Greenwich Students Get Close to Nature

This article was posted by Barbara Heins. It was reported and written by Sue Rogers.

“An interactive lesson on poisonous plants, spiders and snakes, learn compass skills and orienteering, build a tent and traverse a wall…”

While the description may sound like an adventure learning camp brochure, it is actually a one-day outdoor class experience for all 5th grade Greenwich Public School students taking place this week at the Camp Seton Scout Reservation.

The Orienteering Adventure Days are being on April 29 (for Central Middle School feeder schools), April 30 (for Western Middle School feeder schools), and May 1 (for Eastern Middle School feeder schools).

Orienteering Supervisor Steve Rogowskey said, “The GPS physical education teachers have developed an interdisciplinary project that blends fitness, writing, map reading and team building skills. This event was designed to give students the opportunity to meet and interact with those students who will be in their sixth-grade class in middle school next year.” Rogowskey, a Julian Curtiss School physical education teacher, added, “Most importantly, it is a celebration of their learning and accomplishments, whether or not they will be attending their middle school next year.” 

In advance of the program, 5th graders from all 11 schools exchange letters in both English and Spanish to their teammates from other schools.  The students also first learn basic orienteering skills during their physical education classes.

Principals praise the nine-year old program

Dr. Charles Smith, principal of North Street School said “the students always seem to be very excited about the Orienteering Adventure.” Smith said the day is “a wonderful opportunity for authentic, trans-disciplinary work in a community setting that helps to pave the way for a positive transition to middle school.” 

Old Greenwich School Principal Patricia Raneri called the day a “wonderful program that integrates an authentic learning experience with meeting new students from the other feeder schools.” Raneri also said, “the learning emphasizes problem solving and interpersonal relationships/team building … necessary skills for our children's futures.”

As for setting the tone for their futures as middle school students, Raneri said, “I have observed students having such fun and they have shared with me that the day removes the mystery around who they'll meet when they get to Eastern. Most importantly, many say they made new friends!”

It all started with a virtual journey between schools

Cathy Mahoney, a Physical Education teacher at Cos Cob School and one of the originators of the annual event explained “this assured experience evolved from a project where students from Julian Curtiss, Cos Cob and Glenville wore pedometers in their PE class and tracked how many steps they took each class.” 

“The goal of the project was to accumulate enough steps to ‘walk the loop’ between the three schools,” explained Mahoney. “Once students made it to a school, a pen pal letter was sent to a student at that school and students added a sneaker charm to a bracelet they were given at the beginning of the project. The culminating event was a "game day" at Julian Curtiss with students from all three schools.” 

This educational and bonding experience morphed into the event now held at Seton.

According to Colleen Morey, Program Coordinator for Physical Education and Health, Mahoney and Judy Conroy of Glenville School conceived the idea as a way to promote youth fitness through a multi-disciplinary approach.  Originally it was conducted with 4th-graders, but changed to focus on 5th-graders the next year.

Morey explained the “project involved students in their classes being partnered (by name) with a student from the other school (at that time it was Glenville and Cos Cob).” The pen pal element allowed the students to introduce themselves with the correspondence continuing.

Counting Every Step

The students marked maps to identify routes, including calculating mileage, through Greenwich to travel from one school to another. The lesson continued, explained Morey, as the 5 graders then “converted the mileage to yardage and ultimately steps that were needed to get from point A to point B.” Once the number of steps needed was determined, the students wore pedometers during PE and recess to “accrue” the mileage to reach a partner school.  Letters were then written and sent announcing their “arrival.”

Morey explained, “the project incorporated Language Arts/Writing, Geography, Social/Emotional Learning, Mathematics and Fitness” with a culminating event to meet “their Pedometer Pen Pal and engage in a half-day of team building adventure and orienteering based activities.”

Meet Future Classmates

Morey explained the evolution of the program; “since then we have tweaked the project to involve 5th graders as a transitional program for them into the three middle schools.  So they are partnered with two other individuals - one from each of the feeder schools.”  The program has remained basically the same with the addition of one letter having to be written in Spanish. 

A special component of the day is the co-mingling with students from other schools. Beyond the benefit of meeting their future middle school classmates, it allows the students to a half-day opportunity to work together to work and answer questions together relating to other disciplines in their academic and essentials programs.

Camp Seton Outdoor Classroom

When asked about the level of exposure children may have to nature prior to the program, Morey explained that “I am not sure of the exposure kids have to the variety of parks, but to me, there are such an abundance of these resources that it is a shame they are not utilized more through educational community partnerships.”

Bob Gunsten, Senior District Executive of the Greenwich Boys Scout, talked about the use of the Scout’s facility.  “At Seton, we host the three middle school cluster schools over three days at various stations. Those stations are bouldering wall, obstacle course, Kim's Game, a tent set-up relay, compass skills, orienteering (map reading) course, and nature.”

New Experiences and New Faces
Gunsten emphasized that getting students together from different schools, perhaps for the first time, at their outdoor classroom, Camp Seton is in many ways a perfect opportunity to meet and make new friends.  “Camp Seton is a new environment to many of the students to all but the scouts in the groups, and they are all experiencing new activities for many of them, with new people. All of these things make for a great day of learning and working together.”

He added, “one of the things we are always looking to do as a council, is to get as many kids as we can into the outdoors and get them to "do stuff". We think kids learn better outdoors, we think kids grow in a particular way just being outside in the woods. And by engaging them in fun activities, they learn skills and build stronger character attributes almost without noticing.”