Debris Day with Living Classrooms
by Jeff Chandler
November, 2014
EE Week joined Living Classrooms and other environmental organizations at the end of October to help teach local DC elementary students about stream quality and environmental health. Located in the middle of the Anacostia River, Kingman Island provided a great venue to think about what makes a healthy river run smoothly.
After a clean up of the island, the students explored environmental topics through a series of quick educational stations, each with a different lesson related to watersheds, pollution or environmental health. Equipped with a large flat “river board” at our station, it was the students’ job to add natural materials such as stones, sticks and dirt so that the path of the river channel changed to slow the “flow” of a marble representing the stream water. (This activity was adapted from the Izaak Walton League of America’s Creek Freaks program.)
November, 2014
EE Week joined Living Classrooms and other environmental organizations at the end of October to help teach local DC elementary students about stream quality and environmental health. Located in the middle of the Anacostia River, Kingman Island provided a great venue to think about what makes a healthy river run smoothly.
After a clean up of the island, the students explored environmental topics through a series of quick educational stations, each with a different lesson related to watersheds, pollution or environmental health. Equipped with a large flat “river board” at our station, it was the students’ job to add natural materials such as stones, sticks and dirt so that the path of the river channel changed to slow the “flow” of a marble representing the stream water. (This activity was adapted from the Izaak Walton League of America’s Creek Freaks program.)
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Open the activity up to discussion while the students are working on their stream beds. Prompt them with questions like, “How can we tell if a stream is healthy or not?” or “How do trees help contribute to stream health?” Ask them to point out pieces of their model stream beds that mimic the real stream features they’ve identified.
For more information on running this activity and the lesson behind it, or for other Creek Freaks’ virtual trainings, visit www.creekfreaks.net/training.
For more information on running this activity and the lesson behind it, or for other Creek Freaks’ virtual trainings, visit www.creekfreaks.net/training.
