A Case Study of the Pyramid in Play

Killingly Intermediate School is located in a rural corner of northeast Connecticut where the Quinebaug and Willimantic-Shetucket watersheds join to form the Thames River which, in turn, leads to Long Island Sound. Water-powered factories and mills used to form the basis of the economy in the area. Some of the factories still exist. Though no longer water-powered, they continue to influence the quality of the watershed and eventually, the Sound. Additionally, Native American tribes lived in and travelled through the area for many years. The history, science and stories of the area provide a rich opportunity for teachers to plan and deliver multidisciplinary, multiage, and multimedia curricula to their students. Preserving Connecticut’s Resources - Training Tomorrow’s Stewards is just such a project.

The project involves more than 150 students each year, challenging them to understand different aspects of the health of their watershed and its impact on the environment downstream. Each grade takes on one aspect of the study, then comes together to present what they’ve learned and make recommendations to University of Connecticut faculty and the State Department of Environmental Protection. Annually, students produce videos, presentations, dances, music, and hard-bound books which serve as references for the next round of students.

This year, sixth graders told the story of a drop of water coming out of the faucet at home: where did it come from, where does it go? One student, Tré, had a grandfather-plumber who walked with him through the whole process, while Tré recording his grandpa’s voice and shooting digital photos of each step, from the faucet, through the town sewer lines, to the water treatment plant, then onto the watershed. Later, Tré, who had always been labeled as learning disabled, produced a book in his own words to tell the story. He’ll proudly show you the book, now in circulation in the school’s library, ready for next year’s language-challenged readers.

Killingly’s seventh graders usually study Native American history of the area, in line with Connecticut’s standard curriculum. For this project, they focused on creation myths, then wrote their own myths involving water. Their part of the project included visits to local museums, interviews with the docents, creating original images to illustrate their hard-covered books for the school library. When it was time to present at UCONN, students could choose how they wanted to share what they’d done. One group choreographed a dance to tell its story. A musician in that group pursuaded the school’s jazz band teacher to help him write a musical score, then recorded the jazz band performing it. Another student, who has a passion for fabric arts, designed and made a costume based on historical references. Another group sought out the visual arts teacher to learn how to use PhotoShop to edit their images so they could show the gods weaping and creating rainbows on the earth.

One eighth grade teacher, a former environmental water quality scientist, helped her students learn about, then use professional tools such as probes, microscopes, video cameras, and handheld GPS to collect data on geography, weather, flora and fauna, geographical position, humidity, turbidity, density, pH, nitrates, coliform, etc. during several field trips along the watershed and out on Long Island Sound. This data was sent along to a national database for year-to-year comparisons and formed the basis of a video-report presented at a UCONN conference in the Spring. An eighth grade English teacher linked the water study project to a poetry unit, challenging her students to see and describe water using a range of poetic forms. The result was a three-volume set of books now in circulation at both the intermediate and high schools which these students now attend. The Freshmen English teachers use the poetry books in their courses.

This unit provides a good example of Education 3.0, or at least 2.75. The teachers worked as a team with their students to:

• Confront a worthwhile problem (the quality of water in their neighborhood) through a range of lenses (science, history, writing, music, art);
• Seek out relevant ideas, facts, and skills that might help solve it
• probeware, data collection and analysis, technical skills such as PhotoShop, music composition);
• Gather, learn, and practice these ideas and skills (these became the basis of the curriculum throughout the spring); apply them to the problem (using all the tools and skills in the field to gather the data); then,
• Publish a solution (presenting at conferences of professionals, publishing books, posting videos on the school webpages).

As the teachers reflect on the project, they realize:

• Their role has changed - they work closely together to plan and coordinate lessons and activities, often via email and after-school meetings, they work hard at developing collaborative environments for their students and themselves, encouraging students to seek out other adults in and out of school for support and information. They are no longer the sage on the stage.
• Students eagerly take more responsibility for their own learning, seeking others to help them as needed (the plumber-grandpa, the art teacher, the jazz band leader).
• They have a fuller range of assessments to understand what students have learned (one teacher does a pre- and post- KWL chart and has been astounded at the growth; others point to student projects, tests, etc to show growth. They all have many points of measurement).

The pyramid has begun to reverse itself at Killingly Intermediate School. At least for this project, the teachers are drawing their curriculum from a carefully chosen and important problem, engaging all students in a variety of ways, then to solve and publish solutions for real audiences. And in doing so they learn all the basics along the way.