Pet Persuasion
Jennifer Bills, second grade teacher at Annie Wright School in Tacoma Washington, offers this caveat for anyone deciding to replicate her “Teacher’s Pet” project in their classroom. “Students left the project with convincing proof that they could be responsible pet owners,” she says. “Parents were blindsided by their kids’ persuasive arguments, and an impressive number of students got pets out of the deal!” From surveying classmates about pet ownership and care, to spying on their pets, to staging a “lost pet” hunt in the school, Jennifer’s second grade students had fun and learned a lot about domestic animals and their wild counterparts. Along the way, they used spreadsheets to collect and display survey and observation data, they mined the Internet for pet care advice, and used presentation and publishing software to demonstrate all they’d learned.
A School Both Old...
Jennifer’s students are the 118th set of second-graders to benefit from an Annie Wright School education. Situated on a 10-acre campus overlooking Commencement Bay in Tacoma, Washington, Annie Wright is one of the oldest schools in the West. When a northern transcontinental rail line was completed in 1880, “prosperity was soon traveling the rails from Chicago to Tacoma.” Bustling commerce and a growing citizenry followed, and so did the need for schools. Pacific Northern Railroad executive Charles Wright and missionary Bishop John James Paddock founded Annie Wright Episcopal School for Girls, and named it after Wright’s youngest daughter. Annie Wright School has provided a Christian education “ for the rising generation of daughters of the pioneers” continuously since 1884. In 1949, boys joined the student body, and presently, Annie Wright is a co-ed day school through Grade 8, and an all-girls' preparatory day and boarding school in Grades 9 through 12.
...and New
For a school that began the same year “the French honored the young United States with the gift of the Statue of Liberty,” Annie Wright can lay claim to being one of the newest in ways, too. The first school in Washington to have a fully wireless computer network (complete with trained student system administrators), AWS was named a national model for school technology by the Cisco Networking Academy. The school boasts an impressive compliment of technology resources, and a skilled staff that knows how to make use of them through innovative projects. Along with Jennifer, many of the teachers have participated in the Intel® Teach Program training, and technology is integrated in everything from daily lessons to attendance reports sent by e-mail to the office, to electronic grade books, to the student management of an Official Weather Station* that posts to the Web.
Why “Pets”?
Jennifer attended the Intel® Teach Program training sessions during the last weeks of summer. “ I wanted to develop something I’d use right away, that I’d use it while it was still fresh in my mind.” She decided to adapt a set of lessons she uses at the beginning of the year that she knows children love. “The pets project is a great way to start. It stems from the ‘Pet Show Today’ reading unit from the Houghton-Mifflin reading series that I teach in the first weeks of school.” Kids read “The Cats of Tiffany Street”, “Arthur's Pet Business” and other stories on the theme, and by the time they read about Julius, a barnyard pig who goes home with a little girl, they are debating the qualities of good pets and good pet owners. Soon, they’re off and running in their pursuit of the perfect pet.
Second Graders and Technology
Jennifer Bills speaks of the practical approach she takes to using technology with her young students: “I try to integrate technology where it fits best,” she says, “I really try to find a balance. If I can replace or improve an activity with technology, I do it, but it’s not a given. I’m enthusiastic about these resources, but I have some hesitancy, too. There are some things that can’t be replaced, like reading a really good book to kids.” On the other hand, she appreciates how technologies help her kids do things they’ve never been able to do before, such as making pet survey data visible by using chart functions in a spreadsheet program. Also, as the year progresses and her students become more accomplished readers, she teaches them to find what they want to know on the Internet. “Our computer teacher helps me bookmark the right kid-friendly sites on the Internet for the subject we’re studying. Right now kids are using a NASA site called StarChild to study the solar system. It’s a great site, with a wealth of information we could only access with computers.”
Jennifer offers a suggestion for teachers working with primary students. “You can go crazy trying to help everyone in the class when you all go to the computer lab together. I like to incorporate computer work into my centers rotation [where students move through several activities requiring varying levels of teacher support]. At this grade level it’s a lot easier to work with six or eight kids on a project than twenty or more needing help all at the same time”. Jennifer also gets help for her kids from older buddies. “When we finished a slideshow, we had some students come in from the middle school. They helped my students animate and add sound to their slides. I set aside a whole period, and students presented their slideshows to everyone. It was time well spent; we invited our headmaster, and it was a wonderful way to close our projects, and it was great practice for public speaking.”
Sources:
“Annie Wright makes the dreams of 1969 become reality,” Dr. Stanley L. Cummings, Head of Annie Wright School, Business Examiner, April 1, 2002, www.businessexaminer.com*.
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