Project offers students hand-on learning about environment
RICES LANDING – The Monongahela River, as it flows through the borough, has some issues like old mining operations and sewage to deal with, but it has some things in its favor like a good mix of plankton. A nearby tributary, Pumpkin Run, supports a healthy variety of tiny creatures.
At least, that’s what a group of Mapletown Junior-Senior High School students found when they went to Pumpkin Run Park recently to study the environment with educators visiting from Pittsburgh.
“They like this hands-on learning,” Mapletown teacher William Lubich said of his students.
Lubich and colleague Paul Hnottavange accompanied the high school students to Pumpkin Run Park on Oct. 11 as part of the Greene County Community River-Ventures Project of the Pittsburgh Voyager organization, described as a non-profit, river-based science and math educational organization.
The students split up into three groups that rotated among learning stations to study the local freshwater ecosystems, watersheds and biodiversity.
Mapletown is featured here, but students from Carmichaels Area, Jefferson-Morgan and Central Greene school districts took turns visiting Rices Landing for the two weeks Oct. 8-18 of the River-Ventures project.
One learning station was set up at the stream for the study of macroinvertebrates, tiny creatures without backbones. Black rubber boots, nets, compartmentalized trays, magnifiers and forceps were arranged on the bank of the stream for the students to scoop out of the water and then identify whatever living things they could find.
“We found a crayfish,” proclaimed one of Lubich’s students on the hunt for macroinvertebrates.
That particular group was composed of seven 10th-graders, four girls and three guys. It was chilly and rainy but they stomped into the ankle-deep water with no hesitation and collected a number of bugs, worms and larvae that they eventually sorted, identified and counted, with Voyager educator Suzi Bromfield explaining what their findings meant.
Ashley Fox said the rain did not matter to her, and she was not reluctant to touch the creatures that she had already studied in class.
“It was fun,” she said.
Brad Myers agreed the exercise was fun and said he also recognized some of what they found.
Lubich said involving all the senses, as the exercise at Pumpkin Run did, can help reinforce a lesson. He noted that Whiteley Creek and a stand of woods outside the Mapletown school also give him an opportunity to take the students outside for lessons. He said the Voyager project was a chance for all-day emphasis.
Another station was located in the basement of a community building along the river. Microscopes were arranged there for the students to study river water samples for the presence of plankton.
The third station was a 44-foot former houseboat dubbed Scout. The vessel was a converted chemistry lab where the students had an opportunity to travel a distance along the river, take samples of the water, observe environmental factors and use a variety of equipment to test the river quality.
Once they made it through all three stations, the students considered what they learned during an overview of the day.
This was the second trip to Greene County for the Pittsburgh Voyager educators. They did a similar program with the schools in April.
The plankton study was new this time.
When a group of students accompanied by Hnottavange stopped by that station, they tested water samples they had collected on the Scout. They singled out and counted animal and plant plankton that Ann Tipper, a Voyager educator, said revealed favorable conditions for the river, although she talked about how the types of plankton they found could be affected by the time of year and weather conditions.
This group was of 10 guys in 11th grade who participate in Mapletown’s Envirothon team, which Hnottavange explained competes each year in a statewide academic program. Hnottavange said one of the areas the Envirothon addresses is aquatics.
“It makes a difference to be on site rather than in a classroom. If all you do is talk about it then you don’t really know it,” Hnottavange said.
Steve Roszak and Matt Messich said they did not realize so many factors could affect the water, and they agreed they most enjoyed the learning station on the Scout.
Tipper said the students were questioned on everything they were learning, because the experience was meant to be more than a field trip. She said she hoped they took new knowledge back to school.
She said the Voyager team plans to do a teacher workshop as a follow-up to the two weeks spent with the students from throughout the county.
The Greene County Community River-Ventures Project got support from Allegheny Energy, the state Department of Environmental Protection’s Growing Greener program, the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, The Pittsburgh Foundation and the Denali Initiative. Other partners/supporters are Rices Landing Borough and the Greene County Conservation District.