Students gain Research and Teamwork Skills by Working Together

At IMS, our community is further strengthened by having mixed age groups come together throughout the year for various projects, special events, or classroom work. Just before November break, Ms. Vaughn’s 7th grade history class joined up with Ms. Brown’s 3rd grade class to explore how harvest festivals are celebrated around the world. Older and younger students paired up and each team researched data pulled randomly from a bucket of facts to determine which country the fact came from. Once they figured out which country the fact belonged to, they attached the fact to the flag of that country. After all of the facts were added to their respective flags, the teams began a scavenger hunt to answer questions about each country. Students learned about the Aslogli Yam festival in Ghana, the Mid-Autumn Moon festival in China, Thanksgiving in the United States, the Epiphany in Greece, the Pongal festival in India, the Rice Harvest festival in Indonesia, Vendimia in Argentina, and Sukkot in Israel. It was a wonderful way for our students to understand different cultural traditions, as well as to recognize the many similarities that we share.