Part 1: Designing the Future with Students: A Whole-School Mapping Vision Begins
Fall 2025 marks the start of something new at our school, small, local, and rooted in science.
We’re excited to launch a 6th-grade pilot project in collaboration with the Children’s Environmental Literacy Foundation (CELF) that invites students to explore the spaces around them through science, storytelling, and civic thinking.
Mapping Our Place: The Idea
This pilot, Mapping Our Place, is grounded in the belief that when students explore their own surroundings with curiosity and intention, they begin to understand how systems, ecological, historical, political, are connected.
With CELF’s tools and frameworks, our 6th-grade students will:
Map local environments, starting with our campus
Collect and analyze environmental data (biodiversity, invasive species, water access, soil health)
Reflect on place, impact, and identity through writing, discussion, and visual storytelling
Use AI tools like App Inventor and NotebookLM to explore ideas and make data visible
Connect learning across science, English, social studies, and math
AI Supports the Process—Not Replaces It
Students will use platforms like MIT App Inventor to create simple digital tools that support their investigations, from logging biodiversity observations to visualizing how invasive species spread.
AI helps students move beyond collection into interpretation. It supports student choice, differentiation, and cross-modal thinking, especially for our neurodiverse learners.
Long-Term Vision
This is just the beginning. Our goal is to expand this into a K–12 initiative, with each grade level contributing a new layer to a living map that grows over time, geographically, conceptually, and emotionally.
We’re starting with Grade 6 across subjects, and as science leads the charge, we hope to build out collaborations with English, history, and math in the other grades in future years.
📌 Next on Futurise:
In Part 2, we’ll show how students are using AI—specifically App Inventor and NotebookLM, and how our students will use them to design their own tools and extend their inquiry into real-world action.
