NSHS

We decided that our project would involve teaching other students about desertification. We wanted to teach all of the sixth grade classes at the two middle schools that feed into our high school, Brown Middle School and Oak Hill Middle School, but this would mean that the five of us would have to teach close to 180 students. Realizing that this was too big of a project for just the five of us, we decided that we would enlist the help of the senior AP Environmental Science students at our school and have them go off in groups to the middle school to teach the sixth graders. In order to do this, we reached out to the AP Environmental Science teacher and asked we could get their class involved. Once we got the go ahead from the teacher, we went ahead and contacted all the sixth grade teachers to see if they were interested. They were and we worked out a time and date to visit their classes.

In order to teach the AP students, we first had to come up with the lesson to teach the sixth graders. Our outline for the sixth-grade lesson included an introductory conversation, two videos, an activity on ways to combat desertification, and a concluding discussion. Next, we went to the AP class and taught the seniors how to teach the lesson to the sixth graders. We split them up into groups of 4-5 students and they practiced presenting the lesson. The next day, everybody went off to the middle schools to teach the sixth graders. As part of the lesson, the sixth graders drew pictures and came up with either a law or a technology that could combat a cause of desertification. We collected these images and created an art piece with all of them that we hung up in our school to create an art exhibit that all the students at our school could see. Since education is the first step in solving problems, we are happy our UNESCO project reached two communities... the sixth-graders at both middle schools and our high school students here at South.