Mark Carlen, Teacher at Kent Public School, Campbellford Ontario

“The benefits are multifaceted and very meaningful. The project gave my curriculum a sharper focus, gave the students real world experience and the cash rewards to the school are providing continued assistance to students.The [Caring for Our Watersheds] watershed project fit perfectly into my grade 8 science curriculum in Ontario. Students in grade 8 in Ontario are expected to learn about the water cycle, and how humans impact water systems in their area.These curricular expectations were seamlessly inserted into a very realistic project. Through producing this project, the students gained experience in reading a variety of texts, writing for a intended audience and purpose, oral presentation, math, and in creating visual presentations. This holistic approach to learning, or integrated learning, is extremely beneficial as it seamlessly draws the students into higher level of thinking skills. They were not simply writing for their teacher, but they were creating for an audience much bigger than the one they were used to in their classroom. This type of real-world experience, is often very hard to artificially create in a classroom.”