Shakerag Elementary School, Fulton County Make a Difference in Your Environment During this model EIC unit, students will work through an environmental enhancement process. Students will read about a school that created change in the wetlands around their school. Then they will plan and implement their own environmental service projects. Stephanie Mack, 2004 Project WET Teacher of the Year and 5th grade teacher at Shakerag poses with her class after the “Everyone Lives Downstream" Activity. After arranging for her entire grade level to visit Minor Elementary’s Water Festival, the 5th grade students put on their own Water Festival for their primary grade book buddies. Ryan Butcher, a 5th grade teacher across the hall from Stephanie, caught on to the excitement of using the environment as an integrating context for learning. His math class planned a garden and used their math skills to estimate, measure area and volume, and to predict and collect data. Suzette regularly takes her class on the trail to the pond to observe the changes in habitat of the Johns Creek area. Christine Burton’s 4th graders mentored their Kindergarten book buddies in Wendy’s class for the ABC garden. They also designed signs for the ABC garden that had flip charts, which uncover the names of the plants. Anne Shenk of State Botanical Garden of Georgia came to help Liz Porterfield’s 3rd grade class look for an ideal spot to create a bog garden. She brought pitcher plants for the students to dissect. These two girls are totally delighted and not at all squeamish to find insect carcasses in the cavities of these carnivorous plants. Missy O’Connor has been involving her students in the outdoor areas for years. She invites her former students to share in the growth and results of their work from Spring to Fall. They bring a depth of information to the new students. Here students from Spring are observing the young frogs that they caught, raised and studied before releasing into the pond. Cindy Locker’s 4th grade students and Ruth Gillespie’s 2nd grade students almost didn’t make it to the trail on their trail hike with Sally Pamplin, because they spotted these caterpillars, which they later identified as future Fritillary Butterflies, crawling on the driveway where the buses had already devastated the population. They brought them to the Butterfly Garden to release them. Where does the water flow? Shakerag Elementary is incorporating hands-on, service-learning activities in our school setting that reach beyond the classroom to the community-at-large. We are utilizing community support including our community organization representative, Keep Sandy Springs/North Fulton Beautiful and our EIC coach, Chattahoochee Nature Center, to create a unique student-centered learning environment. Colleagues from four different grade levels, as well as three community organizations, are working together to enhance our service learning goals. Lessons build upon students' previous knowledge and are related to real world situations and problems. We are using a correlation with curriculum to link literature and writing with the sciences to enhance service learning. Taking old ideas and reworking them to become a truly workable reality has been an exciting endeavor and teachers, along with students are making new discoveries daily. Shakerag is located on a site that is part of a 64-acre Fulton County Park with many shared recreational amenities developed as a joint use project with Fulton County Schools and adjoins the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area. Farthest away from the river is a pond, natural wetlands and a remnant mixed deciduous forest. Over the summer a housing development has encroached on the one side of the pond that is privately owned. The existence of the pond and wetlands, along with the construction that is taking place on former farmlands, provide a multitude of educational opportunities for community problem definition and problem solving. Change through progress has defined our focus: Given the growth and development of our watershed, Johns' Creek, how have the water quality and habitats been affected? Fifth grade students asked the question, "What is in the water of our local watershed?" Fourth graders asked, "What habitats and ecosystems are found in the watershed?" and first graders are using their newly acquired map skills to study the school's watershed and the effects on natural habitats from building structures such as Shakerag School. Currently, 5th graders are working to implement projects on non-point source pollution to increase awareness and action in our local community. Using computers, students are creating leaflets to distribute, as well as original books to share with younger students. Other groups are painting signs to display around our school. Several students are taking action by picking up trash weekly around our schoolyard and on the trail to the pond. Through this process, students have become motivated and focused. They are mastering standards without even realizing it! There is purpose in their learning and it is not to memorize facts that are imposed upon them. They are recognizing explicit and implicit main ideas, for example, while researching self-initiated topics. They are sharpening process and mechanical skills as they write letters and design plans for action. At the same time, they are forming a respect and passion for the natural world around them. Shakerag Elementary is becoming a school where boundaries are erased to provide students the tools to become productive, creative, problem solvers in the world. Our students, parents, and teachers are busy working with the community to reach common goals. We are building a working environment around our pond for student research and community enjoyment. Creating a student museum of local history and natural environment will unite the grade levels. Through these efforts, we hope to cultivate interdependence between our school and the local communities to enhance both.