Literate About Biodiversity

Waterville Historical Museum presentation

2009-10-04T19:13:00.000-07:00

This team of Waterville School students was invited to do a presentation at the 50th anniversary celebration of the Waterville Historical Museum on October 3, 2009. Students shown include Zak (8th), Alexis (4th), Nolan (6th), Elizabeth (6th), Kelsey (6th) and Katja (5th). Also shown are Waterville mayor, Royal Devaney, Museum curator Lori Ludeman and teacher, Diane Petersen. About 60 people attended the celebration.
The students showed the GLEF video of the Adopt-a-Farmer project, described in detail the Literate About Biodiversity project and explained Photo Point Monitoring.

Big Sage

2009-06-10T12:50:00.000-07:00

American Robin

2009-06-10T12:23:00.000-07:00

Western Racer snake

2009-06-08T11:17:00.000-07:00

Northern flicker

2009-06-08T11:14:00.000-07:00

Black ant

2009-06-08T10:45:00.000-07:00

Sagebrush lizard

2009-06-08T10:40:00.000-07:00

Rattlesnake

2009-06-08T10:36:00.000-07:00

Short horned lizard

2009-06-08T10:17:00.000-07:00

Black widow

2009-06-02T09:53:00.000-07:00

Side blotched lizard

2009-06-02T09:49:00.001-07:00

Western skink

2009-06-02T09:49:00.000-07:00

Jumping spider

2009-06-02T09:46:00.000-07:00

Great horned owl

2009-06-02T09:45:00.000-07:00

Garter snake

2009-06-02T09:38:00.000-07:00

Spokane River Mile Trip

2009-05-18T12:23:00.000-07:00

Presentation Powerpoint

2008-06-16T12:51:00.000-07:00

Hi I’m Jessica and I go to Waterville jr. hi. In Waterville the goal is that every student will learn lots of scientific content, meet the state standards and do projects that connect to the outside world. Today we’re here to share with you how we plan to meet this goal. Here today are a few students who will help tell you about our projects. Please welcome Julia, Nolan, Kelsey, Kalah, Elizabeth, and Zak.

Elizabeth
We will begin by sharing a video that shows the Adopt-a-Farmer project that has been going on for over 10 years-it started before I was even born. Please notice how it meets state standards, uses the scientific process, is organized, and is connected with the community. After that we will tell you about our schoolwide project, Literate about Biodiversity. We got started on that with a $10,000 Toyota Tapestry grant.
Now, let’s watch the video.

The video can be viewed on the Edutopia website under "Leapin' Lizards" or at the University of Washington NatureMapping website address given at the end of this presentation under Teachers NatureMapping Around the State/ShortHorned Lizard Project.

2008-06-16T12:50:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth
Everything we do starts with a question. For example, in our classrooms we ask essential questions for everything we study. In science when we do NatureMapping our question is What do you see and where do you see it?

Nolan
When we collect data about our animals, we always ask the same questions: What’s it called? Where did you find it? How many did you see, What size was it? What is the species code? Are you sure? This way we can report our data to Karen at the UW.
Each classroom data sheet iincludes some other information as well.

Kalah
To get ready for the year’s study, the teachers got together in the summer and made this giant chart. They used sticky notes because they knew their plans would probably change. Each teacher figured out ways to include reading, writing, technology and math with their science topic.

2008-06-16T12:47:00.000-07:00

Kelsey
Karen asked the teachers to mark on the plans when they would need help with technology and science. Then she scheduled visits for teacher training.

Zak
There are three kinds of questions we can ask about our scientific topics. They are descriptive, comparative and correlative.

Kalah
Here are the simple descriptive questions each class is wondering about.;

Zak
This graph shows an example of a comparative question. We were comparing how many horny toads were seen in each month.

Nolan
When Karen showed our data to scientists, they often wondered why we didn’t record sightings in the winter. They thought maybe we were missing some sightings because the farmers weren’t in the fields working. The students knew that there was snow on the ground in Waterville in the Winter. However, when they put average precipitation data and sightings on a graph, they saw no correlation. They realized that the temperature determijned if the precipitation was rain or snow. So they knew that they needed to actually put temperature data in with the sightings data.

2008-06-16T12:45:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth
In our Literate About Biodiversity Project, each class is helping to answer the question “What is the biodiversity of the Waterville Plateau?”
Now we will show you how these ideas fit into each of our classroom investigations.

Kalah
Everybody in the school K-8 would use science to improve reading, writing and speaking. We would work together to write a field guide of common species, make a walking tour map of drought tolerant plantings, add pictures to the school mural, and plant a native plant garden.

Julia
The kindergarten is studying spiders.
They caught a lot of spiders, put them in jars and then they studied them. One was pregnant, they watched it have babies and then it died. A lot of other kids brought in spiders also. I brought in a black widow that I found in my garage. We have a whole bunch and they are very common around Waterville. As the kids learned facts about spiders on the internet and in books, the teacher recorded them on charts and pretty soon the kids could read the charts. They took data sheets, looked at their spiders and wrote the information down on the data sheets. They had a middle school mentor who helped them. People who study spiders are called Arachnologists.
Kalah
Everybody in the Waterville School is helping everybody else collect data. Whenever we find an insect,interesting rock,flower, spider, or other animal that a class is learning about, we bring it down to the class and fill out a data sheet for them.

Julia
The first graders are collecting specimens of butterflies and moths. They are learning that every butterfly is not a monarch. In Waterville we have lots of different butterflies. The first graders have found cocoons, caterpillars, and live butterflies to show all the parts of the life cycle. Right now they are each watching their own crysalis to see how it hatches.

Kalah
The 2nd graders really know their birds! First they studied owls. They read fiction and non-fiction books about owls and learned to identify the owls of the Waterville Plateau. One of the books was Owl Moon. Then they used field guides, puppets and real stuffed birds to learn about the other common birds. They chose three birds for the field guide-the flicker, the robin and the great horned owl . The kids are working in groups to write a field guide page for each bird. Some of the artistic kids like Kristina will be drawing sketches for the field guide. One interesting thing that happened was that all the kids thought we had lots of crows around Waterville, but they found out they were really ravens.

2008-06-16T12:40:00.000-07:00

The 3rd grade entomologists started thinking about insects by making models. Then they learned the scientific name and characteristics of the 8 orders. After they chose their favorite order, the students made posters to show what they learned. This orthoptera picture was made by one of our deaf students named Colt. Last year our class made large computer posters for the orders. To find out what insects live in the Waterville Plateau, they will do a bioblitz on the schoolgrounds and people will also bring in insects. Students made up a song to help them remember the insects order. The song will be placed on a podcast.

Nolan:
For years I’ve heard about the 4th grade horny toad study because my dad is one of the cooperating farmers. I remember the first day he brought me home a horny toad. It looked like he had a bucket of dirt, but the horny toad was buried under the dirt. They are so well camouflaged, they look just like dirt. Do you ever see horny toads at your place, Nolan?
Yeah, I see a lot in the summer in the field above my house. They’re usually in a ditch by an old fence that is on north side of the field. One time I kept one in captivity for 2 months.
Elizabeth
Desi told us that she kept one in captivity for a whole winter. It was an adult and could eat mealworms.
Kelsey:
Two summers ago, my mom found one in our front yard in town. All the kids on the block came over and we put her into a big washtub under a tree. We shook some ants from the tree down for her to eat. The next morning she had 9 live babies and they started eating ants right away. We called Mrs. Petersen right away and she came over and took pictures.
Nolan: Now that we are the official herpetologists of the school, we will need to fill out data sheets for each of our horny toad sightings and the other reptiles we find. We are also busy writing 3 field guide pages for horny toads, western rattlesnakes and the skink which are common to our area. Some of us will draw pictures for the mural.

The fifth grade class will be studying geology and soils. We will also be taking many trips. One of these trips is the trip to Douglas Creek where we will be studying soil shifting, erosion, human impact on the area and doing sit spots. I have learned much about soils from my dad, Chad Kruger, because as a scientist he works on direct seeding and soil conservation. Another one of the trips we will be taking will be to Dry Falls where we will be studying about the ice age and the Missoula floods. We will also be watching pre-trip videos and drawing land formationsl.

Kelsey, have you noticed all the different wildflowers growing in the field by the cemetary?
Yes, and I know that the 6th grade will be going out to collect samples there, in Pine Canyon and at Douglas Creek. They want to find out what grows naturally so we can plant those things in our native plant garden at the school.
They will also be trying to find out what kinds of plants are needed by the animals who live on the plateau.
Kalah
The second grade is learning to find their own homes on terrain Navigator. 4th graders help farmers locate horny toad sightings on Arview and By the time students are in the 6th grade, they are locating their own data for plant sightings on ArcView mapping software.

Jessica:This is a picture of Pine Canyon. I am in the 7th grade and we are one of the classes going down to Pine canyon. We go down to the canyon to; collect plants, take photo points, measure slopes, and collect scat. I am 1 of the 2 photographers, what we do may seem simple... but really it takes a lot of responsibility. We have requirements, we have to know how to read lat. And long on a G.P.S, we have to be able to read a compass, and we have to take pictures of every plant that is collected at the trip down that day. We have teams . They are; the photographers, the plant collectors, the tree measurers, the slope measures, and the scat team…(crinkle nose for affects!) in each of those teams the members work together. Lets just say theres never, nothing to do.

2008-06-16T12:37:00.000-07:00

While the 8th graders are in Pine Canyon their focus is allot about the animals. They have scat finders, bone collectors, trail finders. Although they focus a lot on the animals they still do other things like; recording tracks, reading topo. maps, and database management. They have a variety of tools like NatureTracker, calipers, tape measures, and other handheld devices.

The 3rd year high school Spanish class is helping us out in two ways. First, they are translating NatureMapping wildlife fact sheets into Spanish and those will be on the website. They are finding out a lot about the Spanish language and the English language with this project. Second, they are reconstructing a coyote skeleton that we found as road kill outside of town. This picture shows a reconstruction project from another school. Right now, they are working on cleaning all those stinky bones.

Our school has the library in the center with classrooms all around it. On the outside walls of the library is painted a mural of our area. It includes the Cascade Mts., Badger Mt, the Waterville Plateau and Douglas Creek. This year student art from each class will be added to the mural to show the wildlife of the area. We also plan to make display boxes in the big windows for samples to be kept in.
This is a sample of two pages in our field guide. Each class will contribute 4 pages about 3 animals.

Some students will be producing a map of the school grounds and the town of Waterville that shows where people can find examples of native plantings that don’t use much water. You see, even though our town is called Waterville, we sometimes have a water shortage and we want to show people one way to not use so much water.

I have been working with our technology mentor, Jessica, to make the Rattlesnake field guide pages. She also taught us to read township range and section before the farmers came in. Another mentor, Taylor, is helping me learn all about using ArcView. These girls get one middle school credit for their work.

2008-06-16T12:31:00.000-07:00

We went to a training class at the beginning of the year with Karen and the rest of the teachers at Waterville. It went from 3:30(4:ish)- 7:30ish. We learned all about the technology and what each utensil was and how the inside of the machine worked. Also, we had to learn about each of the programs on the computer. It, was cool being able to learn about little tricks you can use (ex. Ctrl+z, ctrl+a). It is a very interesting class to take and we got paid minimum wage to help with this class.

This is a picture of all of the mentors with Dan and Karen, at the beginning of the year. They were explaining to us the responsibility’s we would have as a mentor. We also signed up for the projects that best fit our interests.

Jessica:The pictures above are pictures of a few of the mentors at work. Our responsibilities as mentors include; working with the students on the maps and filed guide pages, helping the teachers with technology, and making sure we are in the right room doing the right assignment at the right time.

We have been able to do some projects to help our community.
The city of Waterville wanted maps made showing all the trees on public property so two students made those last year on ArcView. Now the high school science class is adding tress found on private property. This will help track disease and insects.
We work with the BLM at Douglas Creek to do photo points. Photos of the same area taken over time will help us see changes in the creek and riparian area.
Elizabeth
The 6th grade is working with the conservation district and local farmers to see if they can control weeds by planting native wildflowers along some roadways.
Another of our recent projects is making farm field atlases for local farmers.
Another of our recent projects is making farm field atlases for local farmers.

I’ve worked on atlases for 3 different farmers. We have to meet with the farmer and find out exactly what he wants in his book. Then we locate each of his fields on the ArcView map, isolate it in a different color and export each field in a close-up view and as part of the entire farm. We then have to put the pictures into a ppt and add all the information the farmer requested. That might include the name and address of the landlord, the number of acres, the legal description, the driving directions, the farm name, and the common name of the field. It’s a lengthy process, but they do pay us and it’s very satisfying when you are finished. Two other students have been working on this as well and we have more books ordered.

Literate About Biodiversity

2008-06-16T12:27:00.001-07:00

Another opportunity that comes along with this project is speaking engagements. This picture shows three Waterville students in San Diego at the ESRI conference showing Jane Goodall how the prototype of the touch map works. They were able to zoom in on her study site in Africa and show her where Waterville was. These students shared the keynote speaking time with Ms. Goodall at that national convention and it was quite exciting meeting her.

It’s very important for your school and the tech person to set up an organized way of keeping track of your data. You need to know where to store files, what to call them and who will have access to them.
We set up classroom files the same for each class on the server.
We taught each class to save files in the same way. That way we don’t have to learn a new way each year.
Only teachers and mentors can access these files.

On the Naturemapping website you can find lots of lessons for teachers and students. We have tried some of them out and some of our work is included in the student section. We hope you will take a look at it.
Thank you for listening.