This week was spent preparing for and presenting our watersheds to the Mayor and City Council of Gleasonia.
On Monday, students were once again recruited by me, the proud mayor of Gleasonia, to assist with our water issues. This time however, I asked the scientists to help find solutions to the problems for one of the five areas that they investigated the previous week.
For the remainder of the week, students used their knowledge to create a three dimensional watershed to demonstrate the consequences of adding pollution to our watershed in the form of animal waste, too much fertilizer, stormwater run-off, and sediment. Then, they were asked to employ one of the techniques they had researched to see if it helped to protect the watershed. Riparian Zones, fencing, rain gardens, and increases in permeable surfaces have shown promise in aiding Gleasonia's troubled watershed.
As science is about observation and data, students had to test their watershed with and without modification and complete data tables to show the efficacy of their clean-up method. The best part of these days was the excitement the kids had when their water samples were more clear or the run-off stopped flowing. Below are images of the students building and testing their models.
On Friday, students presented their watersheds to the Gleasonia City Council (their classmates) and the mayor. Each group shared their watershed and its pollutants both before and after adding modifications to improve the water quality. In every class, with almost every watershed, the added modifications saw definite improvements in water quality. Riparian zones and fences were by far the most popular methods, but they were not the only modification added to Flinderation Run and Sweetwater Creek. The pictures below show all of the wonderful projects created by the dedicated scientific teams.
Finally, I wanted to say a HUGE thank you for all of the donations that have come in this past week. Our class has been flooded with plastic containers of all shapes and sizes, aluminum trays, toothpicks, paper towels, aluminum foil, and tape. Due to your kindness, all students were able to create a watershed model using what was available in my classroom. Thank you again, from all of us :)
There will be a quiz on Monday on everything that we have learned about the watershed unit.