Seventh Grade Students Hone Collaboration Skills During Exploration Week

The students were participating in Exploration Week, an annual event that introduces the seventh grade to its interdisciplinary units on diversity and multiculturalism. 

The goal of the activities, which ran from Tuesday, September 24, through Thursday, September 26, was for students to develop individual and group problem-solving, communication and collaboration skills. The students formed teams to take on challenges given to them by their humanities teachers, Mary Chappell and Paul Friedman. The teams gained points by solving research quests, completing activities such as racing across “treacherous” fields and crossing an “acid swamp,” and creating team cheers. 

The culminating activities on Thursday tested the students’ survival skills. Dressed as explorers from the 1600s, they participated in a scavenger hunt, escape-the-room activity, map creation, and even headed to the woods behind Clarke Field to build shelters out of tree branches and sticks. “It was exhausting, challenging and exciting for everyone,” Chappell and Friedman said.