Project Post-Mortem

The Egypt Immersion Fiasco 

This spring I led a project that culminated in the creation of an ancient Egyptian tomb in my 6^th grade classroom. Though the tomb looked great and the students had a great time, the quality of the learning was questionable. The project is part of our school's global studies program in which students travel virtually with a teacher to another country. The 6^th grade focus country is Egypt which fits within our standard study of ancient civilizations. According to the grant which funded the overseas trips, we are to immerse ourselves in the country of study across all subject areas for two weeks. As the 6th grade World History teacher, I am considered the leader of this project each year for my grade level.

The 6^th grade Egypt Immersion Unit was written six years ago by the teacher who traveled to Egypt and created the Egypt Blog for the school. In this unit each academic subject area is assigned different tasks which culminate in the creation of the tomb. For history, students were asked to research then create models of ancient Egyptian artifacts that might be found in a tomb and to create key historical event timeline entries for the hall-length timeline. In math, students were asked to use their knowledge of negative and positive number sequencing to create a 20 foot timeline on which to place their event entry. They also calculated the surface area of one of the pyramids at Giza to figure out how many gallons of liquid protectant it would take to coat the pyramid. In science, they studied the different chemicals that could be used to protect the pyramids from erosion caused by sandstorms. In language arts, they used the writing process to write and then create a digital story book using pictures from the Egypt Blog for their first grade buddies. They also wrote informational summaries about the artifact they created and included these with their artifacts in the tomb. Finally, students used murals containing pictures of the ancient Egyptian gods, hieroglyphics, and Pharaohs to create a mysterious passageway leading visitors through a display of artifacts to a chamber with King Mizar's mummy.

All seemed to be going well enough until the day of the tomb tours. As I watched my students describe their artifacts and guide students from all grades of the school through the tomb, I realized that the students had no clue what they were talking about. The 6^th grade students were supposed to act as knowledgeable tour guides and archaeologists who had discovered the tomb. Needless to say, the stories I heard that day were at times quite humorous. Students seemed to have no trouble when reading the information about the artifacts to the guests, but when they had to ad-lib, they were clueless.

A week after the infamous tomb tours our team sat down to do a post-mortem of the immersion. Though we did not have a set of post-mortem questions like those described by Greer (2010) to guide us, we were able to come up with a list of changes that should make this project much more successful in the future. Each of us had taken time to review our part of the project before meeting, so we had a lot to talk about. We quickly discovered that the biggest problem was due to the age of the original unit of study. The program was six years old and many changes had occurred over those years. New teachers were in place, several of the textbooks were changed, the student population was different, and technology had advanced.

Another problem stemmed from scheduling issues. The immersion weeks landed in the spring during our study of Ancient China instead of Egypt. We studied Egypt in depth in October, but six months had passed when it came time for the immersion unit and students were left to review the basics on their own. In regards to math, this group of students had a lower math ability than the original group which caused issues with the geometry assignment. As for language arts, the study of narrative writing had already taken place in January rather than late spring, so this project interrupted the poetry unit. Language arts was most effected by the change in technology. The installation of Windows 7 on the school computers caused Photostory to no longer work. We had to scramble to find a different way to complete the digital story. Students ended up combining Audacity and Windows Movie Maker which, due to compatibility issues, kept the students from being able to complete their projects on time. Finally, our wonderful science teacher had to fit the study of erosion and chemistry into the middle of a unit on human biology.

After much discussion, we came up with a plan to redesign the Egypt Immersion Unit content. First we had to determine the most important objective of the Unit. Was it to study geometry, chemistry, writing, or Egyptian history? We decided the objective was to expose our students to another culture through the study of its history. Ultimately, the history department gets priority and choice of timing. We set next year's immersion dates to coincide with our normal study of Ancient Egypt. Next, each subject area teacher was tasked with creating a new project that integrated the study of Egypt with the concepts they would be covering at that time. I was tasked with gathering all the documents and creating the new Egypt Immersion Unit. Finally, we agreed that the ability to be flexible was key to ensuring a successful project.

I have included an Animoto video in this blog post which includes pictures of this year's Egypt Immersion and highlights of our Greek Olympic games that was held in February at the end of our study of Ancient Greece.

Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your projects! (Laureate custom ed.). Baltimore: Laureate Education, Inc.

San Jose Episcopal Day School. Egypt Blog. http://www.sjeds.com/blog/egypt/