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A Teacher's PerspectiveRead what others are saying about the resources from the Rainforest Alliance Learning Site.
In an interview with Rainforest Alliance staff, Mrs. Peterson, an ESL teacher at the Jefferson School in Norwalk, Connecticut shares how she adapted the curriculum to teach writing skills to her fifth grade students. Read on for a teacher’s perspective on bringing the Learning Site resources into the classroom:
Rainforest Alliance (RA): What grade and subject do you teach? Mrs. Peterson: I teach ESL for kindergarten through fifth grade, and I used the Rainforest Alliance curriculum to do a group project with my 5th grade ESL students and their classmates in another class taught by a fellow teacher, Mrs. Signore.
RA: Why did you decide to implement the Rainforest Alliance curriculum in your classroom? Mrs. Peterson: Our school principle, John Reynolds, was introduced to the Rainforest Alliance curriculum by the Rainforest Alliance staff and asked if I would be interested in using it with my students. Part of the 5th grade curriculum that we currently use at our school is learning about ecosystems and adaptation, so there was a link between the Rainforest Alliance curriculum and ours. We have also been trying to emphasize improving writing skills among our students, so using the topic of rainforest conservation and the materials from the Learning Site, we focused on creating a well-written report about rainforest issues in El Salvador.
RA: Has the curriculum benefited your students? How? Mrs. Peterson: This curriculum has a strong cultural link to our students and their families, many of whom are from Central and South America. Because of this connection to Latin America, the students particularly enjoyed studying the units about bird migration and coffee farms in El Salvador. Many of the students are conscious of environmental concerns as well. It was an eye-opening experience for them to see that a common product, such as coffee, can have strong environmental connections.
RA: How did you use the resources from the Rainforest Alliance Learning Site? Mrs. Peterson: I like to focus on face-to-face time with the students, so I used the materials from the 5th grade units of the Learning Site and printed them out to use with my students. I feel that children get lots of exposure to using computers, and I like to do hands-on, interactive activities with the students, so we were able use print-outs of the stories and background materials from the Learning Site and read through them together as a class.
RA: How did your students respond to the lessons? Mrs. Peterson: They loved the story “Life in San Miguelito.” We discussed the parallels between his life and our lives in the US. We read through the 5th grade resources together to learn about El Salvador’s El Imposible National Park. We discussed how and birds migrate from the US to El Salvador, and the students used the information as the basis for writing a report. We only spent a few hours working together on this project each week, but the students were visibly enthusiastic and learned a lot.
RA: Do you plan to continue using the Rainforest Alliance curriculum with your students next year? Mrs. Peterson: I hope to do the same thing with our classes next year, time allowing. Mrs. Signore and I came up with this cooperative method to use the Rainforest Alliance curriculum to teach writing, which worked well for us, so we would like to do that again.
RA: Is there anything else you would like to share with other teachers about the Rainforest Alliance curriculum? Mrs. Peterson: If other teachers have high populations of Hispanic American students, like we do, I hope they’ll use this curriculum as well. This topic of bird migration in the 5th grade units was highly interesting for our students. It was interesting for them to realize the connections between songbirds and the rainforest. They were so excited to learn that they might see a bird in their own backyard that has traveled to the rainforest. ____________________________________________________________________
Would you like to share your experience using the Rainforest Alliance curriculum with your class? Email us at education@ra.org.
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