Coni Prewitt has the left brain and right brain of her fifth graders covered at Blix Elementary School. Hands-on science stimulates the left side and creating knit hats for babies charges the right side.
Prewitt was recently featured on Teaching Channel, a national non-profit organization that showcases videos on effective teaching practices and great common core lesson ideas online and on television.
"Our mission is to highlight and celebrate exceptional teaching, and serve as a resource for teachers across America," said Zaki Hussain with the Teaching Channel.
Prewitt used to take her fifth graders to an environmental outdoor education camp at the Boys Scouts' Camp Thunderbird to teach them how to be good stewards of their environment. When funding dried up, so did the camp experience. Prewitt now welcomes a member of the Audubon at her noon-time science club once a week to help teach everything from composting to water quality to plant identification.
"I want my students to get as much hands-on science as possible," Prewitt said. The Teaching Channel features her Project Earth game which is about environmental sustainability and the impacts people's choices make on the environment, on each other and on the future. She wants her students to leave a place better than when they found it. Project Earth helps her accomplish that.
She adapted Project Earth game to fit her class and real life situations. Prewitt wrote her own city scenarios, designed the materials and tweaked props for her classroom. For example, they did a scenario on the Alaska Way viaduct and on nuclear energy after the Japan earthquake. Her students might use corn kernels, beads or beans for paydays which they can lose, depending on their choices in each scenario.
Prewitt said Project Earth takes a lot of prep time, like making the forest trees, but the props help the students see choices and learn how to use them wisely. In a wildfire scenario, the students learned that sometimes it is better to let a fire burn out the underbrush in a forest rather than putting out the wildfire. More homesteads were lost in a fire because the underbrush had accumulated and provided more fuel for the fire.
"Working through the scenarios and the impacts of their choices really opened their eyes," Prewitt said. "I like to see the kids when they start to see that their choices made a difference. I hope my students take what they learn through Project Earth, such as recycling and reusing things in their environment, back to their families and put the ideas to use."
Now for the right brain of her students: Prewitt has encouraged them to give back to their community by teaching them to knit hats on looms for premature babies at the area hospitals. And, it shows they are part of something bigger.
"Every year, my students knit 50 to 100 hats for the babies with donated yarn," Prewitt said. "My class also asked to make hats for cancer patients since the mother of a classmate has cancer. I teach them this hobby—both boys and girls—that they can keep for a lifetime. They also asked to learn how to crochet. They come in to knit during their recess time."
Prewitt often had eight to 12 kids working on hats and that number is limited by the number of looms available. She uses all kinds of yarn, but prefers a brand that is completely washable since the hats will be used for babies.
Her students are learning how much a difference even fifth graders can make in their environment and the lives of others—and happily choose to give up recess time to reach their goals.
Blix E.S. teacher Coni Prewitt