Pelham Middle School Participates In 'A Long Walk to Water' Project

From Pelham Middle School: Pelham Middle School 7th graders spent the afternoon of May 4 participating in a variety of activities designed to supplement their reading of Linda Sue Park’s novel “A Long Walk to Water,” and to help raise money to make drinking water more accessible in South Sudan, Africa.

The goal of the “A Long Walk to Water” unit and event was to help kids become more empathetic members of a global world, as well as to discover their ability to impact the lives of others around the world. Students explored real-world issues and were authentically assessed through action and service assignments. This unit was developed by seventh grade teachers and closely reflects the objectives of the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme.

"We really want our students to be able to make connections with others around the world,” said Teacher Rachel Pixley, who organized the event. “Empathy is a major focus of all our novel studies, and “A Long Walk to Water” lends itself beautifully and naturally to this idea and lesson for kids. They become invested in the characters and their hardships and really want to make a difference.” The "Walk for Water" event, held on Ingalls Field, helped students connect with the experiences of the book’s main characters and their struggles to find clean drinking water. Students' cross-disciplinary activities included walking around the field carrying gallon-size jugs of water over their heads (mimicking

the redundancy, time, and challenge that many around the world are forced to endure to collect water), contests to see how long they could balance water jugs on their heads and shoulders, making natural water filters using limited materials to discover how difficult it actually is to clean dirty water, and assembling beaded bands with different colors depicting the proportion of available drinking water and the amount of water frozen in glaciers versus the amount of salt water in the world. Seventh grader Daniel Fredbeck said that the book and activities helped him realize how fortunate he is to live where there is accessible water.

“I learned how hard they have to work for water and that we’re lucky to have it,” Daniel said. Additionally, the students worked to reach their goal of raising $15,000 to help construct a well in South Sudan. To date, about $7,950 had been raised. Donations can be made by visiting: https://www.crowdrise.com/pmswalks4water.

“Here, it is really easy to get water, but I learned that only a small percent of the water is drinkable, and in Sudan a lot of the water that they have is brown and dirty, so raising money can really help,” said 7th grader, Analia Casey.

Images Courtesy of Pelham Middle School