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First "It’s All Connected" Activities Unveiled
By Tom Anderson  On Friday, December 2, 15 docents and interested members met at the Huntington Beach Wetlands Conservancy where Joana Tavares-Reager, Amigos de Bolsa Chica Curriculum Developer, unveiled the lessons and activities she has designed for the 6th grade.These new activities will be offered in addition to our existing tours to teachers who want their students to participate in a program that offers a more complete fulfillment of State curriculum standards. This newprogram, which demonstrates the connection between the ocean and wetlands, will utilize both the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve and the Bolsa Chica State Beach Visitor Center. An interested class will rotate students between stations with activities at the wetland and stations with activities at the beach. There will be 6 stations with 3 activities for the wetlands and 3 activities for the State Beach Visitor Center. This is flexible and can be modified to fit the class’ schedules and availability of docents. While this is subject to change, the planned stations for the beach: “Where does all the sand come from?” explains the concept of watersheds, weathering, erosion, sedimentation and coastal transport; “Who moved my sand?” shows how wave action shapes the coastline; and “Heat, wind and convection currents” reveals how the heat from the land and the coolness of the water creates the breezes at Bolsa Chica.  Likely stations for the wetlands: “Topography, Earthquakes and Landslides” displays how the shape of the land creates habitats and affects living organisms; “Food webs and the flow of energy” entertainingly demonstrates the complexity of a food web with string; and “Settle down, sand samples!” demonstrates why different sizes and kinds of soil particles behave in different ways, some creating sandy beaches and some forming wetland soils.Unless students take an elective earth science class in high school, 6th grade is the last time students will be exposed to topics such as these (unless of course they continue with the subject in college). So Joana created simple yet extremely clever activities that teach important lessons on basic concepts that might actually stick in kids’ imaginations. They are designed to be fun for docents to demonstrate and fun for students to participate in. Students will walk away with a good understanding of concepts like watersheds and how everything ends up in the ocean, wave action, erosion, wind and food webs. Most importantly, injust a few hours they will see how the land, the ocean, the birds, animals, plants and people are all connected. As this was the first run-through of the activities, there was discussion and suggestions on how best to get the thrust of lessons across to the students. Now that this format has been settled upon, Joana will apply it to lessons and activities appropriate to the 7th, 8th and 9th grade State Curriculum Standards. These plans will also be reviewed by the State Parks interpretive programs personnel. Amigos will begin training docents after the New Year. Also being developed: an offsite presentation of “It’s All Connected” that can be given at schools before the students come to Bolsa Chica to give them a short and entertainingintroduction to a place many of them have never been. This program was funded by grants from PIMCO and Ralphs. Back to the Tern Tide/News Index |