Miss-Delectable
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http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/news/local/2716655.shtml
FALMOUTH -- What a difference a change in learning styles can make. Last year, six middle-school students at Governor Baxter School for the Deaf were easily frustrated in class and had trouble getting along.
But this school year the students are working as a team, patiently putting in long hours on the exacting work of building two Greenland-style kayaks in a traditional way.
And as they measure gunwales, plane wooden paddles and cut mortises, the student are learning math and other skills that can benefit them later in life.
"There's a world of difference" in the students' attitudes, said Steve Greene, a consulting psychologist at the state-run school for deaf and hard-of-hearing youngsters.
He and other school officials attribute the change to a new curriculum at the middle school: project-based experiential learning.
The hands-on type of learning gets students involved in projects that reinforce academic and important life skills.
Other experiential learning activities the students have participated in are cooking, gardening, making pottery and weekly horseback riding.
The kayak project started last fall when students visited a lumber mill to see how the material for their boat would be transformed from trees to lumber.
The students plan to launch their kayaks when school ends in June, and auction them off. The two boats, which are still being framed, sat Monday on student-built sawhorses in a hall of the school on Mackworth Island.
Anthony Long, 14, of Wiscasset, lashed the kayak together with strands of synthetic sinew. To keep the boat watertight, he had to pull so hard his hands hurt.
He showed his reddened fingers, but said through a sign language interpreter, "It's not so bad you can't get through it."
Anthony said his favorite task was making the traditional Greenland-style wooden paddles, even though the work took hours of tedious planing this is correct; planing, not planning .
"The wood didn't start out in that diamond shape," Anthony said. "It wasn't boring at all. It was fun."
Another student, Courtney Taylor, 12, of Walpole, stopped sanding the oak ribs of the kayaks to say: "I love drilling and using tools."
Greene said such enthusiasm was rare among the middle-schoolers previously. He said traditional classroom instruction takes place outside the context of real life; teachers assume that students will have a lot of life knowledge and experience to put lessons in context. However, he said, many deaf students start out life with a delay in learning language and can have other developmental delays.
They don't bring the same knowledge and experience to a traditional classroom, and get frustrated easily, he said. But experiential learning puts learning in context for them, Greene said.
The students started out last year making small, round wooden boats called coracles. One of the students, Woro Yanga, 14, of Portland, said the boats "were really tippy when you went in the water with them."
That's why the students this year decided to focus on kayaks. Chris Mills, a staff leader at Rippleffect, a Portland-based youth development organization specializing in outdoor adventures such as kayaking, is helping the students. He said he's impressed with the careful way students have followed measurements and done the work. "It's not just getting it done," he said. "It's doing quality work."
Kayla Marr, 14, of Westbrook, said that cutting mortises -- recesses in the wood where the ribs will attach -- was somewhat tedious, but she liked shaping the kayak ribs. "It was new for me," she said. "It was something that I learned."
Experiential learning is hands-on learning in which learners get involved with an "experience" or activity. Then they typically reflect on the experience and draw lessons from it. A third phase is for learners to take what they've learned and apply it to a new activity or problem.
FALMOUTH -- What a difference a change in learning styles can make. Last year, six middle-school students at Governor Baxter School for the Deaf were easily frustrated in class and had trouble getting along.
But this school year the students are working as a team, patiently putting in long hours on the exacting work of building two Greenland-style kayaks in a traditional way.
And as they measure gunwales, plane wooden paddles and cut mortises, the student are learning math and other skills that can benefit them later in life.
"There's a world of difference" in the students' attitudes, said Steve Greene, a consulting psychologist at the state-run school for deaf and hard-of-hearing youngsters.
He and other school officials attribute the change to a new curriculum at the middle school: project-based experiential learning.
The hands-on type of learning gets students involved in projects that reinforce academic and important life skills.
Other experiential learning activities the students have participated in are cooking, gardening, making pottery and weekly horseback riding.
The kayak project started last fall when students visited a lumber mill to see how the material for their boat would be transformed from trees to lumber.
The students plan to launch their kayaks when school ends in June, and auction them off. The two boats, which are still being framed, sat Monday on student-built sawhorses in a hall of the school on Mackworth Island.
Anthony Long, 14, of Wiscasset, lashed the kayak together with strands of synthetic sinew. To keep the boat watertight, he had to pull so hard his hands hurt.
He showed his reddened fingers, but said through a sign language interpreter, "It's not so bad you can't get through it."
Anthony said his favorite task was making the traditional Greenland-style wooden paddles, even though the work took hours of tedious planing this is correct; planing, not planning .
"The wood didn't start out in that diamond shape," Anthony said. "It wasn't boring at all. It was fun."
Another student, Courtney Taylor, 12, of Walpole, stopped sanding the oak ribs of the kayaks to say: "I love drilling and using tools."
Greene said such enthusiasm was rare among the middle-schoolers previously. He said traditional classroom instruction takes place outside the context of real life; teachers assume that students will have a lot of life knowledge and experience to put lessons in context. However, he said, many deaf students start out life with a delay in learning language and can have other developmental delays.
They don't bring the same knowledge and experience to a traditional classroom, and get frustrated easily, he said. But experiential learning puts learning in context for them, Greene said.
The students started out last year making small, round wooden boats called coracles. One of the students, Woro Yanga, 14, of Portland, said the boats "were really tippy when you went in the water with them."
That's why the students this year decided to focus on kayaks. Chris Mills, a staff leader at Rippleffect, a Portland-based youth development organization specializing in outdoor adventures such as kayaking, is helping the students. He said he's impressed with the careful way students have followed measurements and done the work. "It's not just getting it done," he said. "It's doing quality work."
Kayla Marr, 14, of Westbrook, said that cutting mortises -- recesses in the wood where the ribs will attach -- was somewhat tedious, but she liked shaping the kayak ribs. "It was new for me," she said. "It was something that I learned."
Experiential learning is hands-on learning in which learners get involved with an "experience" or activity. Then they typically reflect on the experience and draw lessons from it. A third phase is for learners to take what they've learned and apply it to a new activity or problem.