, and weighing in at three pounds, Big & Awesome is bound with a hard cover and with a specially reinforced spine. All 240 pages are printed full color on 100# paper, and filled with bridge profiles and elevation drawings; a bridge building guide and load testing curriculum; interviews with ironworkers, bridge operators, and engineers, among others; artwork, and poetry, and other riveting stuff.
To all friends, explorers, and celebrators of bridges: this is the book for you!
You can find a copy at Powell's books, while supplies last.
Only one thing could make Big & Awesome more engaging to students: the opportunity to see the structures and places described in the book up close and in person. PDX Bridge Tours offers a one-of-a-kind opportunity for students to build connections between the lived experience of a day exploring bridges, and the many diverse ideas and topics covered in Big & Awesome. The bridge tour provides an exciting context in which those ideas and topics may be considered more deeply, both on the tour and back in the classroom.
PDX Bridge Tours can be a unique way for educators to take the content of Big & Awesome and focus it, through a day's exploration of bridges, on the specific theme or direction of study appropriate to their curriculum; from simple machines to Portland history to environmental impact to a year-long exploration of change. The tour can serve either as introduction or culmination to the relevant in-school science or social studies curriculum, and it provides a set of vivid "dots" for students to keep connecting throughout their continued learning. After the tour, when students encounter a bridge in their daily lives or in their studies, they'll have gained a new perspective that will forever impact how they experience it and think about it.
In short, PDX Bridge Tours and Big & Awesome go hand in hand. In fact, guide Nathan Hoover is carrying forward a bridge tour program originally developed by his mentor and predecessor, "The Bridge Lady" Sharon Wood-Wortman, who retired from leading school bridge tours in 2010 partly in order to focus more fully on the development and realization of Big & Awesome.
As part of the district’s priority goal to ensure that all students read at benchmark by the end of the third grade, Big & Awesome books were distributed to every PPS third grade classroom and library in early 2015. That’s a total of 4,105 books, 58 schools, and 161 classrooms! Thanks to PDX Bridge Tours, educators can get even more out of this incredible resource while crowning their classroom studies with a field trip students will remember and talk about for years.
PDX Bridge Tours can be a unique way for educators to take the content of Big & Awesome and focus it, through a day's exploration of bridges, on the specific theme or direction of study appropriate to their curriculum; from simple machines to Portland history to environmental impact to a year-long exploration of change. The tour can serve either as introduction or culmination to the relevant in-school science or social studies curriculum, and it provides a set of vivid "dots" for students to keep connecting throughout their continued learning. After the tour, when students encounter a bridge in their daily lives or in their studies, they'll have gained a new perspective that will forever impact how they experience it and think about it.
In short, PDX Bridge Tours and Big & Awesome go hand in hand. In fact, guide Nathan Hoover is carrying forward a bridge tour program originally developed by his mentor and predecessor, "The Bridge Lady" Sharon Wood-Wortman, who retired from leading school bridge tours in 2010 partly in order to focus more fully on the development and realization of Big & Awesome.
As part of the district’s priority goal to ensure that all students read at benchmark by the end of the third grade, Big & Awesome books were distributed to every PPS third grade classroom and library in early 2015. That’s a total of 4,105 books, 58 schools, and 161 classrooms! Thanks to PDX Bridge Tours, educators can get even more out of this incredible resource while crowning their classroom studies with a field trip students will remember and talk about for years.
the perfect compliment
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