Project Overview

This “field guide” was created by 7^th and 8^th grade students at the Vergennes Middle School in Vergennes, Vermont as part of a Learning expedition called Adolescent Odyssey and was meant to be a “user’s manual” to students’ changing bodies.

The original product is a thick book, bound with loose-leaf rings, in which each page was printed on cardstock, and could be removed and used individually. Selected pages from the book are included in this archive. The format for this product was inspired by the Rock Park Field Guide (entry #379), a field guide with removable card pages. Students were excited to create a guide to adolescence that could both be a composite of individual bits of information and have the flexibility to be broken apart via the metal ring/card format.

Because the intent of the project was to create a product that would be useful to other students (e.g. sixth graders, when the authors were seventh graders) the work allowed students to disassociate slightly from personally embarrassing content in the interest of providing something accurate, candid and useful for others.

80 students did extensive research on three areas related to adolescent development: physical development, social/emotional changes and risk factors/lifestyle choices. Through their exploration of these topics, students covered what might typically be found in a health textbook, but in a much more engaging and authentic way.

Part of their research included work with students from a local medical school. These medical students acted both as outside experts and as the students’ audience. The students’ final presentation was given to the medical students. Simultaneously, the medical students benefited from their work with the middle school students by deepening their understanding of the experience of adolescence from an adolescent’s point of view.

Each student was responsible for researching and designing pages on a specific topic including things such as peer pressure, body odor and family values.

This product is very appealing to other teachers and has been taken up and developed by many around the country.