KENT, Washington - Growing up practically a stone's throw from Puget Sound, children at Emerald Park Elementary School are used to seeing ocean-going freighters pulling into harbor. When a team of third-grade teachers set out to teach a unit about international trade, however, they realized few students knew much about imports and exports. So they rolled up their sleeves and mapped out a technology-rich project to teach students how those freighters affect their lives, as well as the whole region's economy.
The four veteran teachers have all been at Emerald Park since the school opened a few years ago. Jennie Mong, Annie Martin, Tim Martin, and Michelle Kam are accustomed to working as a grade-level team. They're also comfortable using technology to support student learning.
Cargo containers were tracked worldwide with a shipping Web site.
Emerald Park was built from the ground up to take advantage of computers and other technologies. By the third grade, most students know how to log onto the server, save their work to a folder, navigate the Web, and use a variety of software applications for word processing, presentations, and graphics. That means teachers can incorporate technology into a project "wherever it makes sense," the team explains, "and we can spend our time teaching content rather than teaching technology."
To set the stage for the trade unit, teachers first have students learn about the harbor cities of Puget Sound: Bellingham, Everett, Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, and Bremerton. Emerald Park is located in Kent, south of Seattle. This year, students are conducting Webquests to get familiar with the port cities of Puget Sound. Previously, teachers have had students write letters to chambers of commerce in the region, requesting information about the history and current profile of the cities. Students' research fits into third-grade learning goals, which relate to learning about communities.
When the lesson shifts to the topic of trade, teachers take time to lay a foundation. They explain: "We start at square one. Our students are not at all familiar with trade as a concept. They know we have a lot of water, but what's the impact of that? How does that relate to jobs or shipping?"
Teachers start with a concept students already understand, such as trading baseball cards. They also have students empty their desks and find out where different objects were made. "That's a powerful lesson, when students take things out of their desks and investigate where they came from," the teachers report. "They find out that objects they carry around everyday come from Japan, China, and Indonesia. That opens the door to discussions about how they got here and why they were made there." Students enjoy the chance to be "import detectives," figuring out where different objects originated. It's also an opportunity for reinforcing math concepts by having student make graphs about where products come from.
Many of the students' parents work for large Seattle-area employers, such as Microsoft* and Boeing* involved in global trade. Class discussions help students understand how such large employers affect the local economy. "They start to get the bigger picture of how all this relates to their lives," the teachers observe.
Although teachers incorporate technology throughout the project, they also include lots of hands-on activities and a major field trip to the Port of Seattle, a natural deepwater harbor. There, students see gigantic orange cranes lifting cargo containers off the piers and into the hulls of freighters. They understand that the containers hold goods bound for a market somewhere in Asia or elsewhere in the Pacific Rim.
A Web site called the Boomerang Box (www.apl.com/boomerangbox/*), developed by the Port of Seattle and a shipping company called APR Limited*, allows students to track a 40-foot cargo container as it makes its way from Seattle to destinations around the world. The Emerald Park teachers have found the site to be especially effective for helping students understand the concepts of import and export. "They could track where the container was on the journey, what the cargo was, when it was due to arrive at its destination, what it held on the return trip," they explain. "You couldn't do that without technology."
By planning a project together, the four teachers acknowledge that unit ideas sometimes get huge. "When does it get too big?" For example, in the past, they've had their students teach a lesson about trade, complete with electronic slideshow, to another class at a different school. "That takes a lot of time to arrange," they admit.
They've also used email to connect their students with a class in Japan. The two sets of students became trading partners. Children in Kent made bookmarks, which they traded for calligraphy produced by the Japanese students. Students also had an international exchange of food products. Starbucks* coffee went to Japan, and Japanese candy came to Washington State.
Although this style of teaching requires an investment of time and lots of teacher energy, the Emerald Park team wouldn't dream of teaching any other way. "This is about real life," says one of the teachers. "When our students look at objects now, they have an awareness of where they were made. When they see the cranes in the harbor, they know what they're used for." Project-based learning is challenging, the team admits, "but the rewards are so great. Our students learn in so much depth." They wouldn't trade it for anything.
A detailed lesson plan for the unit is available at http://www.kent.k12.wa.us/staff/jmmong/winds_of_trade.htm* and at http://www.kent.k12.wa.us/curriculum/tech/K6/3/puget_sound/UnitPlan_3pugetsound.pdf*. For a more detailed look at the lesson plans and resources for "From Sea to Sea" see the unit plan, http://educate.intel.com/en/ProjectDesign/UnitPlanIndex/FromSeaToSea/.