Wetlands Outdoor Education

On May 18th, Barret Miller came to our school to help our outdoor ed class prepare for this week. This week we are interpreting to grade 4 students at Rivers Wetland Centre of Excellence. Many people in my class were concerned that they wouldn’t be able to hold the students attention. They were also concerned that they wouldn’t be able to explain the concepts to the students. Barret Miller helped us forget those worries by giving us helpful tricks and ideas to keep our audience’s attention. He told us that we could show biodiversity using jelly beans. We could fill one jar with colourful jelly beans and another with black jelly beans and ask the students which jar they would rather eat. Most kids will say they want to eat the colourful ones. The colourful jar represents the wetland with lots of plants and animals and the black jar of jelly represents an ecosystem with not many types of plants and animals. We also reviewed our topics that we will be presenting this week. On Monday my ...

Tomorrow Mr. Miller will be doing a presentation on interpretation for the Grade 10 Outdoor Ed class. We are having this presentation to prepare us for the interpretation we are going to give to the Grade 3 and 4 classes that are coming to the wetland on May 29th and 31st. For this presentation the class is preparing questions to ask Mr. Miller in relation to the interpretation we will give. I will be interpreting greenhouse gases and the water cycle to the students. For the greenhouse gases part, I will ask these questions; -How would you explain the complex subject of greenhouse gases to a Grade 4 student? -How can I get the students to care about the greenhouse gases they are producing? And how can I suggest they reduce their contribution to greenhouse gases? For the water cycle part, I will ask this question; -What can I do to help the students understand evaporation, since it isn’t really something that they see?

On May 14, the Grade 10 Outdoor Ed class went canoeing on the Saskatchewan River with instructor  Jack Coulson. We started at the dam by placing our canoes horizontal to the shore to load up. This time we had 3 in a canoe instead of 2, so that the canoe would be more stable and we could have more power. In my canoe Femke sat in the bow, Noah sat in the stern and I sat in the middle of the canoe. The first thing we did was learn to ferry across the river. We did this by starting horizontal to the shore and paddling upstream, this caused the canoe to move straight across the river. We then followed Mr. Coulson to our first rapids. The first rapids were steady so we all easily flowed through.  A few times during the trip we rafted up so that we could talk about how to get through the rapids. One canoe got stuck in a strainer, so we saw what can happen if we get stuck and how to deal with that. We then carried on, another canoe got struck on a rock while going through some rapids....

What I learnt during the quick wetland tour: - there are turtles living in the wetland - skunks are the main predator for goose eggs - insects get plants to grow a home that the insects can live in the growth -we saw a decomposing muskrat. We could tell it was a muskrat because of it’s long teeth that are used to chew cattails. - lady slipper flowers are related to orchids

Today our grade 10 class went canoeing. I saw that you have to hold on to the gunwales and keep low while getting on the canoe, otherwise you will be unstable. We practiced j-strokes. J-strokes help keep your canoe go in a straight line without having to switch sides to paddle on. We also learnt to brake by holding the paddle still vertically in the water. We then learnt to raft up, which means that all the canoes come together and hold on to the canoes beside you. For the first part I started to paddle in the stern then we switched and I paddled in the bow of the canoe. We also learnt about hyperventilating and the rule 1-10-1, which stands for you will hyperventilate for 1 minutes, you have 10 minutes to get to shore, and 1 hour to stay conscious. I enjoyed the canoeing and me and my partner did pretty well. For our moving water canoeing next time Mr. Coulson said to bring a windbreaker jacket, extra clothes in a waterproof bag, something to get the water out of the canoe.

May 4th 2018, the Grade 10 Outdoor Ed class tested the water from the Wetland Centre of Excellence. We tested/recorded: -water depth -water temperature  -oxygen in the water by adding chemicals -pH level by using a sonde machine pH=7.2 -calibration by using a sonde machine -ammonia in the water by adding certain chemicals -phosphate in the water by adding certain chemicals -transparency by using a transparency tube Overall the water tests brought good results, although there was some 

Freeman Tilden made some principles to help others do their best to interpret successfully. These principles can be summarized to relate to audience, reveal information about the topic, be a combination of many arts, provoke interest in the topic, and be a part of a greater whole. When interpreting you should: 1. Try to relate to your audience. Consider the age, group make-up, and if they are local or not . By knowing this you can determine how you can relate what you are teaching to their personal experiences. Answer questions that are most commonly asked or questions that may be about the general area, such as what trees are common to that area because you will be seeing a lot of them throughout your interpretation. 2. Next you should reveal information about the topic. Try to do this in an interesting way that your audience will remember, such as using a metaphor or a simile. For example you could compare a ducks feet to swimming flippers and ask you audience how the flippers ma...