CT Plunkett Students Experiencing UMass Firsthand
Sara Laing's fourth-grade class with binders that they colored and designed to feature their dream jobs. The binders are filled with worksheets simulating the tasks required to attend college. |
ADAMS, Mass. — Fourth-grader Simon Zaleski likes to build things but until recently, he never thought of going to college to become an engineer.
That's changed.
Simon is in Sara Laing's fourth-grade class and he and his classmates have spent the last six months preparing for college.
The students began by writing out their "dreams" and through a series of exercises — from scheduling classes to designing their dorm space to finding used books — have simulated all of the tasks a collegebound student needs to complete before that first day.
On Thursday, the children from both Laing's fourth- and fifth-grade classes will take a field trip to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst to get a firsthand look at their futures. There they'll be given a tour of the campus.
"We get to go and learn what it is like there, compared to regular school," said fifth-grader Shirley Gazaille on Wednesday, who toured Southern Vermont College in Bennington last year. "We learn what it is like to live there."
Early in her special education teaching career in Baltimore, Laing found it was difficult to keep the children's attention late in the school year. She crafted this project as a way to keep the pupils engaged while still learning. This is her third year bringing students from Plunkett to a campus.
"It's one of my favorite things because they don't realize they are doing math," Laing said.
The children pick out a major and their classes, and then find the required textbooks off a list given to them by Liang.They browsed sites like Half.com or eBay to find and compare used books against the prices for new ones.
"We want to get used textbooks," said fifth-grader Breanna Lytle, who has found a big difference in prices between new and used books that she would need to be a theater major.
Fourth-grader Keegan Haggerty said he would just buy new books but when he did the math Wednesday, it was more than $100 cheaper to buy used. Keegan wants to be a professional football player but he knows to do that, he'll need to play on the college level while earning a sports management degree.
He is looking forward to seeing the playing fields and buildings at UMass where he'll need to spend a lot of time to reach that goal.
"I expect the buildings to be big and there will be a lot more people," Keegan said. "I'm thinking the football field will be the same size."
The trip will be the first time Keegan has stepped foot on a college campus, including the colleges in the Berkshires. Laing said she intentionally tries to find campuses outside of the county that the children have not likely been to. She also alternates from a large school to a smaller school each year to show the differences. The goal is to expose the students to college so they can have it in their sights when they enter middle school.
Another activity in the program is when the students pick through scholarships and use grade-point averages to figure out which ones they'd be eligible to receive. As Simon calls them, "free money" for "getting straight As." They also do an exercise in financial aid with the idea of showing them that it is possible to make college affordable
"They can see that even if finances are a concern for the family, they can do it themselves," Laing said.
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Keegan Haggerty and Sara Laing add up the cost of buying new textbooks to compared with the costs he found for used books. |
Breanna said that is the biggest thing she has learned during the course of this project.
"You can go to college and pay a little," she said.
The exercises incorporate many types of learning. Not only are the dollars and cents added but Laing has crafted word problems for students to figure out the length of classes while they plan their schedule. They were given campus maps and, in a scavenger hunt exercise, asked to identify places and directions they'll need to take to get around.
They are also asked to choose a club they'd like to form and how they would spend its budget on supplies, and to design their dorm room. For the dorm room, the children are given dimensions of the furniture, cut the sizes to scale out of paper and placed them in the configuration they'd want.
While actually enrolling in college may be some years away, the students know that they can do every task needed.
"These are real majors, these are real courses that were offered last semester," Laing said. "I want them to think 'if I can do it now, I can do it when I am 18.'"
Simon is excited for the trip to UMass "to see what it looks like" while fourth-grader Ruth LeSage already knows that "it's more fun than regular school."
Tags: college, elementary schools, Plunkett, school project,
