The 2017-18 School Year is the 2nd year of our NOAA sponsored “Climate Resiliency Fellows” Program.  Our aim is to “Create a dynamic community of informed teachers committed to involving their students in learning about and engaging in local climate change issues and climate resiliency projects.”  Many thanks to all of our hard working teachers and students!

The following is from Marshall Middle School Citizen Science Institute Teacher Tom Condon:

The Story of Our Oaks

On the cold  morning of October 12th, 2017 we ( our 58 Citizen Science Institute students and Matthew and I) made our way  down Marine Bay drive near the Farmers Market when we came upon a boulevard of Red Oaks dropping their acorns in abundance.  In a matter of 10 minutes we disembarked the bus, sack lunch bags in hand, and collected all we could in 10 minutes. Back on the bus we had an upwards of 1000 acorns.  

The next Monday we did the sinker test on the acorns where we kept the sinkers and tossed the floaters.  From there students loosely packed gallon bags of acorns and stored them in the school’s walk-in fridge for the winter.

This spring we took the acorns out of the fridge and began to plant them in 4 inch pots.  We had close to 80% germination. Studying weather, climate, and the causes and impacts of climate change in science class, students were charged with finding suitable homes for our trees.  Hence was born our “Save the Planet One Tree at a Time” project. Students working in teams created short PSA video clips to encourage other students in our school to take a tree home. An important resource students used for guiding questions and information for their videos came from NASA’s ClimateKids website: https://climatekids.nasa.gov/menu/weather-and-climate/

Thanks!

Tom Condon