By JENNY SHARP

Teachers and students at Norwood’s PS 94 are thinking creatively to promote both writing and global awareness. For the school’s entire third grade, students are seeing a true blending of the two, thanks to a mixed-media project.

The group recently completed a two-month project that paired an in-depth study of Kenya’s water crisis with a unit on persuasive letter writing. The third graders learned the science behind a water shortage and gained a more empathetic understanding by looking at how it affects the Kenyan people. It was an exercise that combined activism, debating and writing.

The third graders then wrote mock letters addressed to the Norwood community that raised awareness about the crisis. Some students also made posters to illustrate the information, combining computer graphics with hand-made visual and digital art.

“I learned that a lot of people die from diseases that they get from dirty water and that the Kenyan government doesn’t really even have a lot of money to spend on clean water,” said Abdullah Zidan at PS 94.

The students then turned their findings into action, concluding the project with a fundraiser. The profits were donated to “The Water Project,” a non-profit that provides Sub-Saharan Africa with easier access to clean water. The project demonstrated a significant shift in PS 94’s curriculum strategy, now edging towards a greater combination of subjects and content thanks to the more rigid Common Core standards.

“The idea behind it was to integrate social studies more into our reading and writing units,” said Nicole Zippo, a third grade teacher at PS 94 who received a broad topical directive from the school’s curriculum coach, Marana Lombardo. Zippo later tailored the project to her class. “It’s a way for us to get the content in and for the kids to authentically use the content,” said Lombardo  “They’re not just learning facts.”

The interdisciplinary format for this project is also a way for teachers to personalize their curriculum while still adhering to Common Core.

“I think Ms. Zippo is a really good example of taking the Common Core learning standards which people think is so rigid” said Lombardo. “They took what they had to do with the content they were given and molded it into something meaningful and engaging for their students.”

And why isolate academic subjects when the students themselves expressed varied passions they would roll into one.  “I want to be three things when I grow up,” said third grader McKenzie Parris-Law. “I want to be an artist because I really love to draw, and a singer and a dancer because I like to move around.”

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.