LIVERMORE FALLS – Students from Livermore Falls Middle School recently took a look at their town through different eyes.

Five teachers and members of the Androscoggin Historical Society took the entire eighth-grade student body – 107 in all – on a historical tour of the town.

They walked them down Main Street. They focused their attention on historical buildings and bridges.

Dennis Stires of the Historical Society described the town’s buildings and businesses, their past and present. He also showed historical photographs of the Androscoggin River, many with bridges that no longer exist.

The school created the Maine unit studies program as a community-based interdisciplinary program titled “Life Along the Androscoggin – Past and Present.” All five eighth-grade teachers worked together, using the community as a classroom and basing the exercises on Maine Learning Results, said Debbie Finlay, a participating social studies teacher.

“We want to bring our kids back to the area and give them a little history of the town,” she said.

The program began with a visit to the local Catholic cemetery, where the students collected data: names, dates of birth and dates of death. This information was used in math class to produce census data and create graphs, charts and tables.

Students researched historical information on the people in the cemetery, using it to create fictional dialogues for English class.

For the history section, the Historical Society partnered with the school for the tour and two photo history books recently released for the students’ perusal.

The students will go to local streams and the river to perform water-quality testing for the science lesson. Five students are also creating a movie documenting the program.

The results of the projects are scheduled to be on display at the school June 16 at eighth-grade promotion.

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