Calais School ESY Upper School and Lower School students are taking trips through time in a summer speech unit on Time Travel.
 
The students started with the 1920s and last week traveled all the way to the 1940s, said Holly Bracken, a speech language pathologist. Ms. Bracken said she designs weekly “time travel-themed” classrooms for students to explore various decades. The classrooms include a bitmoji of Ms. Bracken and Dunkin, a Calais animal assisted interventions’ dog. Perhaps one of the most fun parts of the field trip is that students “can click on objects in the classroom and they link to various activities and stories about each decade.”
 
In their study of the 1940s, students can learn what was happening in history during the time, including World War II. They also learned some popular slang words. Many of the links help students work on receptive and expressive language skills. “We use the information as discussion points during sessions when targeting goals: social language, critical thinking, perspective taking etc.”
 
Ms. Bracken said she hopes that students will also share what they have learned with their families “to expand on social interaction at home,” she said. “The topics make for great conversation starters and they can learn more about their own family history while traveling through the decades.”
 
According to animal handler Susan Greenbaum, her dog Dunkin says “I am pleased and proud to be an Emoji in Ms. Bracken’s time traveling classroom. She made an excellent choice to pick me over my brothers as I am so handsome.”
 
The adorable Dunkin added that “I love it when the students click on the emoji of me as we all get to learn things about a famous dog from that decade. This week we learned about “Chip” who served in World War II. He was very brave and got lots of medals. I do not know if I could be that brave. I cannot wait to see which decade, and what dog, we will learn about next week!”
 
The time traveling has been so much fun that Ms. Bracken is planning more of it in the weeks to come during ESY.