ShawneeDispatch.com

Brandi Leggett knows a thing or two about keeping students engaged in the classroom.

Last year, the third-grade teacher at Prairie Ridge Elementary School was honored with a FOX 4 Crystal Apple Award for creating the Power of the Pen project.

And this summer she received a $2,000 grant from ING Unsung Heroes Award for her innovative idea Organism Mania.

Leggett was one of 100 teachers in the nation to be honored as an Unsung Hero for her ideas in the classroom.

Organism Mania came about last year as Leggett was looking for a creative way to teach students about living organisms.

“I just didn’t want them to do a video or just read in a textbook,” she said of the lesson.

And so, Leggett’s classroom turned in to a type of living organism exhibit with hermit crabs, bugs, crawfish and other organisms.

The unit encompassed reading, writing and of course science.

Students became experts on one organism, researching the species. Later students use creative writing to write from the viewpoint of their organism.

“They have weeks that they become experts on the organism, then get in groups and make an investigation,” she said. “They write dramatic monologues and then record podcasts of their writing and create voices for their organism.”

Students then observe their organism and another while comparing and contrasting differences, making inferences and finally summarizing their findings with digital storytelling.

Leggett said it took some time to create the organism mania last year.

“I used money from my own paychecks to purchase the organisms, so I tried to spread it out,” she said. “It took a long time to put it all together.”

This year that aspect of the project will be different. Leggett will use the $2,000 grant to purchase organisms that didn’t survive the summer and new video equipment for the digital storytelling portion of the unit.

“This year with the funding it will be easier to have more microphones and another video camera for the kids, so there won’t be some much sharing and we can expand it across the grade,” she said.

On the first day of school this year Leggett asked her students what they had heard about her classroom.

“One of the students said they heard we had a lot of class pets,” she said. “It’s all about incorporating the project. As kids from last year were bringing back some of the organisms or the habitats for those that died over the summer, you could see the students getting excited.”

Leggett found the ING Unsung Heroes Award program last spring while searching for ways to continue her new curriculum.

“Mostly I found it through research Googling things,” she said. “When I was in Philadelphia (two years ago) the schools were big on teachers taking initiative to find grants. Last year my husband was nice about letting me spend money on the organism but I wanted to find something else to help.”

The ING Unsung Heroes Awards program recognizes educators for innovative teaching methods. Leggett submitted a proposal on how she would use the $2,000 grant and laid out details on the project for submission in April.

After receiving the recognition and grant in June of this summer, Leggett was automatically entered to win additional grants of $5,000, $10,000 or $25,000.

“The biggest thing is with so much teaching focused on reading and math, it’s kind of like science isn’t so much the focus,” Leggett said. “I want them to be able to experience being their own scientist. I hope they leave able to thoroughly talk about the scientific process.”

Midland Adventist teacher also recognized

Another Shawnee teacher was recognized as an ING Unsung Hero.

Jason Donovan, a teacher at Midland Adventist Academy, received a $2,000 grant for Midland’s Watershed Protection Program.

The innovation is part of the pond ecology project at Midland. The program uses concepts of conservation biology to invest energy in caring for people and the environment.

Through the program, students will restore and clean the 40 acres of wetland and woodland on which the school sits. Additionally, students will become familiar with the area by researching and studying the wetlands’ plants and animals.

Students in a chemistry class will take water samples from the pond to test for nitrate, salinity, phosphate and other components. The findings will then be shared with biology students to determine why some plants and animals can or cannot exist in the area.

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