04/11/2006
Washington Oak gets 'puzzling' project
By: Jessica Selby

The students at Washington Oak Elementary School are helping the Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Interstate highway system.

The school was given a single black and white piece of a 39-piece puzzle created by the RIDOT to form the biggest interstate map in the smallest state.
Each town or city in the state was represented by a single black and white outline-style puzzle piece. The pieces were distributed to schools in the areas represented to be colored, designed and elaborated on.

The students at Washington Oak used stickers of a cross to represent churches, horses to represent farms, fire engines to symbolize fire stations, and golf clubs to acknowledge golf courses. They also drew in side roads off of the major arterial roadways that traverse the town and acknowledged the bodies of water.

"Coventry, such as its history and geography and mapping, is already a major part of the third grade curriculum so, when we heard about this project, it couldn't have worked out any better," said Diane Hunter, a third grade teacher at Washington Oak. "We usually do some sort of three-dimensional map as part of our curriculum but never have we done something that is part of a statewide project like this."

"Someone's husband in our school works at the state Department of Transportation and knew that the third grade was working on mapping and Coventry's geography so they told us about the statewide project," Hunter said.

The puzzle piece that was delivered to Washington Oak to represent Coventry in the map was broken into four smaller pieces, the western, eastern, southern and northern sections. Each one of the four third grade classes was given a section and all 97 third graders were given some sort of responsibility in completing the task. Some colored in the grassy areas and others the bodies of water. Some, Hunter said, drew the roadways or placed decals.

"Just about every single person in the third grade helped complete the map in some way," Hunter said.

Ethan Lesnett and Alex Towey, both students in Hunter's class at Washington Oak, said that they helped color the grass in the western end of Coventry. Brittany McSparren and Brooke Taylor, students of Hunter, also helped. They were in charge of decals and the first one they selected, McSparren said, was one to represent the Dunkin Donuts on Tiogue Avenue.

In total, the Coventry map stretched approximately 3 feet wide by 10 feet long. The students left the finished product on display in the foyer in front of the school gymnasium until last week when a representative from the Rhode Island Department of Transportation came to pick it up.

"The kids are really excited about this," Hunter said. "It is not too often that you get to see a map of the entire state put together in puzzle pieces, especially one created by kids."

Once all 39 puzzle pieces are collected, the entire map will be unveiled at an event that will coincide with the national celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Interstate on Thursday, June 29, in Newport.

Students in Tracy LeFort's art classes at Deering Middle School are completing the puzzle piece for West Warwick.