Staff Developer: Kathleen Cooney
Ms. Cooney’s integrated unit, “Who Needs Trees?,” took advantage of the local schoolyard ecology.
 “Trees are something to do all year. Bringing kids to their neighborhood parks is a great way for them to become more aware of why they need to be more respectful of their parks. …The kids’ attention was grabbed immediately… . With the Peabody Fellows not only do the things come, but there’s so much. Like with the owl pellets, it’s not just the pellets, but the owl study skin, the owl call, the tracks… . Other classes came in and my Special Ed kids were able to teach what they knew about the owl… . I think that if someone says that they don’t know science and are afraid to do it, they should see how much the kids get out of it.”
Her Special Ed students were even able to apply their hands-on experiences to standardized testing.
“The whole school system is involved with the CT Mastery tests… . One of the things they have to do is look at graphs, reading and interpreting graphs… . So, we took the data that we did about measuring the trees, but put the data into a graph. And because this was a meaningful experience for them, because they had measured the trees, they were able to do something that I don’t think they would have been able to do before. It had significance for them because they had the hands-on experience.”
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