Grant sparks learning at Glen Hills

By JEN COWART
Posted 6/28/17

By JEN COWART Earlier in the school year, Glen Hills third grade teacher Lisa Davis received exciting news: she was the recipient of a Rhode Island Foundation grant in the amount of $1,000 which would support her Classroom Spark Grant Project. The letter

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Grant sparks learning at Glen Hills

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Earlier in the school year, Glen Hills third grade teacher Lisa Davis received exciting news: she was the recipient of a Rhode Island Foundation grant in the amount of $1,000 which would support her Classroom Spark Grant Project.

The letter Davis received stated, “Classroom Spark Grants are designed to help third grade classroom teachers engage students through unique experiences and creative learning methods, and stimulate student interest in relevant educational topics. Spark Grants were conceived of and funded by Letitia and John Carter.”

Davis certainly had an innovative and creative project in mind and the $1,000 would be put to good use at the end of the school year as her students broke up into small groups and took on an in-depth learning unit about the indigenous people of New England, which would include research, an on-site visit to a local Native American Indian museum in Connecticut and a hefty presentation assignment.

The students were more than up to the task, and the grant would allow them to have the resources they needed, including a new classroom computer, which would be compatible with the technology being used by the students.

“Our classroom Macs are so outdated, we needed something that would be able to work with their technology,” Davis said.

After the class traveled to the museum in Connecticut, taking photographs and videos on the trip to be used for their projects, they came back and got down to business, putting it all together with each of the four student groups taking on one Native American Indian tribe for their presentation.

“They were given some parameters to work within,” said Davis. “Each group was given a graphic organizer. Each student had two topics to learn about and each was responsible for two paragraphs. They also each needed a 3D item to aid them in their presentation, and a presentation display, whether it was a poster-board, a trifold board, a power point or a book. There were no restrictions as long as they met all the requirements.”

As the students worked, Davis watched them, assessing the many different types of learning and skills, which were being derived from this blended learning project. She also noticed that each group took very different paths to get to their end result, taking advantage of the leeway that was given in the assignment and doing what worked best for their own group dynamics.

“They were researching and learning, teaching each other, but there was also a lot of independence in there as well as the interdependence,” Davis said. “They were learning real life lessons about teamwork and team building.”

The student groups had to present their projects to each other at the end, and in one of their final conversations, Davis had a talk with them about all of the learning and skills, which had been taking place throughout the unit.

“When I talked to them and we discussed everything they’d done, everything they’d learned, I had a big long list, almost filling the page, of all the things they’d learned,” said Davis. “It was really a great experience for them and for me as the teacher.”

The student groups researched the following Native American Indian tribes: The Narragansett Indians, the Mashantucket Pequot Indians, the Wampanoag Indians and the Mohegan Indians.

 

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