Station Grouping and Shorter Educational Sessions

If you want to focus for 1 to 2 hours on an educational component, any of the below Stations will work well. When completing the Stations, there are corresponding pages in the Logbook for the children to fill out. Copies of specific pages being used can be easily made.

Overall, a variety of field exercise combinations can be used to create a short lesson in an educational context. Weather, resources, location and group size should be taken into account when choosing which Station to use. The Logbooks provide helpful worksheets which reinforce what children learn in the field, and can be complimented or replaced with other materials to suit the group.

 Station 1 - Physical Data and Water Quality Testing

The purpose of this section is to help students understand the different types of data, as well as how to collect and interpret some basic water quality data.

Please note, you will require a site with safe,easy access to water. If a safe access point is not available, then you may bucket a water sample and have the tests done on that.

Test strips will be required for the acid and nitrate tests. If you do not have any strips, these are available at cost from the Partners FOR the Saskatchewan River Basin. 

• Physical Data (Leader’s Field Guide page 3-4)
• Go for a Dip? (Leader’s Field Guide page 14)
• Acid (Leader’s Field Guide page 15-16)
• Nitrates (Leader’s Field Guide page 17-18)

 Station 2 - Plant cover, loosestrife, wildlife

This station allows students to view and increase their understanding of various types of habitats. This station primarily uses visual identification and discussion questions. For further expansion, you can bring a plant or animal identification guide for the students to use.

•  Plant Cover (Leader’s Field Guide page 5-6)
       helps to teach about riparian and aquatic habitats.
•  Loosestrife (Leader’s Field Guide page 7-8)
       helps to understand invasive plants.
• Wildlife (Leader’s Field Guide page 9-12)
       helps to teach that we share our habitat with other creatures.

 Station 3 - Delineating your monitoring site

Take time to properly instruct the children in this activity. The students should sketch in the major features of the site, such as water, buildings, trees, animals, etc. You should also mark down on the map where you did your water quality sampling and where you did/or plan to do the invertebrate sampling.

You can find a copy of the monitoring map on page 22 of the Leader’s Field Guide and the Logbook.

 Station 4 - Invertebrates

This activity requires easy access to water. See the Leader’s Setup Guide page 8-9 for tips on invertebrate sampling. You should have 1 bucket per pair of students so they can view at the same time. Pictures of the invertebrates are included in the Logbook on pages 19-20 with questions to complete on page 21.

• Fill a white ice cream pail with pond water.
• Dip net around plants and rocks near shoreline.
• Place net into bucket. Turn inside out and gently swish in the water releasing the debris from the net.
• View the ice-cream pail in the shade to ensure that you do not harm the invertebrates.
• Observe, and then release back into the wild.