Students teach students science in Sisters

The students of Rima Givot's class enjoyed a new learning experience last week, one that may send a few on to a career in teaching: they became students teachers for students in the second grade of Sisters Elementary School.

Givot gave her freshman and sophomore students an assignment to learn about plants - any particular plant they chose to study, as long as it was an angiosperm (flowering plant) - and then make their findings into a book.

Like most everyone does these days when confronted by a question, most (if not all) of the students went straight to Google. Erica Lowery, one of Rima's sophomores, Googled "lavender" and ended up with 1,900,000 hits in a mere .19 seconds.

The students developed their plant books by the current Internet-inspired standard of cut-and-paste. However, some books were real works of art; the layout was very attractive and the job of cutting-and-pasting was very well done.

To make sure the information assembled online was truly assimilated, Givot went one step further: she required the students to synthesize the information in such a way that they could present it in an understandable form to the second-graders of Sisters Elementary School (SES), teach the children about plants and provide them with seeds to watch their own angiosperm grow.

Tyrell Gilmore, a freshman, decided to study the morning glory, a familiar plant that just about everyone knows. However, he put a twist on it that would mean something to second graders. He introduced the role his plant plays as a nectaring source for hummingbirds and hawk moths.

Givot seemed particularly pleased with the plant book Meghan Connolly produced. She went the extra mile and inserted her own words into the knowledge she gleaned from the Google sources.

Her book was on bok choy, a species of Chinese cabbage popular for green smoothies, which she shared with Simon Rhett of SES.

Meghan has her eye on becoming an ER nurse somewhere down the trail, and is planning on attending Xavier University in New Orleans when she graduates from high school.

Proving that teaching is a great way to learn, each high schooler tried their best to explain the complicated interactions of photosynthesis, root structure, and pollination. Meanwhile, the younger students worked hard to absorb everything they were hearing.

Erica Lowery aspires to become an art teacher. Programs and courses she and her fellow students are experiencing in Rima Givot's class will equip her to understand the many facets of education, and will become one of the key stepping stones in her quest for the future.