Columbus School Elementary students from 5D presented a project about extreme weather on November 20th as a celebration of the work they’ve been doing in their reading class. Students had 2 weeks to do their research and build the project during class.

The 5D students worked for almost a whole month on their projects. Groups of 4-5  students were divided and assigned a topic related to extreme weather; after the students finished the research they had 80 minutes to prepare for the final presentation in front of the whole class.

“It is a celebration of the work they’ve been doing in reading; it lasted two to three weeks. We’ve been focused on informational reading and  the topic is extreme weather: tornados, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, floods and draughts”  Benjamin Light, 5D teacher, said.

For most 5D students, reasearching a topic and planning a presentation was  fun, comfortable and made the material easy to understand; students also believe that the project prepared them in case they ever have to face a severe weather situation. 

“I liked a lot the project and learned a million things that I didn’t know, we can know how to be prepared if we were in that situation.” Pedro Gomez, 5D student said.

While researching the project, some groups faced some problems and disagreements. In the end, most were able to agree on the things they wanted to do and solved the conflicts.

“We fought a lot because we thought really different, but then we learned that we were a team and that we had to work as a group and then we solved all the problems and worked as a team,” Ana Sofia Correa, 5D student, said.

As students researched they learned new things according to the website they read. Most of the research they gathered was taken from books and internet websites for kids and other websites they were able to understand.

“We learned all of the information by reading books and internet, National Geographic, and Wikipedia; we could use everything we understood but most were kids websites,” Ana Sofia Correa, 5D student, said.

In addition to learning about extreme weather, students learned it wasn’t easy to collaborate and work in groups, but in the end, they also learned about teamwork.

“We had to work in team and we depended a lot in each other because if I didn’t do my research about something we couldn’t move on with the project,” Laura Mesa, 5D student, said.