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Thank you for your interest in Waynflete. We hope that the short story below will convey a sense of academic and campus life in Waynflete’s Lower School.
We invite you to join us at this upcoming event:
Discover Waynflete: Lower, Middle, and Upper Schools
Prospective Parents
Preschool–Grade 11
Thursday, January 19, 2017
8:30–10:30 a.m.
(Snow Date: Tuesday, January 24)
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Experiencing the Industrial Revolution in 4-5
As part of their fall study of immigration and the Industrial Revolution, Waynflete’s multi-age fourth- and fifth-grade class visited the planned mill city of Lowell, Massachusetts. Students used floor looms to weave, learned how the workday changed for craftspeople, and heard about the harsh living conditions for workers who had been drawn to Lowell from area farms.
Back in class, teachers challenged student groups to use their newly acquired knowledge about land use and waterways by creating their own planned mill towns. The “Lowell Minecraft Challenge” turned students into hydro engineers, mill architects, city planners, and parks and recreation directors. Each city had mandatory components, including canals and waterways, roads, boarding houses, civic buildings, parks, and a town square. Students examined canal systems and city plans from other municipalities as part of their research.
While many children look forward to playing Minecraft the minute school is out, the game is also a powerful tool for collaboration, creation, and problem-solving. Students can apply their research to "real-world" situations and collaborate on complicated, open-ended projects. Minecraft building blocks have realistic properties. The objects that students build must obey physical laws, such as motion and gravity, in order to work. (If you’re building a roller coaster, for example, and you don’t provide your car with enough downward distance, it will not make it up the next hill.) Waynflete teachers have used Minecraft to explore topics such as animal food webs, renewable energy, DNA structure and function, urban design, and civil wars.
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After constructing their towns in Minecraft, students created video “fly-throughs” in which they unveiled their final city plans and addressed issues that had arisen during their research. What was the primary function of the mills during the Industrial Revolution? Why did water play such an essential role? What made a mill efficient? What methods were used to increase the speed of the water? “I loved being able to build in the same world with my friends and see how the things we learned in class could be made in Minecraft,” says fourth-grader Abie. “We made our own city.”
The unit’s culminating project was a three-day boot-making exercise designed by teachers to illustrate the effects of the Industrial Revolution on workers. On the first day, students took as much time as they needed to craft “the best boots” while enjoying popcorn, cider, and music. On day two, the boot production quota doubled—and there were no more snacks or music. On day three, students were asked make as many boots as possible. They realized that most efficient approach was to make each student responsible for a small part of the boot-making process. “We got things done faster working together, but the boots were not as unique and it was not much fun,” says Henry. “This was like the change people went through when the mills started. They used make things slowly at home, but in the mills, things were made fast to make more money.”
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