Home
Curriculum Overview
Lessons
Poster Contest
Project Wet

[ Lesson 1 ] [ Lesson 2 ] [ Lesson 3 ] [ Lesson 4 ] [ Lesson 5 ] [ Lesson 6 ]

Lesson 6: Spring/Fall Field Trip

* A field trip down the Little Susitna River

Geared toward 3^rd through 6^th grade (targeted 4^th grade)

• Materials:
• Bus for transportation
• All day field trip equipment (food, first aid, cell phone, insect spray, sun screen, garbage bags)
• Water chemical analysis kit
• Aquatic macro-invertebrate kit and kick nets
• Minnow traps (two per site / baited and set the previous evening)
• 100 meter surveyor’s measuring tape to measure off stream distance
• Oranges (floated and timed as they drift 100 meters used to determine stream velocity)
• Waders (for staff or students in the river)
• Disposable latex gloves (for use in chemical analysis and site clean up)
• Clipboards (One for each student)

• Activities:

1.      This field trip will begin at the students’ school. Students will board the bus at the beginning of the school day.

2.      First stop is just upstream of the Hatcher Pass Bridge . Students will step out onto the viewing platform where a discussion of the river condition will take place. Note the fast moving water in this area, steep banks, water moving quickly over rocks. Water clarity. Check fish trap.

3.      Second stop is at the bridge crossing along Welch Road . Students are divided into 3 groups/stations: Chemical analyzers, Minnow Trap Checkers, and Macro-invertebrate collectors. Previously described procedures will be used for the chemical analyzers and macro-invertebrate collectors. Minnow trap checkers will retrieve traps placed the evening before and place any creatures in the traps into clean plastic buckets with at least three inches of river water. Observations and discussion of the stream site, creatures collected, “salmon facts” and characteristics will take place. A sketch of the creatures collected and a description of how the trap operates will conclude this station’s work. All organisms are returned to the stream.

4.      The third stop is upstream of the Sushana Road Bridge . Student groups are rotated so that each student is doing a different activity than at the previous station.

5.      The fourth and final stop is at the Schrock Road Bridge . Students are again rotated so that each group can complete the remaining station activity.

6.      Additional procedures:

a.       Field journals are completed by each student and turned in at the end of the trip

b.      A ten minute “speed clean-up” is completed by students before leaving each site with the goal of “leaving the river and banks cleaner than we found them”

• Mat-Su District 4^th Grade Science Standards addressed with this activity:

1.      A1.1 Asking questions, predicting, observing, describing, measuring, making generalizations, inferring and communicating

2.      A1.1a Working collaboratively, carrying out investigations

3.      A1.1c Working with an increasing variety of models and tools

4.      A1 Recording data to communicate results

5.      A1.2 Observing, measuring and collecting data from explorations and using this information to classify, predict and communicate

6.      A3 Understanding that interactions with the environment provide and opportunity for understanding scientific concepts

• Time required:
• 5 hours for the field trip