Starting in 2016, 8th-grade students monitor the rain gardens located on either side of the GHS entrance. These rain gardens contain a wide variety of native trees, grasses, and flowers. You can read more about the purpose of these gardens here.

 

The idea for this long-term project is based on curriculum from a 'Teachers On The Estuary' class I attended this summer. My hope is that the 2016-17 data will become the baseline and monitoring continues so future students can compare their data to past years.

 

• How can we study a change in our environment and why is that important?

• What variables can we measure? 

• What is driving change?

• What questions pop up? How can we find answers to those questions?

 

We'll use a mobile Picture Post to support our monitoring. 

 

My quarter long period 5 classes will take over this project. We'll continue to take our monthly photos with the Picture Post, then we'll photograph and collect data for 5 specific plants: Oak Leaf Hydrangea, Autumn Brilliance Serviceberry tree, Pink Flowering Dogwood tree, Heritage River Birch tree, and Red Sprite Winterberry shrub.