Pittsfield - For these students here at Warsaw Middle School the bulk of their class time recently has been spent thinking about energy. All types of energy. They were split into groups and got to choose which energy source they wanted to learn more about. The project was a collaborative effort between two of the teachers at the Pittsfield middle school. Math & Science teacher Lindsay Bolduc and Language Arts & Social Studies teacher Caitlin Hutt. "They just got to look at different sources and they had to research the economics of that source and how it worked," says Bolduc. "The history of that source and any question they came up with they had to research on their own and find the answers."

The project combined all four courses of study; math, science, language arts, and social studies. For the past month these students worked around 3 hours per school day just on this assignment. That type of effort begs the question, is a project this size a little overwhelming for 7th and 8th graders? "Yeah a little," says 7th grader Lexi Caldwell. "Because it was a pretty big project in the beginning but after we started doing it it was pretty easy"

Her fellow student Mia Fox agrees. "Yeah it was definitely pretty crazy but it was really exciting when you get to have a science fair and learn about this cool stuff."

The teachers say the students jumped right in with both feet. They studied the economics and history of each source and even came up with some visual aids to demonstrate their complete understanding of their energy source. But sometimes acquiring all this knowledge can have a downside. "I feel bad for some parents because I think a lot of kids went home and were like we have got to change the way we run our house to hydro power or we gotta move so we can use tidal power and that was not the intention," says Bolduc. "It's good they got so involved in it."

All things considered and through a few bumps in the road the teachers are happy with the finished product. "Overall things came out fantastic," says Hutt, "and I think the students learned a lot about different types of energy and how energy is produced."

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