STEM Trip For 7th Graders: Visiting The DNR
The seventh graders enjoyed an educational field trip last Friday to the Department of Natural Resources. It was such a cold day, but the students were excited to have some hands-on activities to keep them moving! We divided into two groups, and the staff helped the groups with two neat tasks. First, we discussed the concept of "decomposition rate." A staff member passed out lots of items, from an apple core, to a paper towel, to a glass bottle, to an aluminum can. The students were then told to stand up and order them from the least amount of time an item would take to decompose, to the longest amount of time to decompose. What an eye opener! Did you know it takes 2-4 weeks for a paper towel to decompose? And 200 years for an aluminum can to decompose? And how about as much as 600 years for a glass bottle to decompose?
Before we moved to the second activity, the students looked through microscopes at samples of the water right outside the Department of Natural Resources facility.
We couldn't believe that in almost every sample, we saw microplastics! The activity really made us think about what happens to the "trash" we discard near our waterways!
The last activity was super cool: dissecting a squid! The students had to first identify the external parts of the mollusk, extract the mouth and esophagus (Ewww!), determine if theirs was a male or female, and then cut out the gills! This was not for the faint of heart! The students did an excellent job! Thank you to Mrs. Moser for organizing the field trip, and for the chaperones and seventh grade faculty for making the day possible!
