Wild and Wonderful Wetlands

This past Thursday, I got back into the practicum swing of things with what I would probably consider to be my favorite program: Wonderful Wetlands. Why it's my favorite I can't say for sure, I think I just really like the diversity of all the activities. You've got a nice somewhat-formal powerpoint lecture to kick it off, there's a chance for the kids to sit down at a stereoscope and do some laboratory observation, there's the down-and-dirty hands-on experience of dipping in the wetland and then sorting the macros they find, and of course there's a an energy-burning game that even carries an educational message with it. Oh, and the new addition of a fun and engaging hike around the wetland is the cherry on top!

Aaron, Sara, Laurina, and I had the privilege of working with a great, inquisitive, well-mannered group of 5th graders. It was a big group though, and there's NO WAY the program would have been as successful as it was had Jane not decided to stop by and see if we could use any help. She was our fire-starter, bell-ringer, and all-around awesome supporter. We were using the new WW schedule, which worked really well overall, I thought, but when that schedule is used, there must be an additional person on to be support/coordinator. Also, when that schedule is used, the people teaching that day must do some dipping as part of the set-up routine, since there will be one group of students who are supposed to be sorting before any macros have been collected.

I tried something a little different with the scopes, which I thought I should share, although I'm not sure if it was a success or a failure. Rather than having them sit at a scope for a minute and then rotate until everyone had gotten to see everything, I had the students just stay at one scope with one specimen for five minutes while they drew a picture of what they saw in the scope, and wrote down some observations. After that, I went around the room and had each student talk for 30 seconds or so about what they observed. It seemed to go pretty well. I'm not sure if the students were really exposed to as many specimens as they would normally be, but I felt the skills they practiced in making observations and then presenting on those observations were a worthy trade-off.

One last thing! The students REALLY seemed to like the wetland hike. We tried it with the scavenger hunt and they were all really into it. I highly recommend including the hike when you teach!