Final Project

I had a hard time deciding what I should do for the final project.  I had a lot of ideas floating around in my head and couldn't really settle on anything.  I was reading through my old posts for inspiration and saw my link to no child left inside.  It reminded me to do something that gets the kids outside, even though it's cold.  My school is pretty much right across the street from Westchester Lagoon, yet many kids have never been down there.  I wanted to do something involving that local area.

I also wanted to focus on my wildlife biology class.  This is my elective and it's only a semester long, so I'll get a brand new batch of kids after the new year.  When we started the class at the beginning of last semester, we could go outside and look at plants, fungi, and aquatic invertebrates.  This time of year that's obviously not going to work.  So after learning so much about ice in this course, I decided I wanted to have my students explore some information about snow.  We can do it after we study adaptations of Alaskan animals to cold weather.

I'll attempt to do the following:

• Begin with the 1000 snowflakes quiz to get students thinking about distribution of ice and snow on earth

• Have students explore the Snowflake Physics interactive, focusing on how they form and what different temperature/humidity causes the different shapes.

from Teachers Domain

• Take the students out to Westchester Lagoon with scopes and slides to get a closer look at actual snowflakes outside.

by Clifford Cochran

• Take temperature and humidity readings on a day when it is snowing and then look at what types of snowflakes are falling to see if it matches what the graph predicts. 

• Make models of the snowflakes we observed.

•  Grow some different types of crystals to compare their formation and shape to that of snowflakes.

• Show NOVA Arctic Passage Igloo 101 to show how different types of snow(flakes) matter to Native people who build snow shelters.  Also explore the Inupiaq word iglu and how it doesn't mean just snow shelter.

I'm thinking this will take us 8-10 days, depending on the weather.  All of the students' work will be compiled in a foldable to be assessed for a project grade. 

It would be awesome to have someone help the students actually build their own snow iglus.  So far I've struck out on my ideas for places to contact in Anchorage to find someone who could do this with us.  I've tried it once by reading directions from a book with my husband, and that was a resounding disaster.  If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them!