Classroom Gets Rainforest, Jungle Murals After Studying Chocolate
Posted
David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
It’s a jungle – and a rainforest – in Nicole Cervone-Gish’s classroom at Madison Elementary School. In January 2013, her English language students in fourth through sixth grade were awarded a Red Apple Grant from the Warsaw Education Foundation for their “Rainforest Chocolate Project.” In the project, the students studied chocolate, rainforests and fair trade. The grant paid for two murals for the classroom, a jungle and a rainforest. The murals did not come in until this school year, and the students are now in fifth through seventh grade. Many subjects were incorporated into the project, Cervone-Gish said, including geography, social studies and a focus on writing. The overall project for the 25 students involved was for each student to create a magazine. They had to choose a profession to learn about for the magazine based on what they wanted to study. For example, if a student wanted to study how chocolate was harmful to dogs, they had to choose veterinarians. “It really was a big project,” she said. The class project was started during summer 2012. Cervone-Gish was inspired then by Eisenhower EL Specialist Debbie Buhlmann, who had said she was going to study chocolate and the rainforest. When Cervone-Gish asked her students if they wanted to study chocolate, they overwhelmingly said yes.
