The SMILE Program @ OSU

With Easter around the corner we wanted to show you some natural ways to dye your eggs.  The SMILE Club at Forest Grove High School shared with us the experiment they completed during a club meeting.  They used things found in nature like grass, cranberries, and apple skins to create their colorful eggs.  Check out their work and have a Happy Easter!

During the 2014 Winter Teacher’s Workshop, participants learned about StreamWebs, an online database that provides teachers, students, and community partners with a multimedia showcase for watershed stewardship projects.  StreamWebs provides a variety of resources that support student monitoring efforts including: sampling equipment, field support, and curriculum.  To learn more about StreamWebs click HERE.

As an addition to the schoolyard geology activities that were shared in Matt Nyman’s session during the Winter 2014 SMILE Teacher’s Workshop, here is a 4-lesson unit on Earth Science that can be done in the classroom.

Lesson 1 – Earth Layers

This lesson explores Earth, and it’s layers.  Students will be able to construct their own mini Earths according to different layers.

Lesson 2 – Plate Tectonics

Students will be able to explore the plates and their boundaries of the Earth. This lesson serves to explain how earthquakes and volcanoes come to be.

Lesson 3 – Earthquakes

This lesson explores earthquakes, how they happen, and how to stay safe.

Lesson 4 – Volcanoes

Students will explore the different Pacific Northwest volcanoes and get the opportunity to construct their own volcanoes.

At the SMILE Teacher’s Workshop Spring 2013, Brad Agenbroad and Ian Niktab presented similar activities to those below.  Other activities can be found on their blog.

Bottle Biology

This activity helps students explore the connection between land and water by allowing them to build a TerraAqua Column and change different variables of the system and observing their effects. These TerraAqua Columns are made from an empty two-liter bottle and other easily recycled items that can be acquired at little to no cost.

2-Liter Bottle Worm Bin: Garbage Eating Worms

In this activity students will learn about the importance that earthworms and microorganisms play in creating soil.  Students will make their own worm farm and will be able to watch the worms turn organic garbage into soil. This hands on activity can also be made easily with found materials.

The links below have really clear instructions that should be easy to follow. The last link is for a larger container that the worms can live in for a longer period of time. Brad suggests the small red wigglers, rather than night crawlers (they tend to get out at night.) If you use the liter bottles, they can live in there for a couple weeks, but you will need to watch the moisture and feed.

Here are the exact lessons that Brad and Ian presented in the Workshop:

https://suite101.com/a/popbottle-wormery-science-craft-a124055

http://www.spelloutloud.com/observing-worms-with-preschoolers.html

GreenWood Resources, home to the largest drip irrigation farm in the world, was nice enough to provide our workshop attendees with several varieties of poplar saplings.  With these saplings we ask that you and your students plant them and conduct your own growth experiment.  Here we have provided for you a lesson plan as well as planting instructions for your trees.  We would like to see data about your sapling’s progress and we will provide a way to share that data in the near future. Enjoy!

Alicia Lyman-Holt, a staff member at the Hinsdale Wave Research Lab, led a session at the 2014 “Step up your STEM” Teacher’s Workshop and shared her expertise on Tsunamis, Civil Engineering, and the Engineering Design Cycle. Take a look at the materials that Alicia shared!

This year’s High School Challenge event will be held on February 13 and 14, 2014 at OSU, and it will focus on the complex topic of Marine Protected Areas. Here are two introductory lessons that provide a general overview into what Marine Protected Areas are and how they work! Click the titles below to access the lesson plans.

Marine Protected Areas: An Introduction

Marine Protected Areas: Conservation Goals

A Classification System for Marine Protected Areas

This activity was provided by high school club leader Ken Dicky.  It adds to the sampling concepts taught in the halibut unit with a sample-to-population-inference activity.  It is a chance to do some basic math (statistics) and eat food at a club meeting!  Along with the activity worksheet you will find teacher notes with specifics on leading it during a club meeting.  Ken says: “It was fun, valuable, and took about 1 hour”.

Sample to Population Inference Activity

Teacher Notes