Seventh Grade’ s Restoration Work on Artificial Oyster Reefs
Romeo and Juliet Interdisciplinary Collaboration with Marymount School
Seventh Grade’ s Restoration Work on Artificial Oyster Reefs
Seventh graders helped to restore the oyster population in the New York Harbor through their year-long collaboration with the Billion Oyster Project. In May, their learning was augmented when the sister of one of our fourth graders visited with the grade to share related research she has conducted at Monmouth University. A junior at Nightingale-Bamford School, she led the class in a discussion of her research concerning biodiversity found on artificial oyster reefs in the Atlantic Highlands( Lower NY Bay). During the session, the boys not only learned about this topic, they also were introduced to the process of conducting scientific research for a university. The informative class built upon the boys’ learning about DNA through our partnership with the DNA Learning Center of Cold Spring Harbor and their experience with the Billion Oyster Project.
Romeo and Juliet Interdisciplinary Collaboration with Marymount School
In one classroom, groups of boys and girls pose silently to represent dramatic action in key scenes. Across the hall, they dig into the script, noting themes and the use of rhythmic speech. In another room, they struggle through new dance choreography; while in the theater, the students master the tools and steps of stage combat.
This sneak peek into the eighth-grade curriculum provides a snapshot of a multi-session academic collaboration between our eighth-grade boys and the eighth grade at the Marymount School, who studied Shakespeare’ s Romeo and Juliet in their English classes. The workshops, led by teaching artists from NYU and Columbia University’ s MFA programs, explore the use of language, imagery, text and subtext, universal themes, and how to conceptualize and interpret a character.
At the end of this joint curricular experience, the boys and girls take their deeper understanding of the work to the stage themselves, in a presentation for an audience of their peers, faculty, and staff of both schools.
38 • Saint David’ s Magazine