April

Systems:

The Gray Area mystery continued to unfold this month as we considered the role of erosion in the problem of the dying fish.  Students tested the turbidity (amount of sediment) of the Gray Area waters and found that one in particular had a problem with soil runoff.  Our suspects became the local farm, cattle ranch, logging business, and surprisingly the growing deer population in the area’s wilderness park.  Students followed the chain of events from the hunting of the deer’s natural predators to the population boom, overgrazing, and lack of plant cover to stop the erosion of sediment.  They also researched the effects of dirty water on aquatic life.

Critical and Creative Thinking:

Students enjoyed getting creative as they were called on to design hats for our fictional friends the ATs.  Using this prompt they came up with many clever strategies to help solve their pest problem.

Can you design hats

For four-legged ATS

Who are bothered so much

By troublesome gnats?

They also created original haiku poems to describe their experience in Jones Gap State Park and continued in their novel study of Rachel Carson.

M^3 (Mentoring Mathematical Minds) Digging for Data:

Students continue to work hard on analyzing data in our math unit.  They have evaluated various charts and graphs for information that can and cannot be gained and practiced translating between modes of organizing information.