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| Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie Bazinet Taylor Wallace and Conan Roussel were two of approximately 65 students who participated in “Rock Literacy Rocks.” |
By Natalie Bazinet
Staff Writer
LIMESTONE — In a time when social media and electronic devices reign supreme, kindergarten through fourth-grade students of the Limestone Community School have become enthralled with their low-tech educational tools that they received earlier this year. Utilizing these objects, students have worked toward honing a variety of scholastic skills — math, science, vocabulary, not to mention developing comparitive skills and problem solving.
Just what might these tools be that students have been eagerly caring for since school started?
As explained by Literacy Specialist Reneé Parente, who started this educational craze at LCS, these invaluable teaching tools are basic backyard rocks.
But how much can a student really learn from a rock?
Based off the literary event Parente coordinated on Nov. 21, they can learn plenty.
Just about 65 students from kindergarten through fourth grade participated in Monday’s literacy-themed event, titled “Rock Literacy Rocks.”
“The students are quite attached to their rocks,” Parente explained.
There were rock songs and promethean board presentations on the rock cycles, geological introductions and famous rock structures throughout the world.
There were rhyming games and team quizzes, dancing and mathematics — students were even charged with filling out ID cards for their personal rocks.
In every sense of the word, the literacy event rocked.
The multi-faceted approach to learning about rocks helped students retain rock-related knowledge by engaging their different senses, as described by Parente, who strongly advocates that “learning should always be engaging, fun, and enriching.”
While there’s much to learn about rocks, one of Parente’s main goals of literacy events like “Rock Literacy Rocks” is to get students interested in thinking and sparking youths’ interest in knowledge.
As Parente explained, it’s important to teach kids to think, not what to think.
There’ve been multiple literacy events held at LCS this year affording students the opportunity to really have fun with learning, and there are still plenty more to come.
The next LCS literacy event, slated for mid-January, is geared toward parents and children..
