Imagine a classroom full of active, curious and motivated 5 to 9 year olds who have been together from one to 4 years with the same teachers whose sole interest is to aid them in developing the cognitive tools that feed their individual needs that aids their transition through a swirl of mythic to romantic understanding.

When people first discover that I teach a class of children from 5 to 9 years of age, the questions start, "How do you do it... teach so many different ages? Are you Montessori? Is this a special class? Is it a special school? How do you teach reading, writing and social studies? Don't the older children get bored? How do the younger children keep up? How do you organize lessons? How do you manage curriculum? What is sacrificed? Where did you learn to do this? Why do you teach this way? I can't imagine how you do it?"

I propose to address all the above questions by presenting how I created and implemented my I.E. Mythic / Romantic unit on sketching. My Sketching unit, Sketch, Sketches and Sketching is a roadmap for teachers in developing cognitive tools through sketching. The tools aid students in transitioning to more complex understandings.

In today's classrooms it is a challenge to choose or create tasks and activities that instill curricula, develop tools while maintaining motivation. I believe IE meets these challenges by offering teachers a framework that helps them present curricula in a compelling, interesting and pragmatic way.