Grade 5: Paulette Byer
Ms. Byer’s unit, “Shark Bites,” was quite a hit with her students, who were fascinated by what these creatures can do.

“There is nothing that can prepare for their faces, their excitement, and enthusiasm… . From the minute they gave them the Lab coats, ‘Wow! He looks like a doctor.’ ‘She looks like a scientist!’… We got to go on the Internet, we pulled information up that our library media specialist couldn’t get… . One of my goals was to have it all integrated, not teaching science as science… . We went into geography, history, map reading... . We did math with this unit, graphing, art, language arts, we did all this reading. Now, my reluctant readers can’t wait to do more research to get their projects done… .”

In a first for the Peabody Fellows program, she and Mr. Recalde, another Peabody Fellow at Mauro School, were able to involve the entire school.

“I sent invitations to the whole school… . We had an open house for a week in which we invited parents, families, friends… . I started getting letters and papers from other classrooms… . One thing led to another… . Every class has participated except for one… . The truth is, we will do these things whether you’re here or not because our lives have become so much more richer and we can make the children’s lives richer.”