Introducing the Watershed Education Network’s Washington Middle School Flagship Water Explorers 2020
By Deb Fassnacht and Jenna Rolle
Week Three: More Cattails and Bugs!
Our numbers were cut in half for the third week of Water Explorers, with two of the team in band practice. But the weather was semi-decent so we packed our clipboards and colored pencils and walked down to Bancroft Pond. After seeing the students’ interest in cattails, I had thought to do a miniature plant lesson. Each student found two plants around Bancroft Pond and sketched them, and wrote down two things that they thought made that plant stand out from the others. We then looked in a Wetland Plant Identification book to try and identify the plants they sketched. Finding the dichotomous key to be a bit over even my head, we ended up looking up the plant names and comparing the page to the sketches. They had done a really awesome job identifying the key features of their plants and what set those apart from the others for easy identification.
Once the plant lesson was finished, we still had another 20 minutes before we had to head back to Washington, so the students had free ‘wander and explore’ time. During this time we encountered a gigantic bug, at least 2 inches long, crawling around on a log in the ice of the pond. Much shrieking and excitement ensued. Once we had safely escorted the bug back to its habitat, we packed our bags up once again and headed back to the school.
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