Courtesy of KMS
A KMS teacher held class outside one sunny day last week
KILLINGTON—The connections between the study of biology and conversational French may not be immediately obvious, but Killington Mountain School faculty members Lee Elliot and Christine Hartnett have found common ground within their two subjects and are working together to create an interdisciplinary experience for KMS juniors Sophie Norton, Noah Barrow, Cassidy Bebo, and sophomore Marc Hartnett. The group takes biology with Lee and French with Christine, and they will be traveling to Montreal with their instructors at the end of May in the interest of furthering their studies in both subjects.
Elliot and Hartnett have planned the trip, which will include dinner at a French restaurant, a visit to an open-air marketplace, and a day at Montreal’s Biodome. The group will be expected to speak French throughout the experience.
The Montreal Biodome is a facility that allows visitors to walk through replicas of four ecosystems found in North and South America. The building was originally constructed for the 1976 Olympic Games as a velodrome and is now home to the popular tourist attraction. The students have been working on an ecology unit within their biology course, and they have constructed their own ecosystem in the classroom. While at the Biodome, they will explore how organisms relate to their environment. Once back at KMS, the students will work on a culminating project utilizing their own ecosystem and information they’ve gathered from their Biodome exploration.
