DATE: Apr. 15 , 2008
Nelson Ridge students take “road trip” to Florida:
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Students in Debbie Sewell’s fourth-grade class didn’t have to wait until summer break to do a little traveling.
This winter, they “accompanied” Sewell’s parents on a road trip to Florida, passing through Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky.
“It was Debbie’s idea,” said Gene Maris, a retired teacher who traveled to Florida a few weeks ago and shared what he and his wife, Donna (also a retired teacher), saw by calling Sewell’s classroom each day at Nelson Ridge School.
The couple would talk about their adventures while the students would track their progress on a map each day, recording their longitude and latitude and number of miles traveled since their last conversation. They would also look up answers to trivia questions the Marises would ask, such as “Which president lived in Georgia” or “Which famous singer was born in Tupelo, Mississippi.”
“I want the students to be exposed to as much geography and history of the U.S. as possible,” said Sewell, “and this really brings it to life.”
The fourth-grade teacher turned her parent’s semi-annual trips into a classroom lesson about three years ago while listening to her parents discuss their latest travel plans. Knowing her parents would be checking in with the family from time to time while they were gone, Sewell decided to turn their regular updates into a classroom project.
The couple has taken Sewell’s students to just about every state in the United States over the last three years.
Each time, the students have learned a little bit about the states and where they’re located.
“It makes learning map skills fun and applicable to real life,” said Sewell, who arranged for her parents to call the students on a speaker phone at a certain time each day.
On Friday, April 11, Sewell’s parents followed up their two-week trip to Florida by visiting the students in their classroom and showing them photographs of the places they saw, including Graceland, the Sunshine Bridge and the Kennedy Space Center.
“What was your favorite state?” asked one inquisitive fourth-grader.
“Florida,” Donna Maris replied without hesitation. “It was the warmest.”
“Did you go past a megalopolis,” another asked, using terminology from a recent classroom lesson on metropolitan areas.
“We probably did,” replied the retired teacher after receiving a brief explanation of the term from Sewell.
The Marises, who usually take one trip in the fall and one in the winter, are already planning their next trip and classroom trivia questions.
“It’s good for them to learn about places,” said Gene Maris. “Maybe someday they can go see (the places) for themselves.”