Work by Matthew Stone

June 12, 2010

RICHMOND -- Just like most English students, a small group of Richmond high schoolers spent this past month on a long-term class project that involved research, reading, writing and storytelling.

On Friday, Courtney Tibbetts' six-student junior English class took its project on its maiden voyage around Pleasant Pond.

Tibbetts' class spent the final month of school at work on a 6-foot skiff, which they launched on Friday.

In the process, they raised plenty of eyebrows at school.

"The big question I got -- and I've gotten it a lot -- is, what does this have to do with English?" Tibbetts said.

What the project does deal with is a new set of national academic standards, known as the Common Core, and the progression toward "standards-based" education taking place in a growing number of Maine schools.

In standards-based education, students are promoted after they demonstrate mastery of a skill, or standard. The Common Core dictates the standards for English and mathematics in every grade level.

The first step for Tibbetts' class was determining which Core standards they'd meet during skiff construction, student Casey Smith said.

The students needed to find out how to construct a skiff from a sheet of plywood and a couple of two-by-fours that could sustain an average person's weight -- without sinking.

"You don't just wake up knowing how to build a boat," said Angela Dearborn, 16.

That part involved extensive research -- a critical skill prescribed by the Common Core.

Once the research was complete, and a plan in place, class members then needed to communicate with each other to finish the job.

Communication and teamwork, after all, also have their place in the Common Core standards.

"There's a lot of English involved in the project that people didn't see," said Haley Roderick, 17, who took exhaustive notes and synthesized them into a paper.

For Dearborn, blogging about skiff construction offered an opportunity to hone a writing style that differed from the academic writing to which she's accustomed. She also had a chance to compare her writing to the journals kept by her classmates.

"They wrote in different styles," she said. "I got to see some pieces of information that I had missed."

Smith, 18, has the job of condensing more than eight hours of raw footage into a 10-to-15-minute documentary about the skiff project.

"You think making a video's just plopping the clips down, but a lot of planning is involved," Smith said.

Embedded in that planning is a distinct challenge related to English class: How can the story of the skiff's construction be conveyed most effectively?

It's a challenge Smith prefers to conventional class work.

"I enjoyed it more than just sitting down and writing a paper," he said. "It was something that was fun, but I got a lot out of it."

The skiff was the perfect project for the student who doesn't learn well by listening and taking notes in class, said Gennifer Hoopingarner, 17.

"If you're better with doing hands-on work, this is a fabulous way to get a better grade," she said.

The students have an opportunity to ace their "final exam" on Monday, Tibbetts said, when they show off and explain their work to other Richmond High School students and staff members at an exhibition.

That will help the students meet another dimension of the communication standard.

As teachers pay more attention to meeting defined academic standards and more schools in Maine shift to standards-based education, Tibbetts said, it might become less surprising to see an English class fashion a one-sheet skiff.

"I think this is going to be more the norm than the exception," he said.

Matthew Stone -- 623-3811, ext. 435
mstone@centralmaine.com

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