Day 1- Liberty Lake

DAY 1 

Liberty Lake Beaver Dam and Stream Conservation 

Liberty Lake Regional Park is an excellent site to observe some of the abundant natural resources we have available in Eastern Washington. At the park, trees of all different maturity levels are present, creating an hospitable ecosystem to many species. When I visited the park with a group of 5th graders, the park hosts were very informative and helpful to explain the importance of allowing the forest to grow naturally and how humans can help to not inhibit its growth.

In the image below you can trees at many different stages of life:

 The area is home to moose, coyotes, rabbit, ducks, raccoons, deer, and beavers. The beavers play a crucial role in how the streams and rivers flow in the park. One thing that I learned about beavers during the field trip was that they instinctively build the dam to limit the sound of rushing water through the area. Creating the dam, however, has a multitude of benefits for the beavers. By storing up water behind the dam, they are able to create a deep, slow-moving area of water to live in and create their lodge. They build a lodge that has an entrance underwater to protect their home from predators. I was surprised to hear that they can hold their breath for up to 15 minutes! 

The image below shows students overlooking a vacant beaver lodge:

The water above the dam is about 2-3 feet higher than the water below. At this particular location, the beaver family that had been living there for several years disappeared, the park guide suspected that they had been poached. Below is an image of a beaver skull, it was cool for the kids to feel the strong teeth: 

Learning about animals' habitats and ways of life allows students to gain a greater perspective on how ecosystems support life. Giving students a tangible resource, like a field trip, allows them to better understand how human environmental impact can directly affect our local and global environment. A better extension to this field trip would have been for students to return to school and do more research on habitats and ecosystems. This trip would be an excellent 'engage" lesson to further develop in a following exploration. Next Gen Science standards that could have easily been met with this field trip are 

LS2.A: Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems: Having students explore how each species is dependent upon another would be easy to do in a setting such as Liberty Lake park.
and
LS2.B: Cycles of Matter and Energy Transfer in Ecosystems: While on the tour, we saw a handful of dead animals. This spurred a discussion on decomposers. This is a great platform for teaching about trophic levels and cycles of matter. 

This field trip is one I would definitely take my students on in the future, but I would want to tie in a lesson to further develop their conceptual understanding of environmental impact and local ecosystems.

Objective 1- alignment with standards: These field trips and activities could easily be transformed to fit the above standards and also to meet standards which discuss environmental stability and natural resources. The Next Generation Science Standard ESS3.C: Human Impacts on Earth Systems addresses the need for students to understand just how severe of an impact humans have on local biomes as well as the biosphere's environment as a whole. Teaching students about human impact in a local ecosystem where the trees are right in front of them and animals habitats are evident would be much more applicable than when sitting in a classroom. 

Day 2- Wind

DAY 2 

First Wind Palouse 

First Wind, a wind turbine farm in Rosalia, owns 58 turbines along the rolling Palouse hills. Standing 80 meters high, the large structures are a powerful source of energy for customers of Avista Utilities. 

I was blown away by their size while standing so close to the base of one. 

This particular facility supplies 5% of Avista's power by wind. Hydroelectric supplies the majority of Spokane's power at around 48%. 

A few facts about wind turbines:

• The Nacelle (the box that sits at the top) is the size of a Winnebago and houses computers which report data to the facility 
• The Nacelle has sensors that allow it to rotate and face the direction that would capture the most wind energy 
• Washington state has set a goal for 2020 to have 15% of it's power come from renewables. 
• Renewables are cost competitive with fossil fuels- they just aren't being subsidized and thus aren't receiving the funding they need
• Nuclear energy is the most expensive type of energy
• Each wind turbine costs about $4 million 
• The blades on a windmill are 49 (160 feet) long

This field trip provided a ton of information that was new to me, and I think it would be very impacting for students to come tour the facility as an engagement lesson. Following the trip to First Wind, we constructed our own wind turbines with materials and lesson plans from kidwind.org- a fantastic resource for future inquiry lessons with students. This was a great exploration following the tour of real wind turbines- kids would be so engaged and excited to investigate!

As we tested our wind turbines and collected data, I concluded that this exploration would be fantastic to meet the diverse needs of students. Using a hands-on activity would stimulate kinesthetic learners, gathering data allows logical thinkers to be involved and integrates math (Objective 2), and working in small groups would allow students with strong interpersonal skills to shine. Students with specific learning needs could easily work in smaller groups or with an aide. If touring the facility is not an option, a teacher could definitely capture students attention with a video or picture of a wind turbine and by asking students about their background knowledge on wind turbines. The exploration of building a wind turbine could fit anywhere on the inquiry spectrum, ranging from very guided to completely independent- a perfect lesson to meet diverse student needs! (Objective 3) 

Link to USGS interactive Wind Farm map display:
http://eerscmap.usgs.gov/windfarm/

Day 3- Water

DAY 3 

Water Reclamation Facility

This facility was impressively new, innovative, and advanced. I was surprised by how efficient their system seemed to be working. A few things I was really impressed with was the fact that they use microorganisms to eat solid waste and then trap the methane gas by-product of those organisms to power their plant! Talk about productive. This facility has seemingly found a solution to each of its challenges. For example: 

Microorganisms produce excess methane gas --- the facility found a way to store and use that gas. 

There is excess solid waste at the end of the water cleaning process --- the waste is treated and sold back to farmers as fertilizer 

Treatment plants often produce a foul odor- fans pipe the smell into a basin of damp cedar wood chips that absorb the air. 

AMAZING! 

I think it would be really cool to show students how engineers face problems and then come up with solutions. Teaching problem solving skills is a huge concept that starts in 4th grade and it would be awesome to show students that it is applicable for the real world. 

At the Water Reclamation Facility I realized how much of an impact I have on our local community. Not only do my actions affect our water supply- it affects the daily lives of the workers who have to clean and sort through the sludge that is flushed through our pipes.

Preparing students to be respectful citizens is a difficult task. Especially for students who don't have all of their needs met. I firmly believe that Maslow's hierarchy of needs (research, objective 5) is critical in understanding our students lives. Having taught at a school with a lower SES and high trauma rates, I can see where my students wouldn't be as interested in learning about water treatment. The last thing on their mind is how to protect our environment when their own environment is unstable. Visiting a local facility, however, is a very large first step in the right direction to open their eyes to the importance of being good stewards of our community. If kids are able to go witness what happens when they flush the toilet, it may enlighten them to the fact that everything we do has an impact on our surroundings. I have no doubt that being at the facility would have a much greater impact on student understanding than if we were to just teach it from the classroom. (Objective 4)

Not only was the tour itself valuable, but the facility offered several resources for teachers to take and use in lessons and to support curricula.

Bear Lake Field Trip 

The 5th grade field trip to Bear Lake included 6 stations where students were able to learn the value of conserving water, protecting the air and water from pollutants, and how our SVRP aquifer plays a role in the water cycle. The different stations offered so much valuable information for students about environmental sustainability and provided students with hands-on opportunities to understand the importance of protecting our aquifer. This is definitely a field trip that I would love to implement into my school year if possible, I think students really benefit from the content presented here. The only change I would make is to have it at the beginning of the year if possible so that we could further develop the concepts throughout the year rather than having them learn all of this right at the end. In order to really develop skills and practices of sustainability education, teachers would benefit from having these stations be their foundation and then building on that through further explorations in the classroom. Another cool thing to do if this were in the fall would be to have students develop a way to track their water usage throughout the semester, and implement ways to reduce it. A long term project to implement good habits could make a huge difference in their consumption of water. The students also had a station on composting, and they might be interested to start a composting bin in the classroom if the trip were at the beginning of the year.
  After attending a field trip like this,  it would be easy to integrate English Language Arts to have students write informational pieces about water, or conservation in general. 4th and 5th grade both have a CCSS for information writing, "Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas and information clearly." (Objective 2)

Day 4- Hydroelectric and Solar Power

DAY 4

48% of Spokane's power is generated by water. The Spokane area is really stepping up their game in the renewable resource industry, I'm impressed! The inside of the turbine generator is incredible. What's even more fascinating is that it was built in 1920! I think students would have so much to take away from this field trip, this is an amazing asset to have this contact information. 

Below is a diagram of the inside of the turbine:

 This field trip would definitely engage students and make them want to learn more but it could also be used as an explain stage of a unit! Students could be working on building their own hydroelectric power plants in a classroom and then go see the Spokane dam as an explain lesson where they could ask super thoughtful questions to the engineers, allowing them to really take ownership of their learning. I also loved the tour guide's ability to elicit student response of some big conceptual ideas like the heat being given off by the generator, and the pressure of 1 cubic foot of water, etc.

In order to assess students' understanding at the end of this trip, they could be required to answer some higher level thinking application questions such as:
How is energy produced by the turbine?
Why is water a good renewable energy source?
Can you think of some challenges that hydroelectric power plants might face?
Why have they designed the gates to be able to channel the water where they want it to go?
What are some benefits of hydroelectric power?
(objective 5) 

As we toured the facility and saw how the turbines worked, my own gears were spinning with ideas of exploration lessons. If resources allow, I would love for students (upper grades) to explore how wind and hydroelectric power work simultaneously to supply electricity to an area. This would hopefully guide students to the question of how to store electrical energy. If my students are able to leave my class with some big questions like this that would inspire them to go find solutions, I would feel accomplished as a science teacher!

Solar Arrays

The Avista Community Solar Arrays are a super cool innovative way to test and research a new source of energy while allowing investors to benefit. 

The arrays were really cool to see and they could definitely spark some interest in solar technology for students. A fun integrated math lesson could include work with math arrays - for example:
If one 3x5 panel produces 2 KWH of electricity, how much electricity is produced by the entire field of 1512 panels? (Integration, Objective 2)