To develop a learning about natural disasters, 5th grade students from The Columbus School started a project this month that combines both Science and English class.

Students were placed in groups of 4 to 5 classmates chosen by their teacher to present their learning to their classmates about one natural disaster they were free to choose.

“It is a fun project to do, since we are learning something we did not know about nature, also, working with a group makes it better because we can research different information and later put it all together,” Manuela Velez, 5th grade student, said.

In addition, students were excited to start a project that had a connection between two totally different subjects, since they were gonna learn how to do good research, and the power of nature.

“Combining two classes for one project is a good idea because we have more time to work on it and we can learn two things in one activity,” Velez said.

However, students needed to do their own research using the internet or in books, the only restriction the teacher gave to them was that Wikipedia.org was banned to use.

“This project has taught me to understand and learn how to use reliable sources since we couldn’t use wikipedia,  many times the information given in the internet can be sort of modified in some internet pages,” Luciana Ramirez, 5th grade student, said.

Also students were emotive to present their knowledge to all their classmates and generate more knowledge and consciousness in this topic.

“I’ve learned to work as a group and gather different ideas from all my group members to create something that will teach us and our classmates when we present them to them,” Ramirez said.

For the most part, classmates really enjoyed the idea of doing this project in groups the teacher chose because they felt that different people could give them different ideas for their final presentation.

“Working in teams is the best way to do a project since everybody has a different idea and role, then the project gets easily done,” Valentina Barriento, 5th grade student, said.

Finally, the idea of doing a project with two classes combined was successful and students made the most fun about it, they said that they would do this again in a future.

“The combination of this two classes is new and fun because we could learn many things by doing just one activity, for example in English class we learn to research good information, and in Science we learned about the nature of the Earth,” Manuela Herrera, 5th grade students, said.