• For an expedition on the inter-tidal zone in Casco Bay, Portland, Maine middle school students created a field guide of the sea creatures that live there. The meticulously drawn animals and well-written descriptions help educate visitors to this area. The field guide can be purchased at a park rangers' station near the public beach and the proceeds help fund beach maintenance and restoration.
• First graders in Denver go camping every spring. Before they go, the class is divided into groups, and each group must master one crucial area of camping and then write about it for a camping manual. Different groups learn and write about how to set up tents, how to cook outdoors, and how to accept responsibility for "leaving no trace." Before the students go on the trip, they have a trial run and use the manual to practice. If any part of the manual doesn't help them, the group responsible for that part must revise it.
• With a strong focus on building students' reading, writing and critical thinking skills, the humanities program at an urban high school in Boston engages students in interactive discussions and uses a variety of instructional practices geared toward the understanding of text. A major tool that they use in is the "literacy through drama" curriculum, co-developed with the local and well-respected theater company. The students spend two days a month on theatre curriculum, culminating in the student production of the play. The humanities teacher at the school notes "we increase the passion and care that students put into looking at texts as a means of getting them to do the extra hard work that is necessary to get up to grade level and eventually into college."
• Sixth graders in Dubuque, Iowa regularly visit a nursing home where each child establishes a relationship with one senior citizen. The students' task, besides performing acts of service at the nursing home, is to write a biography of the senior citizens they have been assigned. Students must learn to hone their interviewing and listening skills and to draw portraits of their subjects. Before these biographies can be presented to the elders at an end-of-term ceremony, students make sure that their work reflects the care and admiration they feel for the senior citizens to whom they have become so attached.
• A high school in the Midwest brings historical events to life to spark student learning. On the 40th anniversary of the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, students studied and wrote chapters for a book about civil rights history. They then a developed and hosted a community seminar featuring Elizabeth Eckford, Thelma Mothershed-Wair, and Jefferson Thomas, members of the famed Little Rock Nine, as guest speakers. Connecting with these civil rights pioneers deeply impacted students' understanding of a key event in America civil rights journey and gave life to the concept that individuals change the course of history.
