Treasures Revealed

By Heidi Blokland

Our school recently embarked on a journey called Project Based Learning, or simply “PBL.” PBL is an inquiry approach to education which uses a project as the central context for student learning. Our topic of study was the St. Lawrence Seaway Project. In the late 1950s the St. Lawrence river was widened and a power dam was built. Six thousand five hundred people people were forced to relocate and a number of villages were lost. The site of these lost villages is a 20-minute drive from our school.

After watching a video and giving the students time to wonder and ask questions, we took all our students to visit the lost village of Aultsville. Usually it is under water but the St. Lawrence has been exceptionally low this year, revealing roads, sidewalks, tree stumps, house foundations and many other treasures of the village that once existed there.

Read the rest of Heidi Blokland’s article The Lost Villages: A Project Based Learning Journey at The Christian Courier.

Kindergarten students took photos of old house foundations that are usually buried under water.