Mr. Carter and students exploring Mill Creek
I had the pleasure of working with an after school science club and their teacher/facilitator, Greg Carter, at a local middle school. Witnessing the students explore and learn was certainly a highlight of my position. The club is student guided, the students ask questions and search for answers to their questions.
In the fall the students were very interested in investigating for crayfish in the stream near their school. The students decided where and when to set the crayfish traps, and also made decisions about the type of bait to use. They made predictions about what they would find in the traps and refined their predictions as they learned more about crayfish and the stream habitat.
Mr. Carter and a student opening a crayfish trap
The most surprising animals that the students found in one of their traps was an American Eel. Greg took the eel finding as an opportunity to teach the students about catadromous fish, like the eel, that live in fresh water and travel to salt water to spawn and anadromous fish that live in salt water and travel to fresh water to spawn.
In the winter and spring the group was mostly focused on the insect inhabitants of their stream. The students collected stones from the stream to investigate for benthic critters and used kicknets to collect free-swimming insects. When the students first began their insect study they only saw scuds, but as their eyes became trained they spotted snails, leeches, and caddisfly larvae. The students also documented the variety of colors and sizes of the scuds they were collecting and they chose to publish their scud data record to the Vital Signs website.
The students also helped design the first ever aquatic macroinvertebrate species identification card for an aquatic insect. Their feedback about what helped them identify the insects that they investigated was indispensable!
Winter water quality testing in Mill Creek
Throughout the school year the students monitored water quality parameters. They measured the dissolved oxygen, pH, and temperature of the stream water and Mr. Carter plans to continue to collect this data in the future to assess change over time.
The students in the after school program chose to host a Clean the Creek! event in April to celebrate the Natural Leaders Network’s Get Outside! Day.
We learned many valuable lessons in the first year of using Vital Signs in an after school program. Greg Carter has shared that he plans to continue the after school group next year and will use some of our lessons learned to expand the program to include more students.