Echo Field Trip

Last week, we had the opportunity to visit Echo Leahy Center for Lake Champlain in order to further our learning about watersheds and the issues that impact them. First, we listened to a presentation from the Lake Champlain Basin program about invasive species in Lake Champlain, why they are troublesome, and what is being done and how we can help. Then, we helped to tell the story of Lake Champlain's history with fossils and artifacts. Did you know...that a beluga whale was found in Charlotte? How did it get to Vermont? We also built our own model of a watershed with a housing development, roads, a farm, and thought about ways we might be able to prevent the farm runoff from getting into our lake. We talked about impervious surfaces and absorbent surfaces, too.

 A HUGE thank you to the chaperones who helped us make this trip successful. Thank you, also, to Echo for providing us with this field trip (and the bus!) at no cost! (Third grade teachers took a class at Echo this summer to write the curriculum; Echo gave us a field trip as a thank you for helping to further develop the education program offerings at Echo.)

Pilot Project: Minecraft

Mrs. Rankin worked with a small group of third graders recently to try out Minecraft (the oh-so-popular building video game) as a possibility for sharing research related to our recent World Geography research project.

Here's an excerpt from Mrs. Rankin's blog about the project:

Due to the small group nature of our project we were able to team students together so that experts could support novice players.  Next, we explored the application.

When students understood the tool useage expectations, they got right to work! I could clearly see their informational knowledge as they designed, built and created!  Students had to problem solve how to create animals, stop ice from melting, and more.  They also collaborated on how to add labels (most settled on capturing a screenshot of their biome and then editing it in Explain Everything, but then others found a way to make signs inside of Minecraft!)

This project was a way to share already understood information.  Students could have certainly drawn a picture or written a description of their understanding...but I believe the Minecraft tool added three additional components to their learning:  a need to collaborate and learn from each other, high (very high!) engagement, and problem solving.
Below are two images created during our small group pilot.

We're hoping that we can bring this experience to ALL third graders next year!  Thank you, Mrs. Rankin, for helping us to pilot this project.  You can read Mrs. Rankin's entire post here on her Enrichment at RES blog.