Fourth-grade teacher LaiLoni Elggren agrees with Earle, even though her teaching method is "100 percent hands-on." By integrating structured study and testing into her projects, Elggren said she can help all her students — including those with learning disorders — understand important subjects.

"The more they do and touch and feel, they more they will remember it," said Elggren, who teaches at King Elementary in Layton. "Usually, I can't stop them from learning because they want to do more."

At Majestic Elementary in West Jordan, sixth-grade students have spent the school year in an educational time machine, traveling from ancient Greece to the Middle Ages — all while learning about each society's noted accomplishments.

But students don't even notice that they're absorbing the information, said teacher Heather Rich, because they become so engrossed in the role-playing and creative fun that projects offer.

"Anytime you can relate any subject to real life, they are a lot more interested in it," she said, pointing to a recent stint in old Athens that had her students behaving like real Greeks.

Rather than give her class a lecture on the important influence of ancient Greece on modern society, Rich divided the room into "cities," which were modeled after Greek city-states.

After some explanation and historical background, each city wrote a personal pledge, which Rich casually compared to the U.S. Constitution. A few days later, the cities were busy at work building temples that would rival the Parthenon.

Of course, no trip to Greece could be complete without a visit to the ancient Olympic games, which Rich recreated with relay races and physical competitions.

"Instead of just looking at pictures in a book or reading about what towns were like, they are actually thinking about and creating history . . . and they loved it," Rich said. "Now, they can tell me anything about ancient Greece when I ask them."

Same goes for Titemore's class. Before, many of her students didn't know what a rainforest was. Now, they can name the four different layers of the rainforest (forest floor, understory, canopy, and emergent).

Although the rainforest unit for Titemore's class is about to wrap up, the rainforest will not be cut down anytime soon.

"We'll be studying the Incas, and they live pretty close by," Titemore said.

---

E-mail: lwarner@desnews.com, jdoria@desnews.com