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! 

On February 23, my fourth grade classes went to Schafer State Park to water test.  We had SNOW on the ground.. Students cleared snow off the picnic tables in order to set up their testing kits.  They all did a great job. We did our dissolved oxygen 4 or 5 times because we kept getting a high number, 16 or so.  I didn’t think that with the water being colder it could hold that  much more oxygen. But they were correct!

They were cold so they got on the bus and ate lunch and warmed up.  Then we all got off the bus again for them to do their scavenger hunt.  Each team had an iPad to take pictures or videos and they all set off. They had to find things like a berry that survived the winter (I knew they would find snowberries), new life starting, something from fall, different types of trees, a sign of erosion and other things.  The kids had a blast even though it was cold.

After they returned they uploaded their pictures or videos and started to work on their presentations.  They put them all in Google Slide and made a slide show which they shared with the whole class. Many of the students used videos which were hard to show once in the slide show.  All students loved the activity and said they hope to do one again. All of the presentations were great. Many students did not get the WA state tree correct – and some of they said in their slideshow “ here is the tree that we thought was the WA state tree “  sorry Mrs. Niels. It was cute.