Venturing to Outer Worlds: Grade 8 Integration Week

Integration Weeks for Grade 7 and 8 students offer an invaluable opportunity for students to apply and integrate their learning across different subjects into one project. The Grade 7s had their Integration Week earlier in the year. For the Grade 8s, their Integration Week began on April 15 with a field trip to the Humber Arboretum where they learned about shelter building, water filtration systems, the ecosystem and various survival methods. 

For the remainder of the week, the students worked in groups to design a city built for a specific planet’s habitat. Each of the planets feature unique traits that the students needed to account for in their design, such as torrential rains, extreme heat or high-speed wind storms. The groups first designed a water filtration system and tested how well it worked to filter out chemicals from collected rain water. Each group also designed a city layout that best suited their planet’s climate and features. For each project, the groups also needed to consider what kind of spaceship would be required to reach their chosen planet. Combining their learning from their English, Science, Math and CSS courses, each group produced a well-rounded project.

By Friday, all the groups presented their final projects in a final gallery walk in the Lodge. The progress the students made throughout the week was really astonishing. “It is really amazing to see how far the projects have come since the beginning of the week,” remarked Mr. Kaushal.