By Katherine Ellison and Louis Freedberg

The young-adult novel “Hatchet” – about a boy who learns to live in the wild after surviving a plane crash – has been a staple of elementary-school English classes for years. But this year Sara Siebert taught it with a twist.

She assigned her fifth-graders at the Santiago Elementary School in the Santa Ana Unified School District to build rafts out of popsicle sticks, string, duct tape and glue to recreate part of the book in which the boy uses his only tool – a hatchet his mother gave him before his departure – to build a raft.In the process, the students not only gained new appreciation for the novel but drew on their math skills to measure and design their materials, and deepened their knowledge of science by learning about buoyancy and solubility.

via Project-based learning on the rise under the Common Core | EdSource#.VT-0OGctHGg#.VT-0OGctHGg.