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Vol. 2, No. 2, May 2000
Background Grafton, Illinois, is located at the confluence of the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers. On Thursday, March 12, 1998, Grafton second graders began a six-week water project by brainstorming and categorizing ideas about water and displaying the results on a class Web site. Letters were sent to parents encouraging their participation. Personal water stories were recorded and placed in the listening center, along with a continuous-roll "movie" box of illustrations portraying each child's story. Teachers posed open-ended questions about water to pairs of children, rotating from question to question, giving all children a chance to write down ideas about each question. Children wrote their responses on charts for future reference. Learning Goals and Standards The application of curricular skills abounded throughout the project through small-group investigations or as part of systematic instruction. Students produced several charts about water, two class books (alliteration essays and descriptive essays), and three math books (two-step story problems, number words, and fractions) all of which related to water. Introducing the Project Many children brought in water samples for observation and testing. Liquid measuring scales, measuring containers, tubs, thermometers, litmus paper, microscopes, pipettes, and other science materials were used for making discoveries, which were recorded in learning journals. Students shared discoveries, such as the example below, at group meetings: Valerie: "If you start with 43 ml. of water and add 1 rock crystal, it goes to 45 ml. Add 1 more rock, and it goes to 49 ml.Community Connections On March 27, 1998, the teachers and students walked to the local water park, where the manager showed us each attraction and explained the construction, water capacity, cleaning process for opening day, and other interesting facts. Many of the children swim there during the summer but had never had the opportunity to explore the park. After the students sketched and took notes, we picnicked in the adjacent park. Later that week, we took a walk to the Grafton Water Works, where we took notes as the manager explained the process by which our water is pumped by wells from an aquifer (underground river) and carried by pipes to the mixing bowl, settling tank, and filter. Our environmental educator visited our classroom to teach about the three states of water (liquid, solid, gas) and the sources of water on Earth. Afterwards, we went outside and conducted an experiment demonstrating the availability of water in each of the sources. On Thursday, April 2, she took us by bus to visit the Alton Lock-and-Dam system on the Mississippi River, about 10 miles from school. A member of the Corps of Engineers was our guide. Then, in the adjacent wetland area, we used binoculars to observe pelicans and walked to the river bank to collect mud samples in sieves and look for critters. A park ranger from the local state park came to the classroom on Friday, April 3. He talked to the children about various river-related topics and natural resources. He answered the children's questions and contributed many handouts and posters. Children continuously posed new topics for investigations:
Teacher-Led Activities and Group Discussions Following is a sample discussion about our findings: Bethany: "Even though I didn't need to read for my experiment, I read with Kylie and took notes. I read in this fish book that fish have gills, and a dolphin is a fish."It turns out Bethany was right; there is a family of fish called dolphins. Team Investigations and Individual Activities On Monday, April 6, we began our investigations:
Monitoring Student Work As progress on investigations continued, many children wrote poetry, songs, idioms, and comic strips about water. Daily journal entries about the investigations were shared at group meetings, sparking interesting discussions. Group meetings were also used for sharing progress on investigations and representations, with children offering encouragement, comments, and suggestions. The children studying ocean creatures displayed their models in a large "aquarium" made from boxes. They conceptualized creative ways to represent their knowledge, writing a book about the manatee and dolphin models, and creating posters of the whale and shark models. The children studying river wildlife hung a plastic see-through mural in front of the "polluted" bulletin board. A poster telling about the pollution in the river was on display in the front of the mural. Models of a turtle, otter, and 13-foot catfish hung from the ceiling behind the mural and various kinds of fish were painted on the mural. On the riverbank stood a blue heron and a sycamore tree. A female red-winged blackbird sat on her eggs beneath the sycamore, while a male blackbird flew overhead. The children entered information about the wildlife into the computer and printed it out for others to read. The children connected the water works model to the school building model, using real pipes one of the boys had brought from home (his father is a plumber). They also created a filter, with layers of anthracite (charcoal), rocks, and sand. A container was placed in the "school building" to catch the "clean" water that actually ran from the filter through the pipes. On May 4, we rode by bus to a creek in Elsah, Illinois, (about eight miles away) to study water, water plants, and wildlife, and look for fossils and geodes. We then went to the pond at Mrs. Schuler's house for a picnic, followed by fishing, casting molds of animal tracks, and sifting through mud to find pond life. After each trip, we had a group meeting to share our sketches and notes, documenting everything on charts displayed in the room. Assessing Student Learning Schuler's Scholars Water Project culminated on Tuesday, May 26, 1998. After Samantha explained the rules of her planned excursion, we walked around the community with plastic bags and rubber gloves and picked up litter that would potentially pollute the river. Then we cooperatively prepared our room for the celebration of knowledge that evening. At 6:30 p.m., we gathered in the school cafeteria for refreshments and introduced our experts and visitors. After the second graders performed water songs they had written, the crowd of about 60 went to our classroom to view the student's products, including the "Waterfall Aquarium," "River-With-Many Animals," "Experiment Table," "The Raging Rivers Exhibit," "The Water-Works-When-the-Water Works," and the computer movie of poems written by the children. Using their printed river guide, visitors read the information about the fish, turtle, otter, blue heron, red-winged blackbirds, and sycamore tree. In addition, books about turtles and others were on display. A bar graph revealed the answers to a survey about the longevity of turtles and the number of eggs they lay. Another bar graph represented interview results about the color of water. Venn diagrams compared a person to a red-winged blackbird and a shark. The water works model displayed a flow chart explaining how our water is cleaned and a diagram showing the layers of the filter. The "school building" had signs hanging from the windows telling how water works in each classroom. At the experiment table, guests watched as various people experimented with water. Others viewed the chart that showed how water had increased the sizes and weights of some foods. Another experiment explained how chemicals get into our groundwater supply. Models of Raging Rivers Water Park attractions were on display, accompanied by informational signs. The aquarium contained a hump-backed whale, dolphin, manatee, and basking shark suspended from the ceiling, with fans creating the effect of slow movement. Each model was accompanied by a book or poster explaining the knowledge gained during the investigation. A pictograph illustrated the size of sea horses, and plastic see-through coral reef murals on the aquarium created the effect of real water. Sand and three-dimensional models of numerous species of coral reef adorned the bottom of the aquarium. Teacher Reflection Project work was definitely the highlight of our year, and we were proud, but sad, to see it end. On the last day of school, we watched segments of our projects on videotape and reflected on our work. The children are looking forward to next year, when they can visit my new group of students and tell them about project work. They are now the experts on studying a topic in depth!
Dot Schuler
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