New Gisborne, Victoria - March 18, 2005 - A mystery tortoise that arrived unexpectedly at school turned the day's lessons upside down.

The tortoise, found on a doorstep, instantly captured the students' imagination and presented a unique learning opportunity for the lower primary students of the Gisborne Montessori School.

Their teacher, Emily Walters, quickly seized the opportunity to create a magical learning day. 'The students were absolutely enthralled with the tortoise so we decided to adopt it' said Emily. The class had to understand the tortoise's needs, design a shelter and determine how to pay for it. ''It all had to be done fairly fast - the tortoise was waiting!'

To impart a large amount of information quickly, Emily asked the students to lay on their backs and close their eyes while she read out the research notes. 'I asked the students to imagine the ideal tortoise shelter' said Emily. They came up with some wonderful and creative ideas like feeding tubes, filters and an automatic drainage system for the pond.

The best of each students' designs will be used to create the shelter.

When the children met the tortoise they were enthralled! They asked to sketch the tortoise and lay quietly examining the tortoise intently. The children were very keen to respect the tortoise and monitored each others noise levels.

Raising funds to build the tortoise's shelter created yet another opportunity for the students. Having considered a number of options, they decided to plan and run a 'Name the Tortoise' Competition. Between themselves they designed and made the tickets and a colourful poster decorated with tortoise designs, set up the stand and decided who would man it. Ticket sales started at 3.15pm; half an hour later they had raised the tidy sum of $31!

'This is an excellent example of an integrated curriculum at work' said school manager Suzanne Fitzmaurice. 'Emily combined language, mathematics, SOSE, science and art as well as refining research, communication, negotiation and conflict resolution skills - all in one action packed day. The children were so fired up - they didn't even want to stop for lunch! It was just a matter of guiding them appropriately during the day.'

The competition was won by Daniel; the tortoise is now known as ‘Big Shell’.